My boyfriend and I aren’t really sportsball types, so on Super Bowl Sunday, I commandeered the laptop and our Netflix subscription to watch a documentary called “The Boxing Girls of Kabul,” which I didn’t know anything about, but liked from the title alone. The basic premise is that it follows three teenage Afghan girls: Sadaf, Shabnam, and Shahla as they train under their coach Sabir, himself a former competitor who decided to start a training gym for girls’ boxing. The girls, despite inadequate training conditions and extreme social pressures, train diligently and travel to compete internationally. Some of my favourite scenes are of them training together.
My only complaint about this film is that it was only about 53 minutes long, because I completely fell in love with it and its subjects. This is not a Hollywood special that will make you feel as though all the problems have been overcome, or that a great debt of gratitude is owed to the interventions of the West. Nope. Just some scrappy girls who really want to be boxers in a world that really doesn’t want them to be anything.
I really appreciated that the movie didn’t shy away from the immense inequalities that they faced due to their lack of resources and due to their gender. All of them tell very matter-of-fact stories about threats that they received due to their participation in the sport. Shahla talks about being harassed and threatened with kidnapping; Sabir describes an encounter with a man he thinks would have shot him without hesitation had they been alone. The girls cry in frustration and wonder how they can possibly be expected to make something of themselves when they are at such a disadvantage in comparison to girls from other, wealthier, countries. But at other remarkable moments, they acknowledge their great fortune to have families who allow them (for the most part) to go to school and play sports. They talk about other girls they know, from more conservative families, who are not even allowed to leave the house.
Still, this documentary walks a fine line – showing the tremendous courage and determination these girls have, but never portraying them as superhuman, treating them as a kind of oppressed regime version of “inspiration porn,” or seeing them as struggling damsels in distress to be rescued by well-meaning westerners. They don’t need any of that, because they’re amazing just the way they are. Watch it. You’ll love them.
In it Caulfield debunks the health and fitness trends perpetuated by celebrities, everything from juice cleanses to to gluten-free diets.
Sometimes it seems as if celebrity diet and fitness advice ought to have a giant negation sign put in front of it. If Gwyneth Paltrow says to do something, that’s almost a reason not to do that very thing. Think of the Costanza maneuver, doing the opposite.
What’s the latest version? I know, vaginal steaming. But I’m not going there. How about exercise corsets? Apparently Kim Kardashian recommends them. I don’t know if Caulfield’s book covers the claims made on behalf of exercise corsets but here’s James Fell’s assessment, Kim Kardashian: Queen of Celebrity Weight Loss Dumbassery
What in the holy mother of crap?
Here is part of the marketing pitch from the publicist: “a workout corset like this will support long-term slimming and help you lose inches through the science of compression.”
The science of compression? That makes about as much sense as “the science of Play-Doh.” Brain … hurts …
Wait, there’s more. Here are additional marketing claims from the email, alleging the results are:
Midsection control (Read: “I can’t breathe!”)
Increased thermal activity (Read: “This thing is hotter than a Kevlar vest.”)
Loss of inches reported (Yeah, as long as you’re still wearing it. The instant it comes off everything flops back into its pre-corset place.)
Mobilizes fat cells (BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!)
Stimulates perspiration (In case you don’t know what “Increased thermal activity” means.)
Oh, and one of the features of this corset is something called “FlexiBoning.” Does this mean there is a new sex tape in Kim’s future?
Forget about organs though, how about for exercise? There’s certainly lots of so-called “sports corsets” out there. The thing is exercise corsets go against everything I’ve been taught about the need for being able to take deep breaths when running and cycling. The argument for the superiority of bib shorts over regular cycling shorts says that regular elastic at the waist can be too much.
Bibs are more comfortable at the waist. They don’t need anything around your middle to hold them up. Elastic waistbands or drawstrings can feel restrictive during deep breathing and like a tourniquet when riding away from a food stop.
I’ve also bought “no waist” bike shorts for a similar reason. Though they did a feel a bit like they might fall down (they weren’t bibs) it was certainly easier to breath. I’m kind of a fan of breathing.
In addition to exercise, corsets are making a comeback as a general dieting and posture aid.
Through the practice of waist-training, women aim to reshape their bodies and trim inches off their waists by wearing 21st century steel-boned corsets for a certain amount of time per day. These corsets are said to put any extra-strength body shaper to shame, and according to New Jersey retailer GlamourBoutique.com, when waist training is paired with diet and exercise, it can “radically reduce the waist” and “help reduce food volume intake by constricting the internal organs thus helping promote the healthier practice of smaller meals, rather than three large meals a day.” The company recommends beginning with wearing the corset three to six hours a day, gradually upping the time to several hours a day for maximum results.
