New Zealand isn’t a country I associate with body shame and modesty. In my experience (sabbatical at the University of Otago in Dunedin a few years ago)-it was the land of men wearing short shorts. Think rugby. Also shirtless men and shoeless everyone. My Canadian academic wardrobe made me feel overdressed.

And certainly, like Australia, the cyclists weren’t a very modest bunch.

Yet here is a cafe in New Zealand banning bike shorts. (You have to wear trousers instead. Just taking them off isn’t an option.) That’s especially odd given how much cyclists love coffee and breakfast after long rides. Whatever. I’m sure there are other coffee shops in town. This discomfort with men’s bodies is puzzling.

Why men’s bodies, in particular? The sausage references are a clue. The owner of the Plough Hotel Mike Saunders complains about unsightly bumps and bulges.

“We get a nice group of customers out here, some elderly folk . . . when you’re trying to concentrate on your breakfast you just want to see the sausages on your plate.”

Read more about it here.

What is it with men’s bodies that makes people so uncomfortable, positively squeamish unless those bodies are perfect? See Stop saying you don’t need to see that for some of my thoughts about this.

And I worry that enough people are already uncomfortable enough in bike clothing. This won’t help. See No way I ask wearing that for my thoughts on body conscious clothing as a barrier to fitness.

Me, I’m very happy in lycra. I often think I look better in bike clothes than just about anything else. I’m not sure if it’s just that they do suit me or if they just make very happy. Bike clothes mean bike rides!

What are your limits for wearing bike clothes in public?

Sarah and I went for a ride yesterday before my book group. It was a beautiful day, beautiful ride east of Toronto on the waterfront trail. But she got calf cramps on our way back to the car and we were delayed. And then city traffic.

“You will arrive at your destination at 6:53 pm. You’re on the fastest route despite usual traffic.”

Book group is at 6:30 for a 7 pm start. And we still needed to pick up food.

Pizza! Yay! But that meant going into book group and the pizza shop dressed in bike clothes. Tights, jersey, arm warmers, vest. I’d ditched the shoes, gloves, and helmet.

I told people that since I was spending more time in Toronto they should get used to seeing me dressed this way. Nice to have a range, said our generous host.

I don’t usually teach in cycling attire, though I confess I have once or twice in my career taught graduate students dressed in cycling kit. Tight teaching, training schedule. Sorry. But I figure by then they’re instructor resilient. Almost nothing gets in the way of their learning.

But always black. There’s a reason cycling shorts are black.

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Yes, we’re a bit behind the curve–the curvy Barbie curve, that is. More than a month ago, Mattel came out with a new, more diverse line of Barbie dolls that included different skin tones and different body types (petite, tall, curvy).

I grew up with the Malibu Barbie doll, with her camper and her Ken and her younger friends Skipper and Francie. As we all know, Barbie, Skipper, and Francie were all skinny, long-legged white women (or girls — I think Skipper was a girl). Not much diversity there, but I loved them all anyway even if I didn’t look anything like them and never would.

The new more diverse line is meant to have broader appeal. Mattel uses the language of “choice” when explaining the rationale:

 “Barbie has always given girls choices – from her 180 careers, to inspirational roles, to her countless fashions and accessories. We are excited to literally be changing the face of the brand – these new dolls represent a line that is more reflective of the world girls see around them – the variety in body type, skin tones and style allows girls to find a doll that speaks to them.”

But as Tracy de Boer says in her article, “What to Make of Barbie’s New Bod”:

toys are more divided by gender now than they were prior to the 1990’s. For instance, blue toolboxes, trucks, and building sets for boys, pink kitchen sets, dolls, and everything princess for girls. What’s more, some toy makers, like Lego, now release building sets catered specifically to girls (in more “feminine colours”) that are meant to create things like grocery stores or dollhouses—which seem to reinforce gender stereotypes. (Lego pirate ships for boys, Lego grocery stores for girls.)

This raises the question of whether we should be updated Barbie or phasing her out altogether.  Is diversity a good thing if it helps to reinforce the gendered division of toys?  Or do we go the harm reduction route here and accept that Barbie isn’t going anywhere, so let’s make her more diverse?

Besides that, there are also those cynical folks who point out that it’s nothing but a marketing ploy designed to garner attention and sell more dolls. Well, yes. Barbie sals have dropped. And making money is what toy companies are in the business of doing. If they do it in a way that helps to change attitudes, then perhaps that’s a good thing.

