Month: April 2013

athletes · body image · competition · fitness · motivation · running · swimming · training

On Comparing

Tracy I18 Comments
Image description: "Don't compare yourself to others" written in a notebook. Credit: pexels.com
Image description: “Don’t compare yourself to others” written in a notebook. Credit: pexels.com

I walk into the pool area at the Y and suss out the various lanes.  They’re marked “slow,” “moderate,” “fast,” and “speed.” The first thing I look for is occupancy.  Other things being equal, I default to the lane with the fewest number of people in it. But it also matters how fast or slow they are swimming. And there are no absolute standards for this. I like “fast” the best, but some days I’m at home in the speed lane. Other days, I’m make out better in the moderate lane. It depends how I compare to the other swimmers who happen to be there at the time.

This kind of comparing is practical. But there is another, more insidious and pernicious form of comparison.

Still at the pool.  Hey, she’s super fast.  And look, she’s got amazing flip turns. And wait!  She’s got a float thing between her legs, so she’s not even kicking at full steam.  I thought I was a pretty good swimmer.  Guess I’m not as good as I thought.

Or maybe this.  That guy’s a lot slower than I thought. Why did he rush off the wall so quickly at that end instead of letting me pass him? Now I have to slow down and zip by at the other end. Look at me, I’m so fast!

I’m going out on a limb here by sharing these thoughts in the hopes that I’m not the only one who compares in this way.  By “this way,” I mean the way that makes me come out either better or worse than, superior or inferior but rarely equal to, other people.

I’ve blogged before about why “fitspo” doesn’t inspire me in the way it’s apparently meant to.  I was browsing a blog this morning that I found on a list of recommended fitness blogs. It turned out to be a fitspo tumblr that combined inspirational quotes with pictures of unbelievably fit-looking young (always young! sigh!) women, many in dance or yoga poses that I honestly wouldn’t be able to get myself into no matter what body I had.

It took me about two minutes on this site before I started to hear a voice in my head telling me I’m never going to look like that (true) and that there’s something lamentable about that fact (false).  And it’s not just lamentable. It quickly leads to the feeling that I’m not quite up to standard.

I’m fairly reflective about these things and even explicitly, loudly, and frequently reject the idea that a particular body aesthetic is a marker of someone’s worth. But when I start to compare, it can bring me down fast.

And comparing isn’t just harmful when I come out feeling worse about myself. I don’t the best source of a sense of self-worth is through thinking myself better than other people either.  As a feminist committed to equality and to solidarity with other women, I can do better than that.

Comparing myself to other women also leads fairly quickly to the need to compete with them.  I’ve blogged about the competitive feminist already. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with competition, particularly in the realm of sport, competing and needing to win in order to feel good about oneself strikes me as a pretty weak foundation on which to build a sense of self-worth.

Sam has suggested that she feels most fiercely competitive not with others but with different past selves.  In setting her fittest-by-fifty goals, she would like to outperform two of her previous personal bests.  Sam is really good at separating self-worth from her athletic performance. She’s a huge role model for me because she pursues physical activity and improved performance because she loves a good challenge, not because she thinks it will make her in some sense superior (either to others or even to who she is today).

She’s good proof that you can want to out-do former selves without using past performance as a stick with which to beat yourself when you fall short of it.  That’s probably why tracking is such a good thing for her — she’s so neutral about it.

On the weekend I saw the film Quartet, in which Maggie Smith plays an aging former opera star who moves into a retirement home for musicians. At the beginning of the film, she lives in the past and refuses to sing any longer because her voice is no longer what it once was. Of course, a major plot mover in the film is the question of whether she will sing again in the upcoming gala.  Her constant comparison with herself at her prime keeps her from simply enjoying what she can do now.

