“Just a tiny brag. I ran a tempo run at a 5:33 pace last night, which is waaaaaay faster than I’ve ever done. 3.01km in 16:39. It felt so good to move that fast.
It felt good too because I was running right alongside the two very young statisticians, one of whom is nice enough and the other of whom is nice enough but very very annoying and loud in the vein of Dora the Explorer and said to me, after she asked what I researched and I replied “social media,” “Oh you mean NARCISSISM” and so I won’t let that woman run faster than me if it kills me even if she is 20 years younger than me. Petty makes me fast.”
I don’t suffer from any sort of anxiety disorder but I am quite experienced with garden variety anxiousness.* So that means I get stressed out while to manage my work, or when I am trying to figure out what order to do my work in. I’m sure lots of you have the same kind of thing going on.
While anxiety makes my thoughts hop from topic to topic, my main physical symptom is tightness in my neck, shoulders and upper back. Sometimes I don’t even realize I feel anxious until my neck gets cranky with me, and then I take the opportunity to corral my racing thoughts and bring myself some ease.
This is what happens when I try to demonstrate a stretch while smirking and then accidentally close my eyes as I snap the photo. Goofiness abounds.
I wouldn’t say that anxiety *causes* me neck and shoulder tension but they are definitely related.
I discovered a few years ago that the relationship goes both ways.
If I do too much writing, or overdo my upper body workouts, or if I walk too long in the wind,** my neck and shoulders get tight. Once those muscles get themselves in a twist, my brain goes problem-solving mode and tries to figure out what I am anxious about. My breathing gets shallower, I draw my shoulders up closer to my ears, and I keep waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop.
The thing is, there wasn’t even a first shoe, let alone an ‘other’ one. I wasn’t anxious in the first place, I just had tight shoulders. But my brain, my ever-so-helpful brain, knows what that tension signifies and reacts by generating anxious thoughts.
Delightful, hey?
Okay, it’s more frustrating than delightful, but at least I have started to recognize when it happens. Once I know what’s going on, I stretch, I do a little exercise, I roll a lacrosse ball around on my shoulders and neck (based on my chiropractor’s advice – thanks, Ken!) and eventually both the muscle tension and the resultant anxiety eases.
This whole scenario happened to me this past Sunday. I woke up with neck, shoulders and upper back all pulled taut. I had weird nightmares all Saturday night so I suspect that I was hunching my shoulders in my sleep.
I spent a good chunk of Sunday morning feeling pretty awful – my brain was bouncing from side to side in my skull and it was hard to breathe – and I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself.
I meditated for a little while which helped with my racing thoughts but not with my shoulders, and then I hit on the idea of doing some yoga.
A yoga video from ‘Yoga with Adriene’ that is focused on ‘neck and shoulder relief’
(I really like Adriene’s videos because she’s cheerfully goofy)
It was exactly what I needed. Not only did it have the sort of stretching that I needed to do, it kept me sitting still long enough for my brain to rest a bit.
My next step is to work on some preventative habits that help keep my neck from getting so tight in the first place.
Do you have that cause then effect and effect then cause thing going on too? How does it happen for you?
What do you do to help yourself out of that loop?
*I feel like this is pretty common with people with ADD. When you have trouble measuring time and your executive function is not always on call, the risk of messing something up or forgetting something important is pretty high.
**Apparently, I hunch my shoulders when walking in the wind. This is a serious hazard in NL where it is windy ALL THE TIME.
Image description: Intuition razor with green handle, white trim, four blades, surrounded by a white moisturizing “solid” to provide shaving lubrication.
Body hair, like make-up, is one of those issues where feminists often feel conflicted (based on my conversations with friends and my own experience as a feminist). On the one hand, we see the pressure for women to have smooth bodies as a dimension of normative femininity that makes us spend time on “the beauty project” instead of (arguably) more important things.
On the other hand, many of us (a) like smooth skin and/or (b) feel self-conscious when we’re not smooth even though we don’t really care and if we knew no one else did we wouldn’t bother and/or (c) consider shaving or other hair removal rituals as just part of our everyday habits of self-care or perhaps even pampering.