It’s being sold as a non-surgical version of the lap-band, bariatric surgery without the knife, but it’s also without medical advice or nutritional counseling. And no surprise, most experts say that they won’t work. It’s all about diet and exercise. As Tracy said in a blog post from awhile ago, spot reduction doesn’t work.
Researchers from the Netherlands published a study in the January 2015 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that suggested that focusing on appearance could affect a person’s sensitivity to their internal satiety cues.
“We found that focusing on how you look may hinder how you listen to your body’s hunger fullness cues and how you adjust your food intake,” said Evelien van de Veer, the paper’s lead author.
Makes sense to me. We’re in favour of athletic rather than aesthetic goals, about what our bodies can do, rather than what they look like.
Most of our readers engage in a distinctive combination of cardiovascular conditioning and resistance training; as such, it places an incredible strain on both your central nervous and musculoskeletal systems. While acute bouts of stress are necessary to trigger positive adaptations, chronic metabolic stress kills progress as it relates to body composition. As an athlete, you are infinitely better off keeping your Calories higher so you have the materials and energy necessary to recover from your training, especially when you first start off. Don’t fall into the trap of eating chicken and broccoli every day because conventional wisdom says it’s “healthy”.
I’m interested in this because I’ve been thinking lots about difficult it is to lose weight and the assumption that you can just achieve that goal by moving more and eating less.
The obesity epidemic is heightening chronic disease risk globally. Online weight management (OWM) communities could potentially promote weight loss among large numbers of people at low cost. Because little is known about the impact of these online communities, we examined the relationship between individual and social network variables, and weight loss in a large, international OWM programme.
Take note Precision Nutrition folks. Online friendships help!
Dieters often feel that they are waging war with their stomachs, but psychologists like Robinson believe that appetite is formed as much in the mind as our guts. So much so that if you try to remember the last food you’ve eaten, thinks Robinson, you can get thinner without the hunger pangs.
“Lots of research has now shown that subtle psychological factors can impact how much you eat – but people still aren’t aware of the influence,” he says. “And that’s important, given the worldwide obesity problem.” If this is true, how could it work?
I’m curious about the limits of intuitive eating about whether there are different ways of responding to hunger cues.
Lots to read out there and lots to think about!
I didn’t see it on Superbowl Sunday because I didn’t watch the Superbowl. But I was intrigued when I heard on the Friday morning news that the NFL was sponsoring a Public Service Announcement by a group called No More. No More’s website describes it as a movement designed to end domestic violence and sexual assault:
NO MORE is a movement to raise public awareness and engage bystanders around ending domestic violence and sexual assault launched in 2013 by a coalition of leading corporations, advocacy and service organizations. NO MORE is supported by hundreds of domestic violence and sexual assault organizations at the local, state and national levels that are using its signature blue symbol to increase visibility and funding to address these critical issues. Any individual, organization, or corporation that wants to end domestic violence and sexual assault can use the NO MORE symbol to show their commitment to this cause.
The Superbowl is known for its big production ads, and the spot donated to the PSA was worth $5,000,000.00.
The chilling ad is based on a real 911 phone call in which a woman pretends to order a pizza so that her abuser, who is in the room, doesn’t know that she’s calling for help. Here’s the psa:
Over a hundred million people tuned in the game yesterday, so that’s a lot of exposure for a campaign against domestic violence — an issue that rarely gets its due.
But the ad is not without its critics. First of all, the league responded minimally to the Ray Rice incident. In a sickening video that went viral last summer, player Ray Rice punched his then fiance (now spouse) in an elevator so hard he knocked her out. A video surveillance camera caught the entire appalling incident on film, including Rice subsequently dragging his partner out of the elevator like a sack of potatoes.
The league’s initial response to the incident: Rice was “suspended for the first two games of this season for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy following his offseason arrest for domestic violence.”
But there’s more: “Rice also was fined an additional regular-season game check but is eligible to participate in training camp and all of Baltimore’s preseason games, the NFL announced.”
After saying how disappointed he was to be missing out on some games, Rice said:
My goal is to earn back the trust of the people, especially the children, I let down because of this incident. I am a role model and I take that responsibility seriously. My actions going forward will show that.
His coach said:
It’s not a big deal. It’s just part of the process. We said from the beginning that the circumstances would determine the consequences. There are consequences when you make a mistake like that. I stand behind Ray. He’s a heck of a guy. He’s done everything right since. He makes a mistake. He’s going to have to pay a consequence.
Airing the No More PSA is one tiny step in the direction of repairing its reputation for tolerating this kind of violence.