I’ve been tracking my running lately, and it’s kind of demoralizing because my pace is getting slower and slower. But the fact of the matter is that this is what I should expect given that I’ve fallen out of a regular running routine.  When I compare my old run pace to my recent run pace, I am comparing apples to oranges, much like Maggie Smith’s character in Quartet, who compares herself at her prime to herself just shy of eighty. A couple of months ago, I ran three days a week and saw consistent progress both in distance and in speed.  But when I let winter interrupt my running program, of course it’s going to look different when I go out for a run now. I’m just getting back into it.

What’s the upshot of this reflection on comparing?  First, we can use comparing in a negative way, to make ourselves feel inferior or superior to other people.  Neither is particularly helpful and both stand as perilous foundations for a sense of self-worth.

Second, there are neutral ways to use comparison, especially comparison with our past performance, as a means of gathering information. Some of us are better at this neutrality than others. Here’s where you need to know yourself. Personally, I need to be cautious.

I prefer to find different ways of relating to other athletes who engage in similar activities than by comparing my performance with theirs.  I am much happier to be in a supportive community where we can each encourage one another and cheer one another on.

In this respect, comparing can have the same upside and downside as competing.  Chris Evert said that a good competitor reacts the same whether she wins or loses.  Similarly with comparing. If I can look at other women, or at myself at different times of my life, and not feel superior, inferior, envious etc., then I’ve got a solid sense of who I am and what I’m about. If, however, looking at other women gives rise to uncomfortable feelings or in some way gets used as my source of validation (or lack of it), then it may not be a healthy practice for me to engage in.

 

athletes · body image · clothing · competition · racing · running · triathalon

Do ladylike values clash with the norms of sports performance?

Sam B31 Comments

I wonder sometimes about the clash between the gender role socialization of girls and the demands of athletic performance. I’ve been reading and writing about the history of women’s cycling (see Riding this summer? Beware of bicycle face! and Bicycles: Making good women go bad since the 1800s) and it strikes that the mismatch between ladylike behavior and the norms of sport haven’t entirely gone way. What worries me is that if I think this, given that I consider myself mostly free from the oppressive aspects of femininity, I imagine there’s lots of other women for whom it’s worse.

I know, I know. I’m not free of femininity entirely, and I even embrace some aspects of chosen femininity as fun, but I don’t think of myself as particularly ladylike.

Part of the story is that the demands of femininity never quite fit me that well. And I suppose that’s true for lots of girls.I remember the clashes. I once got in trouble for chewing gum in church, ‘girls don’t chew gum.’ Later I got in trouble in grade school for sitting on a chair astraddle with the back of the chair between my legs. Clearly, not ladylike. I was even punished for pulling on my snowpants over my skirt and tights without waiting to get into the girls’ cloak room to do it.  The joys of attending a Catholic school, taught by nuns, during Newfoundland winter.

Part of the the ill fit now is age related. “Lady” sounds not just feminine to me, but also old, and I don’t plan to grow old gracefully. Part of it is also my connection to the queer community. I’ve spent time with people who’ve questioned gender roles much more seriously than I have and if traditional gender roles rub me the wrong way, for other people they’re a jail cell that makes life hell.

In grad school I started to approach this issue theoretically, reading Iris Marion Young’s Throwing Like a Girl. Young’s essay begins with the phenomenology of learning to throw a ball and argues that women are trained into fragility and self-consciousness because we are objectified. You can read more about Young’s views here at the blog Pondering Postfeminism.

I also loved Sandra Bartky’s Femininity and domination: studies in the phenomenology of oppression. I was a student of Sandra’s (she’s now a friend as well as a former teacher and mentor) at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I learned a lot about the demands of femininity and the ways in which those demands make women’s lives difficult. At that stage in my life though I didn’t have an athletic bone in my body and so the particular constraints femininity imposes on athleticism weren’t obvious to me.

But the clash between ladylike values and sports matters to me now because I’d like to get more women out on bikes and I’d like to see more women out there racing and competing. Yes, racing.

What are some concrete examples of the clash between ladylike behavior and the values of athletic performance?