It’s a fraught feminist issue because when a woman appears with underarm hair or leg hair, it’s a radical move that can even have professional implications. As Britni Dela Craz writes in Elle, about how much time she spent before an important professional moment considering the extent to which different clothing choices would show her thick black leg hair (she is a freelancer who usually works from home and doesn’t worry about it so much):
As I crowdsourced ideas and solutions and posted photos of myself in various professional outfits on Facebook, I wondered how many men had lost hours of prep time for their job worrying about their body hair. I wondered how many men had to balance their desire to look professional with the autonomy to allow their body to do what it naturally does — grow hair. I was enraged that, hours before a career-defining interview, I was worried about leg hair.
Lest you think this is a completely Western fixation, the website Feminism in India has also published about the severe pressure on women to rid themselves of body hair or be shamed for it. Maryam Monsoor writes:
Societal beauty standards are brutal. Perpetuated and reinforced through the media, they are almost always harmful for women. The stigma around body hair is one such beauty standard that has been extremely disadvantageous for women, who are expected to be hairless all the time.
This expectation leads to shaming and policing of women with body hair so much so that people are disgusted at the sight of hair on a woman’s body. It also results in women feeling uncomfortable wearing shorter sleeves if they have hair on their arms or underarms. Women end up shaming themselves for having body hair – going through the full body wax and other painful measures to free themselves of their hair. When it comes to facial hair, it has to go off! From the upper lip, to the eyebrows, to sideburns to the chin to the nose to the forehead.
She points out that men are free to have both facial and body hair. That’s true, although there is a growing trend among men also to shave or wax themselves smooth. There is more pressure on women. Men can definitely get away with having more body hair than women, and facial hair on men is completely acceptable whereas there is enormous stigma against facial hair on women.
The body hair issue extends to pubic hair, which goes in and out of fashion. I remember when we first started going to nude beaches I was kind of shocked at how many women and men were completely waxed or shaven down there. My preference has always been to have at least some pubic hair — I’m not a pre-adolescent after all. That said, sometimes for travel purposes I find it easier to get it all waxed off than to try hitting just the “right” amount. And for some reason, grey pubic hair had more of an impact on me than grey head hair. Normative femininity and its prizing of youth? Yes, that plays into it. Young. But not too young.
When all the talk of swimsuits and body comfort came up last week, and then carried into this week’s posts about different options and the way the swimsuit industry walks that line between body shaming and trying to design suits that we’ll actually wear, body hair came up for discussion among the blog’s author group.
Different ones of us had different issues. Without naming who’s who (because I didn’t get everyone’s permission), opinion ranged from someone not liking her own leg hair despite it going against her sensibilities (I’m right there with her), to someone not being able to shave because it irritates her skin, to someone being less hairy as she ages and hardly having to shave, to someone hating shaving so much she had her pits lasered and is now annoyed that it’s growing back.
For my part, I have less leg hair than I used to but I still shave it. I have an Intuition razor with the built in shaving lube thing that I use for regular touch ups in the summer. In the winter I am less inclined to give my legs regular attention. I have a different razor (with shaving gel) that I use for my arm pits, where the hair seems to grow faster and I hate even the slightest stubble. And I only deal with pubic hair when I’m expecting to see some action or spending a lot of time on the boat or at the beach wearing swim suits or skinny dipping.
What’s interesting to me is that though we are all feminists, no one took a strong stand against participating in this particular beauty practice. Sam condemned it, saying it feels required, not fun and occasional like make-up (though even make-up feels required for many). But as required, the social and even professional consequences of not conforming can be serious. And that’s precisely what makes it a feminist issue. And yet we acquiesce. Of course we are picking different battles in a world where we can’t pick all of them.
A friend reported that one summer she had had it. “I’m going to stop shaving my legs,” she said. “It’s nothing but a pain in the butt,” she said. A few weeks later I asked her to report back. The result: “I couldn’t handle standing in the ATM line-up, conscious of everyone staring at my hairy legs.” She went back to shaving.
Do you have a considered position on your body hair that you’d like to tell us about?
Last week, Tracy posted here about her recent experience camping and swimming in hot weather. She saw kids splashing about, often just in bathing suit bottoms. Many men were shirtless in the campground. However, some of the women there expressed embarrassment and shame about showing their bodies, so they wrapped up in towels as much as possible, often avoiding wearing a swimsuit at all.
