When I get home from a really good workout I strip down to my underoos and sports bra and strut my stuff. I’m waiting to stop sweating before my shower and I feel like an uber hard body kick arse super human. To be more accurate, I feel like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2.
Her muscle definition in the movie set the bar at ripped and shredded and when I’m feeling like a boss I think of her.
Every now and then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I do my panty parade and think “whoa, I do not look how I feel”. Bodies are weird. I know I refer to “the oatmeal” a lot but he seems to get my mindset about working out and how your body responds to working out. My thighs are large and lumpy, the skin on my belly folds over my cesarean scar to hang over my underoos, I look like a slowly deflating skin suit.
Yet, I feel like a kick ass ninja and my muscles are hard beneath the fat and skin. I don’t exercise to look a certain way, I exercise to do things and support my health but it would be nice to have a touch more congruity between how I feel and how I look. I feel guilty about this, like me dabbling in mind/body dualism is making for shoddy feminism but I also do feel this way. I love my body…
AND it would be nice not to:
- smell like an unwashed ferret after a workout
- have really loud gas while working out
- manage thigh and armpit chaffing
- have a long term relationship with athlete’s foot
- constantly imagine a workout bra that both supports my mammaries while allowing me to breathe.
Seriously, the breathing and boob management thing, we need to do something about this my engineering sisters!
And that is why I think bodies are weird.