I’m going to talk from my own experience here though I’m certain there are examples from sports I haven’t tried. Sigh rugby. Sigh roller derby.

First, there are the clothes. It’s clear that women aren’t always fond of, or comfortable in, performance athletic wear. I’ve written about that here and here. See also my post on going commando. Sports clothing geared to athletic performance have as their purpose to go fast not necessarily to cover everything you’d want covered or to look cute.

Second, there’s acting in a way that commands attention. I’ve had difficulty Kiaing in aikido, for example. But there’s also leading an attack in bike racing. Sports requires confidence and fearlessness and sometimes the way we’ve been taught to be quiet and to not attract too much attention or not take up too much space gets in the way.

Third, there’s physical contact with others. I play defense in soccer and when you’re covering a player on the opposing team. you stay close. Very close. Soccer isn’t a contact sport but you can be uncomfortably close and you do deliberately block and get in the way of players on the other team. In Aikido, I’ve had real difficulty learning to punch and strike people. Yes, Aikido is all about self-defense but in training one person needs to attack so your partner can practice defensive techniques. If your fist stops short of your partner’s chest, they aren’t learning very much and likely you aren’t giving them enough energy to execute the technique properly. I’m getting better at this but it’s taken awhile!

Fourth, and this one definitely sets ladylike values on their edge, there’s bodily excretions of various sorts and the way they’re dealt with in training and competition. My male cyclist friends laughed when they had to teach me how to spit. How could you not know how to spit? Well…

Ditto, blowing your nose on the bike. I had to be taught how. You can read about it here and here.

Luckily, I never plan on competing in an Ironman length event so I don’t have to worry about how to pee while riding a bike. That’s covered for men here.

The Fat Cyclist’s post How To Pee Whilst Riding Your Bike has this to say about women: “And if You’re a Woman… I have neither information nor advice for you. I’m sorry.” Gee thanks.

You can even buy a “I pee on my bike” triathlon tshirt.

Is peeing on the bike disgusting?

“Now, some say “Gross – now you’re covered in pee”. It’s all about getting to the finish line ASAP, not smelling as good as possible. But realistically, it can’t smell all that much worse than how everything else smells. Not to mention you’re doing it on the bike, which means the wind will help evaporate things very quickly. If you are properly hydrated, it is probably closer to water than anything else.” from How To: Peeing on the Bike

It’s probably clear now why the people helping to rack the bikes after the bike leg is over at an Ironman event do so in rubber gloves.

So, for me at least, there have been some tensions between the demands of ladylike behavior and the demands of athletic performance. And I don’t even think of myself as a lady.

I agree with the author of the West Yorkshire ‘was knitting, now cycling’ blog accident bizarro  on the matter of the term “ladies”:

“I’m worried about this word. Its connotations are bad, for me. Ladies are perfectly-behaved, delicate creatures in twinsets and pearls, or bootylicious babes in bikinis (as satirised by Flight of the Conchords so perfectly here). I can’t identify with either of these groups. I’m not that old, yet; I swear quite a bit and laugh like Sid James; I occasionally wonder what it would be like to have a cleavage. I’m not much of a lady.”

I think we women athletes may need to say goodbye to our inner “ladies” and channel our inner “bad girls.” I’ve been meaning to read Girl Trouble reviewed in the Independent here. The book by the cultural historian Carol Dyhouse “explores the history of our moral panics over rebel girls, from the late-19th century onwards.”

Sounds like a great book. And I’m guessing, maybe hoping, there’s a section on bikes, or at least on women and sports.

The reviewer says this about the New Woman, ‘Many depictions traded in stereotypes: “‘Girton Girls’ were caricatured as bicycle-riding, back-slapping, whisky-swilling, bloomer-wearing eccentrics.”

Oh, and note to self, on the list of things not to Google, add ‘bad girls on bikes.’ I did find this call for videos and short stories on the subject of bikes and sex.  They say they are into ethical bike perversion, joyful exploration, shameless flirtation, and radical honesty.

Fascinating.