We’ve written a lot about bathing suits, swimwear and the politics/psychology/marketing and general swarm of discordant messaging around them. See a couple of them below:
Tracy’s post provoked some really interesting conversation (check out the comments here) about the reasons and motivations behind why we choose the swim duds we choose. The issue of body shame and how it affects our clothing choices is a sensitive and personal one, and it touched a few nerves. What I realized from reading and participating in the discussion was this:
We all have complex and tender relationships with our bodies. And swimwear presents a double challenge for many of us:
We have to choose swimwear that accommodates that tender relationship and lets us feel comfortable enough to present our bodies in public and participate in watery activity;
We have to develop emotional tolerance for the ways our swimwear sends signals to others about us (sometimes with misleading information).
We post a lot about body positivity, body neutrality, body image, body shaming, etc. For me, the result of this continuing conversation is that one view certainly doesn’t fit all here. We have the bodies we have, we have the emotional issues we have, and we have the preferences and motivations and interests we have. They’re all different.
However, I hope that, despite all these issues, it’s still possible for us to enjoy cannonballing into the pool, bodysurfing the waves, paddleboarding in that lake, or hanging out on the beach, enjoying sun and shade and breeze and sky.
Here are some of our thoughts about what we want to wear in water and why. I also wanted to share some of our non-traditional options or preferences.
Cate/fieldpoppy:
The first thing to note is that I’m not really A Swimmer, so I tend not to have technical swim gear. At the same time, I have a very functional relationship with my swimgear — I pretty much swim to cool off in the summer or make sure I have a bathing suit when I’m traveling in case I want to take a dip in a pool. I prefer a sporty two piece that feels more like a sports bra and a bottom that covers my butt and has a draw string so that when I jump in, it doesn’t come off.
(That is, in places where it shouldn’t come off — when camping or in private, I prefer to swim naked). …. At the same time, I’m simultaneously Determined to Feel Comfortable being semi-clad in public, not always in the mood to keep the hair under control in the “bikini” area, and have had an experience with basal cell skin cancer on my face. So I tend to have layers that start with the sporty two piece and include a pair of shortish board shorts if I’m going to be hanging around for a long time, and maybe a white cotton long sleeved shirt that covers my shoulders and chest. I kind of look back longingly on the times when I felt comfortable on the beach in a real bikini (when I was in my 30s), but that’s more about my relationship with the sun than my relationship with my body.
I am also sort of Ostentatiously Comfortable running around in shorts and a sports bra. When running I often end up taking off my shirt and winding up in a sports bra, and the other day after a long hot ride, I whipped off my jersey and ran through a splashpad in my bike shorts and sports bra in full view of a number of adults who were totally covered up and constantly telling their kids not to splash them. I made the kids squirt me with their water cannons. I think I’m a different kind of adult.
Catherine:
I was thinking about the ways I like to feel in swimwear, namely skin covered but body shape exposed. I love tight speedo one pieces and I also liked the stinger suits (adult swimming onesies) for snorkeling in Australia. In fact, I’d wear one for ocean swimming, as I wouldn’t have to worry about sunscreen (just my face). I’ve always hated tankinis, as they ride up, which makes me feel frumpy and uncomfortable. Yes, I know—it’s also about my negative feelings about showing my belly. Well, there it is…
Why do I like one-piece suits? I think I feel sort of professional– like I’m a swimmer/athlete, even though I don’t swim a lot these days. It feels like it identifies me as an athlete in the way that wearing cycling kit does. I feel great in cycling kit, too, for the same reason.
Writing this post is making me rethink my position about two-piece suits; I feel self-conscious about showing a lot of skin and prominently displaying my breasts (albeit covered by a cute top). But I can now imagine circumstances where it might be fun and freeing, so it’s worth exploring. I’m now on the hunt for a bikini that says me.
These are two of my favorite swimwear pics (from about 5 years ago, so I need to get going with more recent bathing suit shots!), in my blue reversible speedo one-piece.
Me headed down a sliding board, head first.
Me at the Blue Lagoon in Iceland with my friend Martin and his daughter Julia.
Martha:
I have always found bathing suits really problematic. Mostly because they don’t fit properly. There’s also a lot of fuss and bother because there are expectations on how women should look in bathing suits. But five years ago I was interviewing a woman who runs a lingerie store and discovered that there are lots of new styles in bathing suits. She encouraged me to try on this one suit and I absolutely loved it. Since last summer I have been averaging at least one swim a week if not two when my schedule allows it. My thought now is that once you get past the assumptions that people will make about differently sized and different looking bodies that are female in a suit you can find something that will work for you in the way that you need it to.