In an article in The Guardian, Jessica Valenti notes that “a 30-second spot doesn’t undo the years of damage the NFL has wrought on domestic violence issues, nor does it change the culture of violence and coverups that plague the league.”
And in an article onFeministing, Mychal Denzel Smith talks about the type of masculinity the NFL promotes. That, he says, is what we need to be talking about. That is what the NFL could take a lead role in re-shaping:
The NFL is in a unique position, as one of the most visible arbiters of the cultural definition of masculinity. That definition of masculinity as dominant, violent, and controlling contributes to a culture in which violence against women is not regarded as a serious enough issue to warrant collective outrage. The NFL could be fostering a dialogue with men about how and why this definition of masculinity is dangerous and oppressive. It could be engaging boys and young men in an unlearning process and re-education around the values embedded in these archaic forms of masculinity, and questioning the health and vitality of those models. It should be starting that engagement and dialogue with its players and personnel.
Not wanting to be completely negative, he says:
Again, I don’t want to completely shit on this ad. Millions upon millions of people are going to see it and be forced to reckon with it during a time in which they’d like to run away from the issue. They will have to remember that some people don’t have the privilege of turning away. Conversations will be had.
However, this ad also doesn’t really demand anything more from us than the status quo. At the end, it says “When it’s hard to talk, it’s up to us to listen.” But if the only thing we’re being asked to do is have compassion after someone has already experienced violence, we’re accepting that violence as a part of culture. We’re conceding something I’d rather not — that we can’t prevent men from beating women. We can only care for these women’s wounds.
That’s an important observation. We don’t just need to have compassion for women who experience domestic violence, we need to address the cultural assumptions about masculinity that are at the root of violence against women to begin with. Violence does not need to be part of our culture.
This eye-opening book links gender-based pay and scholarship inequity with male violence and male domination in sports and society at large. As this book points out, athletes who rape and male coaches who brag of beating their wives are often dismissed by our culture with a “boys will be boys” attitude. Formerly competitive co-ed sports have been replaced with sex-segregated sports after a woman wins against male competitors. Those dubious signals sent to boys such as “don’t throw like a girl” are all designed to glorify masculinity and keep it safe from so-called female interference and contamination.
When did that book come out? Twenty years ago, in 1995.
I heard today that last night’s game was the most watched event in television history, breaking records for tv and social media. You might say that’s a lot of people getting exposed to the 30-second version of the No More PSA. And that’s true.
But the game is a lot longer than 30 seconds. And what it represents in the fabric of North America society is a fairly entrenched tradition that embraces, with very little critical commentary, a mainstream and disturbing view of masculinity.
It’s that very understanding of masculinity that contributes to a culture in which women count for less and where a first reasonable response to knocking your fiance unconscious is a three-game suspension.
On July 26, 2015, more than 400 Riders and Crew will embark on a six-day, 600 km journey from Toronto to Montréal to support the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation’s (PWA) ability to provide critical services and support to individuals living with HIV and AIDS in Toronto. Now in its 17th year, the Bike Rally is the sustaining fundraiser of the PWA. Bike Rally Participants of all ages and levels of experience share a common passion in supporting their friends, family and neighbours living with HIV/AIDS. Join PWA’s Friends For Life Bike Rally for the experience of a lifetime and help make a positive difference.
You can sponsor me here. And you can read about last year’s ride:
I am done with people saying to me “Better watch out for you!’ when they find out that I am a black belt in karate. I usually don’t say anything about doing karate to people in general, just those who I consider friends, precisely because of comments like that. First, just because I train in karate does not mean I am wildly or indiscriminately aggressive. Second, people in karate do not go around whacking people whenever they feel like it. Third, I am not impressed with the subtle mocking. I am going to focus on this last point because I am a woman martial artist and from my experience, women in a male-dominated pursuit like karate are subject to unique forms of criticism , dismissal, and put-downs that men do not typically face.
It might seem difficult to diminish the skill or expertise of someone who has been training for 20 years in karate. But over that 20 years I have had more than my share of comments aiming to do just that. Saying “Better watch out for you” suggests that I lack an ability to discern when I might need or not need to engage in self-defence. Let’s see – I train in karate for a myriad of reasons that shift and change as the years roll by. Primarily I am grateful to have handed down to me an extensive repertoire of self-defence techniques to use in mild to moderate to severe situations.
I have used two or three of the most moderate of techniques to avoid confrontation over the years, such as flicking away a stranger’s hand grabbing my hand. Mostly my self-defence techniques consist of crossing the street or otherwise leaving someone’s company. These are fairly banal things that will not impress anyone. But the karate training I have done has equipped me to discern when a situation merits or does not merit my full attention out of concern for my safety or the safety of others. That skill of discernment is one that has done a lot of important work and has only come about after years of practice. To suggest that I might not know when a situation might require me take self-defence action belittles my experience and knowledge of self-defense application.
