Tracy and I enjoy our disagreements. We agree about many things and there’s lots of trust and love and a long history of friendship and collegiality. The result is that disagreeing can be fun and informative.

We part ways over tracking, over road cycling, aiming for more versus doing less, and recently over scales in university fitness centre change rooms. And now it’s body positivity. I’m a fan of learning to love your body. She’s a fan of body neutrality. See Still a fan of body neutrality.

Why am I fan of body positivity instead?

First, let me start with an observation. It’s no surprise to me that most of the proponents of body positivity are fat women. Not all. But most. Why’s that?

It’s radical and empowering to say to the world that you love this body that they hate. And you need love, not neutrality to balance out all that hate.

I feel like if neutrality was the best I could aim for, in the face of all that anger, fear, and loathing, I’d wither away. Loving my body is work. It’s a challenge.

It’s also for me a kind of attitude, like love in general. In my post about loving the body you’ve got I wrote.

What does it mean to ‘love’ this body? I don’t think it’s perfect aesthetically speaking. That’s not what I mean at all. I could list its flaws–I spend enough time with other women to know how to do that–but I won’t. I’m nearing fifty years old. If perfection were ever in my sights, that was a long time ago.

I love my kids. I don’t think they are perfect. (Sorry kids.) I’m not talking about aesthetics and I’m not talking about perfection. I don’t associate either of those values with love.

I associate loving my body with the activity of caring for my body. It’s both a sense of awe and wonder (Wow, I rode my bike 160 km!) and a responding to that awe and wonder with concrete action (Great ride, now let’s go for a massage!).

One difference between Tracy and me is that I don’t feel or experience “love your body” as an imperative, as one more thing that good feminists must do. What I learned from her post is that (obviously) different people experience messages in different ways. 

I’ve never heard “love your body” as a command or order. It’s not for me, one more way to fail as a feminist. Instead, I’ve always heard “love your body” as a permission. Yes, you. Yes, that body. Love that body now.

And I do.

And I plan on continuing to do so for many more years to come.

I’m a big fan of neutrality over positivity. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to optimistic outlooks and affirmations. But I think the idea that we’re supposed to feel good all the time and be happy all the time is the source of so much dissatisfaction at the normal variances in day to day life.

In the recovery circles I move in we have a saying that I love: “life on life’s terms.” I interpret that to mean that basically I’m not in charge of the universe. Sometimes it will dish up stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily choose. These unexpected happenings can be what would ordinarily be regarded as setbacks, or they can be amazing little miracles that fall into my lap unplanned and unanticipated.

So that’s a nutshell background to set up my latest plug for body neutrality. I’ve blogged about this before. See my post “Here’s an idea: body neutrality” It seems I’m not the only one who thinks this. I came across an article recently called “People want to replace body positivity with something more relatable.“

What’s that more relatable thing? Body neutrality! The author, Lauren Gordon, says:

While Body positivity preaches unwavering self-love, body neutrality is almost indifference. It is the acknowledgement that your body exists in its current state and your reaction to that is more factual than it is emotional.

This really speaks to me. One reason it does is not that I find it difficult to preach unwavering self-love for my body (though I do), but because I’m not even sure that’s a thing worth preaching. This brings me back to my thought that the whole idea that I should love my body seems totally over-reaching to me. Why not just have it? Live in it? Experience it? Feed it? Move it in ways I find enjoyable?

Some people argue that body neutrality is a cop-out, a way of dissociating from the body rather than trying to love and accept it. I disagree. Being neutral rather than judgmental has long roots in all sorts of spiritual traditions. We cling to all sorts of judgments, opinions, and ideas that set us up to be constantly disappointed.

To me, the goal of body positivity is one of those things. When I wrote about body neutrality last time, here’s what I said:

But something more attainable [than body positivity], and certainly a step up from body hatred, is a neutral attitude towards our bodies. For me, I feel best when I’m neutral. Why? Because when I’m neutral I’m not passing judgement either way. It just is.

I would rather just be comfortable in my skin than basking in my body’s awesomeness (which basking is not a likely scenario for me). I’ve just come back from two weeks of wearing a bikini every day. And I have to admit, I don’t find that the easiest thing to do.

I just can’t get behind the idea that I’m falling short if I don’t love my body. It’s just another kind of pressure.