Here’s a selfie that Martha took of her in her favorite swimsuit:
Selfie of Martha’s greenish skirted v-neck swimsuit with a waistband; her foot is wearing a pink flip-flop.
Samantha:
It took me awhile to find the right sort of bathing suit, one that matches who I am. The bikinis I wear and prefer are athletic bikinis. And I think with my shoulders and leg muscles, the message they send is ‘I’m here to swim.’ Think athletic over aesthetic values, something I’ve blogged about here. Opting out of the bathing suit aesthetics has served me well but that’s not such an easy choice if you’re not someone who thinks of herself as an athlete.
These days I also wear skimpy hot tub bikinis. Think minimal coverage. But they’re for backyard use only. Just friends and family. I wouldn’t wear them to the beach though I’d comfortably go nude at a nude beach. But these days I’m also frantic and anxious about sun and skin damage. I had a friend of 15 years die in her early 40s with two kids under 5, from skin cancer. Lots of friends have had less serious skin cancer lesions removed. And a few years in Australia cemented the sun and skin cancer worry. Sunscreen is a back up thing. It’s not as effective as we think. The best plan is covering up and staying out of the sun.
Here are some pics of Samantha in swimwear:
Samantha selfie with blue patterned thin strappy top, and tattooed shoulders, in clear aquamarine water.
Samantha standing in clear salt water in a cove, wearing a blue patterned thin strapped bikini top and blue patterned bikini bottom.
Tracy:
What I look for in a swimsuit depends on what I’m looking for it for. I spend a lot of time on a sailboat and these days my swimsuit purchasing is mostly about what I can wear aboard. So I’ll get to that.
For lap swimming though, I like a simple one piece sport style suit with a racer back. My three most recent are plain suits that fit snugly and cost very little when I bought them at cost from my triathlon coach back when I did regular swim training. At that time (three years ago) I also really liked swimming in a wetsuit with my triathlon suit underneath. Wearing a wetsuit makes me move through the water in a way that feels sleek and fast. Mine is a full suit designed for swimming not diving. If you plan to get a wetsuit for swimming you absolutely need to get that kind. A diving wetsuit for scuba lacks the arm mobility for the kind of stroke you’ll do while swimming. Besides keeping me sleek in the water, the wetsuit is also great protection for lake swimming where there are weeds and fish and other things that freak me out. I’m not sure if they protect against jelly fish but they’re great for non-stinging creatures and plants.
Okay, for the boat. I’ve got at least ten bottoms and a bunch of bikini tops, two tankini tops and a one piece I never wear because it’s usually too hot. My favourite go-to bottoms right now are boy-shorts. I have two pairs — one black with white polka dots and the other plain blue. I wear them almost all the time on the boat. But I also have a few “Brazilian” bikinis. That’s the kind that are so skimpy they don’t even try covering your butt. They’re a bit too skimpy for some occasions (parents, for example) but good for a quick dive in and out, then off they come and the boy short comes back on. It’s functional and great for active living. I never have to pull at them or adjust them. My idea of successful clothing choice is something I can put on and stop thinking about. That extends to swimsuits.
I confess to feeling a bit self-conscious in a bikini top at the beginning of any time I spend on the boat. If there is one part of my body that I feel shame about (I’m doing my best not to write an angst-filled paragraph here) it’s my belly. Everything I actually believe rails against that and knows that it’s simply the old oppressive ideas of normative femininity combined with lingering body dysmorphia from my days of disordered eating and body obsession. So at the beginning I need to force myself. But I have tops that I really like and that fit well, and lots of them. And in a pinch, if I’m having a tough day where body acceptance eludes me, I go for the tankini top. On a positive note, I haven’t done that for some time AND I like my butt!
Final point: I am not opposed to tankini, one pieces, swim skirts, or anything that gives more coverage. Women can wear what they like. But if we wear these things out of body shame then there is work to do. That’s the main point I was making in my post the other day about body acceptance and camping.
Here are some swimwear pics of Tracy:
Self-portrait featuring Tracy’s head, shoulders, and her floral swim top, with blue sky in background
Self-portrait featuring Tracy’s black with small white dotted boy short bottom, her thigh and midsection, and tattooed right arm, with light blue sky in background.