But I don’t take that attitude toward me personally. I take the belittling as a symptom of a bigger picture, a picture painting women as generally inept or unskilled at sport unless that sport is “meant for” women. If the sport is meant for women then it predominantly has women athletes, often is a less-attended/ less funded version of the men’s game, or otherwise is devalued as a sport. I can only suppose that the underwritten message is that the sport itself does not demand much skill or athleticism. So then the flipside would be: if the sport is “masculine” then it is much more demanding of skill, talent, athleticism, prowess. And then the result is this: if a woman engages in such a sport then she might know what she is doing, so the view goes, but only if she is an exception. And so women are mocked, belittled, or questioned as competent and capable athletes. Even if they are exceptions.
Those women who are the exception show the world they are in fact quite skilled top-tier athletes who would seem to have by fiat crushed the possibility of mockery and diminishment. Yet it is remarkable that in media coverage and other forms of popular recognition, these women are rarely respected or revered as athletes. Consider Eugenie Bouchard one of the world’s top-ranked tennis players. She was recently asked to “take a twirl” for the media (http://time.com/3677729/eugenie-bouchard-ian-cohen-twirl-australian-open/). To ask that of a top competitive athlete disrespects her as tennis player and as a woman. Sometimes the trivializing of women athletes takes the form of questioning whether or they are actually women. Yes, the idea is that an athlete performed so well we should wonder, “Can a woman actually do that?” – Or so the view goes, which we see in full glory in the case of Caster Semenya. She is a South African runner who won gold at the 2009 World Championships and silver at both the 2011 World Championships and 2012 Summer Olympics. She was subject to gender tests by the IAFF (International Association of Athletics Federations) and disallowed from any international competition until the tests concluded she was, in fact, a woman.
The less recognized and most pedestrian trivializing of women athletes occurs in conversations like those I have endured. I am not a top-tier athlete and I have experienced no media attention. I am simply a woman engaged in a male-dominated athletic pursuit but I have to endure attitudes that I really can’t do it. I couldn’t take a man down, I couldn’t actually be successful in a self-defence situation, or I couldn’t otherwise demonstrate skill and expertise. And so I join those women who are routinely disbelieved that they can be successful in their athletic pursuits. Medals and awards do little to dispell such harmful attitudes. World champion Tracy Stankavitch won gold in 2012 Strongman championships and yet when she walks into a gym to lift weights she has to endure “Don’t hurt yourself” and other comments assuming she doesn’t know what she is doing (http://strongfigure.com/female-strength-athlete-judged-disrespected). Every day, women are subject to such dismissive, trivializing attitudes for engaging in their chosen athletic pursuits. When will the day come that women might actually be presumed experts in their sports, revered as champions, attended just as much by audiences, or flooded with sponsorships and awards just as men are? Attitudes have to change.
Sylvia Burrow/KarateJane enjoys karate, yoga, and meditation as complementary practices allowing her to be a calm feminist fighting the good fight.
I did something unusual for me this week: Aikido Friday night with the Western Aikido Club and then just 12 hours later, I was on my way to the AikiBudo Centre for Saturday morning training.
Why so much Aikido in a 24 hour period? Simple. I’d missed it. Aikido isn’t my first love. That’s cycling. But these days it’s a pretty close second. I like rolling around on the mats and I’ve missed the physical contact. (See Touch me/Don’t touch me.)
It’s interesting when you catch a winter cold what goes and what stays. I haven’t been running outside. When I have a cold, sore throat, and a cough that’s the last thing I feel like doing. All that cold air in my lungs? No thanks.
Aikido is less physical and it’s warm in the dojo but I stayed away because of contact and germs. There’s a lot of touching in Aikido and I’d hate to make someone else ill.
But it was clear from just how much fun I had Friday night that I’d missed it a lot.
Whee! Thump!
And at Western I was even the most senior student there so I had to call the bow in, shomen-ni-rei. My first time ever.
What can I say? I’m petite and the elbows of other players occasionally are right at my head, especially when I am not giving a whole lot of space in order to force a play …
I should have been wearing my contacts, but my new set has not come in…
It made a nice crack that my keeper heard from the opposite end of the field …
I only have a small cut on my nose…
NO BLACK EYE!!!
I’d totally do it all again…
Thanks to my teammate Nadine who taped me up, Hanson-brother style! I’m going to put these pictures up at the office with the caption “Damn right, I’m tough.”