Tracy de Boer says she’s waiting for the “Dad Bod” Ken to come out. And that’s not likely to happen any time soon. But what about old Barbie? If we’re going for diversity, why do we stop at age and body type?  I find those pictures out on the internet of aging Barbie are kind of gripping, if at the same time sad because obviously no kid is going to want to play with a middle-aged Barbie doll.

But why not?  Older women, who are arguably more interesting in lots of ways because of their life experiences, are simply not considered appealing and marketable? The new Barbie may show that kids might be open to diversity, to choosing a doll that “speaks to” them, as the spokesperson said. But the cult of youth still dominates.

There’s also been some backlash, people arguing that the new body diversity in Barbie’s foists “adult hang-ups” on kids.

These critics are suggesting that the kids who play with Barbies are too young to care about body image. But are they? I think a lot of kids are already exposed to adult conceptions of what the ideal body is. If a more diverse line of Barbies can help counteract some of that, even in some small way, maybe that’s a good thing. And there are some studies that do show that kids who play with Barbies care more about being thin when they get older:

Mattel has also long claimed that Barbie has no influence on girls’ body image, pointing to whisper-thin models and even moms as the source of the dissatisfaction that too many young girls feel about their bodies. A handful of studies, however, suggest that Barbie does have at least some influence on what girls see as the ideal body. The most compelling, a 2006 study published in the journal Developmental Psychology, found that girls exposed to Barbie at a young age expressed greater concern with being thin, compared with those exposed to other dolls.

So is Barbie redeemed? Well, I think the point about harm reduction stands here. Maybe the very idea of the Barbie doll reinforces gendered divisions in play and plants the seed of a thin body ideal into the minds of the children who play with her.

But at least having some skin tone diversity and body diversity can help to promote a more realistic picture of social reality. That’s if they choose them. Arguably no kid has ever had a Barbie body (nor has any adult, right? The proportions are all wonky), so it’s not completely clear whether today’s kids will feel drawn to Barbies with bodies more like theirs.

On the skin tone issue, that may be a different story. When I was a kid, I longed to see brownness represented in the books I read, the dolls I played with, and yes, the Barbies I knitted little sweaters for.

What do you think of the new Barbie?

A couple of weeks ago, members of the US Women’s Soccer team launched a federal discrimination complaint against the United States Soccer Association. According to The Boston Globe:

The disparities, according to documents given to the commission, are found throughout their compensation, from base pay to bonus to per-diem travel. Female players on the national team earn $72,000 for playing 20 regular season games, plus bonuses for winning. Men, however, make a minimum of $100,000 for playing 20 games, get a victory bonus — and a smaller supplement for losing. If both teams won all their games, women would earn $99,000, while men could take home $263,320.

The pay chasm widens when players participate in the World Cup. Female players who try out and make the team earn a total of $30,000 each. Men, however, get $68,750 each. With each advancing round, players get paid more, but the structure favors the men. In 2014, the men’s team earned a total of $9 million for losing in the Round of 16, while the women’s team last year got only $2 million for winning their entire tournament.

Most egregious of all is that the women’s team actually brings in more revenue at home. It’s projected that in the year to come, they’ll bring in $17.6 million to the men’s $9 million in the US.  The popularity of men’s soccer abroad makes the men’s team more lucrative on the international stage. But that didn’t stop Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Hope Solo from filing their complaint. As their lawyer, Jeffrey Kessler says, “They do the same work, for the same employer, for 20 games a year.”

Whatever people might want to claim about living in a “post-feminist world,” the pay gap is alive and well in Hollywood, in professional sports, and in workplaces everywhere. Women still earn 79 cents for every dollar men earn.

This inequity in wages, especially for the same work, shows us the cold hard facts about the extent to which women are undervalued for their work. Their labor is worth exactly 21 cents less per dollar than men’s. So it’s no wonder lower wages follow the jobs where the majority of workers are women.

If you’re cynical like me it came as no surprise that the women’s soccer players earn so much less than the men, and that their earning potential is less than half of what the men’s is.

But it’s also exciting to see a high profile case in which women are challenging the status quo on pay inequity.  We talk about it a lot but it never seems to change.

I’ll be keeping my eye on this case, not just for what it might do to increase the value of women in sport, but for what it might to do show that pay inequity is a form of social injustice and that’s not okay.