So here’s to body neutrality. I’m still a fan!

Sam and I (Tracy) have long been interested in hearing from women who are older than we are, who can serve as role models for aging well. When we started the blog approaching 50, we recognized that there’s still a long way to go after 50. One good reason for hitting 50 with the right attitude towards health and physical activity is that with any luck we’ll live a lot longer than that.

So it’s my great pleasure to introduce you to today’s guest blogger, Anne Cummings. I met Anne at Wednesday Feminist Lunch when I first started working at the university as a tenure track assistant professor back in 1992. Wednesday Feminist Lunch was a regular thing that we did week in, week out. And that’s where I got loads of informal mentoring from wonderful feminist scholars and activists like Anne.

When she retired early, I remember asking Anne if she would still continue attending Wednesday Lunch. I mean, she came every single week. How could she give it up? With no apologies, Anne said, “No. When I retire, I’m retiring from it all.”

I heard from Anne last week about how her physical fitness has improved in retirement. This sort of thing always makes my ears perk up. “Do you want to blog about it for us?” I asked. “Okay,” said Anne.

So here is Anne’s blog post about how her fitness has improved in the years since her retirement.

Anne’s Story

I was an academic for many years of my life with most of that time being spent sitting at my computer writing and responding to emails. During my last ten years, I did do yoga once a week and walked an hour with a woman five days a week in the late afternoons. However, I knew that was not enough to counter the many hours of sitting.

So when I retired, I made a commitment to myself that taking care of my body was going to be a high priority. To my yoga and walking (now with four different women partners), I added weekly Tai Chi and a bi-weekly exercise class with the Canadian Centre for Activity and Aging at Mount St. Joseph’s which is a non-profit research centre of Western University for people 55 and older. It is this latter program that greatly changed my perceptions of the physical capabilities of female seniors. See this link for more information.

Unlike a commercial fitness centre, this program first assesses your current physical abilities and then places you in a class that fits your capabilities. While the majority of the Monday-Friday, 6:30 a.m.- 6:16 p. m. classes include intense cardiovascular exercises, there are also classes for people with balance, lung or osteoporosis issues. It surprised me to discover that the program had over 500 participants with an average age of 75 and a range from 55-100 years.

At my first class in their gymnasium, I could not believe the level of exercise that we were pushed to do by a very enthusiastic, drill sergeant-type instructor. I had no idea that women seniors ran, did push ups, burpees, mountain climbers, etc. I found it highly motivating to see women (80-20 ratio of women to men in classes) who were my age or older exercising with such vigor.

I realized that I had internalized a view of aging that included diminished physical abilities. Because I was with the same group of people bi-weekly, it was easy to bond quickly with classmates for both support and good-natured complaints about being worked so hard.

After eight years in the program, at age 70, I feel incredibly fit and strong from both the cardio exercise and weight training on machines. I am rarely sick and am very grateful that I found this program. If there are days when I do not feel like going to class, I go anyway because I want to spend time with these friends and I know that I always feel better after class.

Because I am a competitive person and because the oldest person to remain in the program made it to the age of 100, I now have the goal of staying with this exercise program until I reach 100 years.

Anne Cummings is a happily retired Professor Emerita of Counselling Psychology from Western University in London, Ontario. She is still a feminist activist working on LGBTQ and Islamaphobia issues.  

 

We’ve written before about motivational sayings and videos and about the lies cyclists tell.

But cyclists aren’t the only liars in the fitness world. My favorite are group fitness instructors who say ridiculously untrue things all the spirit of motivation. Personally I’m such a literal thinker I can’t get past the impossibility.

I think spin instructors might be the worst!

Here’s my two favorite outright lies yelled loudly in the name of motivation:

You can do anything for 30 seconds.

No actually I can’t. I really can’t.

You’ve done it before, you can do it again.

No. Sometimes once is really all you’ve got.

The gif above “say what?” comes from another webpage of ridiculous things fitness instructors have said, with my apology for their ableist language. We don’t use crazy talk around here.

Here’s my fave from their list: “”‘Now there’s a mist. You’re cycling through the mist. How’s that mist feel on your face? What’s that mist telling you?!’ The class was inside.”

And here’s more Ridiculous things gym instructors say.

Now it’s your turn. What are your favorite things fitness instructors say that just aren’t true?