Tracy as seen from the back– her blue boy short bottom, legs, blue patterned top, carrying a brown patterned bag. We see her tattooed left arm.
Natalie:
I’m posting here for her because she is, of course, way ahead of all of us, having already written two summers ago about her bikini body. Read all about it here. And you can see more photos of Natalie in her newly purchased bikini below.
Natalie, smiling in her new blue with back accents bikini, and relaxing on a boat.
Natalie again on the boat, posing and being ornamental (her words, and true!) on their boat trip.
Christine:
My swimsuits tend to be largely functional. I have two suits, both are over 5 years old, one of them is a one piece and the other is a two piece but it essentially fits together like a one piece.
I don’t think I have owned a bikini since I was a little kid. It’s not a matter of self-consciousness, they just never had much appeal for me.
I did try to buy one a few years ago – just out of sheer stubbornness after I saw an article that explained why women my age *shouldn’t* wear them – but I didn’t like the lack of support. I hated the idea of spending my swimming time wondering if my top was slipping!
When I go swimming at ponds (if you are not in NL, you would probably call them lakes), I often keep a cotton skirt on when I go swimming – but that’s about not wanting to put on even more sunscreen rather than being concerned about how I look in my suit. (I view sunscreen as a necessary evil and I dress in layers to minimize having to apply more).
Readers: what are your favorite swim wear ensembles? What do you love? What do you hate? Who knows, maybe someone is listening to us– you never know…
My cycling coach got a call one day from a friend saying his Garmin must be broken because the average cadence on his ride was in the low 80s. He wasn’t going slow. He averaged over 30 km/hr. But he got the speed by pedaling slowly in big gears.
I’m like that too. Yes, I can sprint and then I pedal faster but my usual road ride cadence is slower than that of those with whom I ride.
That’s not how cyclists are supposed to do things.
“Pedaling furiously (with a high cadence) on a low gear is calledspinning, while pedaling slower (low cadence) on a high gear is calledmashing. Both can get you to high speeds — so why do the best cyclists prefer spinning?
The prevailing theory is that spinning is a more efficient use of your strength and energy. Many cyclists revert to mashing, however, because it feels faster. But, not only does mashing produce more lactic acid, it predominantly uses what’s called fast-twitch muscle fibers, which fatigue faster than slow-twitch fibers (used in spinning) [source:Williamson].”
Why do I end up mashing? Partly it’s because I can. I have strong legs and can push big gears. Lots of riders can’t. Uphill it feels like my only option. I weigh a lot so I need the power.
The thing is it’s better to get spinning fast and then increase gears. Keep your cadence high. That’s what I do when I sprint.
When I was riding on the track on a fixed gear bike increasing cadence was the only route to more speed. A cycling coach at the velodrome suggested that when training I put a spinnier, smaller gear on my bike to improve my cadence. It nearly killed me. I had a hard time keeping up with my usual peers but it worked. My cadence improved and when I switched back to my usual gear I got faster.
So what’s happening now? Pushing big gears with slow cadence hurts my knee. Not a big surprise given all that’s going on with my knee. Naturally I’ve been moving into smaller gears and upping my cadence. I lost the cadence sensor on my bike a few years ago. I might just get it back and be deliberate about improving my cadence.
I mean, I both enjoy the practice of meditating and I enjoy that I have a daily meditation practice.
Here’s what I have learned so far:
Perfectly imperfect, perhaps?
My app is pretty happy that I have visited it 7 days in a row. I chose this profile photo to a) scare off creepy people and b) remind myself not to take things too seriously.
I have meditated on six of seven days. I actually started by ‘failing’ right out of the gate. I didn’t think about the fact that I was having people over on Canada Day so I would have lots of prep to do for that, and I had visitors until late into the evening. I decided not to worry about it and just pick things up on the 2nd. (that’s why this post is today, and my meditation app is happy for me to have seven days in a row – it includes today)
I think I have only managed to do two sessions on three of seven days. Despite that, I still feel that twice a day is worth working toward and even if I can’t do it every day, it’s great on the days that it happens.
And even though I haven’t been able to get myself to sit twice a day, meditation has come to my mind at other times when I couldn’t just sit and I chose to do my task more while breathing steadily. I guess, then, that I chose to be more mindful of those tasks?
So, if you will allow me that loophole, then I have done dishwashing meditation, icing-making meditation, lawn mowing meditation, and a walking meditation. That seems like a positive to me. 🙂
‘Don’t be precious about things, Christine’
Here I am, right after meditating, lying mat-less on my living room floor. Working hard at not being precious about the details.
When I set out my plan for how I was going to meditate, I thought that clearly picturing myself meditating on my yoga mat on my living room floor, would be helpful. I thought it would be a good (metaphorically) separate space, a marker for when I should meditate.
However, my household was a bit busy this week and I couldn’t always commandeer the living room for my own purposes.
I was annoyed with myself at first for not picking a better plan but then I remembered that there is no point in being precious* about the details (the heading for this section is a direct quote from me talking to myself).
I have to remember that the details are supposed to serve me, not to hamper me.
So, I have meditated in my hammock, sitting in the front seat of my car before going into the supermarket, sitting at my kitchen table, lying on my living room floor without my mat, and lying crossways on my bed. I think I have only meditated the way I planned to on one occasion.
I’m completely okay with that.
Adjusting the plan as needed
Several times this week, three minutes has seemed ‘too short’, so I am taking that as a good sign for my plan to increase my time this week.
I think that two minutes may be my ‘getting into it’ time frame for meditation. I feel squirmy for the first minute or so (I have peeked at my timer – I am totally imperfect) and that second minute takes a fair bit of reminding to come back to my breath, but that third minute starts feeling really good. Let’s see how that holds out for my plan for six minutes this week!
Last week, I tried to have a specific place for meditation and that didn’t play out as I imagined. This week, I am going to try to have specific times. I like having alarms and timers for things so I don’t have to make a decision in the moment, so I’m going to set an alarm for 8:30am and 8:30pm and see how they suit me as meditation times. If for some reason I *can’t* stop what I am doing right then, I won’t just turn off the alarm, I’ll reset it for a time I will be free.
My meditation location this morning was not a hardship.
Big picture
I feel good about this practice and I feel like it is worth explore how to make it work even better for me.
For a change, I was unfazed by not sticking to my exact plan, I just rolled with it the best I could.
I wonder where the next week will take me?
*I have lots of things in my life that are precious to me, I’m not using the word that way. In this case, I mean that I shouldn’t get too caught up in having perfect conditions, or following a specific ideal. I fall into that trap sometimes.
Hi everyone– in the Northern Hemisphere it’s high summer, which means (among other things), fun in and around water. Swimming, sailing, paddleboarding, kayaking, body surfing, picnicking, splashing and frolicking– for me summer is all about the water.
Which gives rise to the eternal question: what to wear?
These days, there’s a dizzying array of interesting types of swimwear. We have soooo moved beyond the tank suit/bikini dichotomy, along with market restrictions on sizes and varieties. Some of our bloggers posted sites with really diverse options, so we thought we’d share them with y’all.
There are some fantastic options for those who want gender-neutral swimwear here.
If you’re interested in bikini looks for all size women, check out this site; it features looks and links to sites selling glamorous and sexy and fun fatkini looks for larger sized women. Here are a few sneak peeks:
Bright tropical colored two piece with skinny straps.
Floral v-neck top with geometric high waist bikini bottom, with dark blue long-sleeved duster.
Black tank swim top with animal print long sleeves, with high waist black bikini bottom.
And then there’s the buttkini. It’s exactly what you think– a two-piece that shows off the derriere in all its glory. Check them out here (I don’t think Facebook lets us show these in a post, which is of course silly…)
Let me put in a plug for Beefcake swimwear, which has THE SUIT I want– the one on the left, called the ordinary. The one on the right is the dreamboat. They’re current out of stock but may have more in July.
The ordinary, a one-piece tank suit with shorts, in black with some white stripes.
The dreamboat, a striped-top and solid-shorts-bottom one-piece tank suit, in red and white.
If you are looking for more coverage, there are suits out there for you. Burkinis provide full head-to-toe coverage, and were invented by Aheda Zanetti, a Muslim Australian who wanted to design sports and swimwear for Muslim girls and women that were functional and also comported with their religious practices. You can read more about Aheda Zanetti here. Now lots of companies make burkinis– here are a few pictures:
A black burkini with geometric multicolored long sleeves and head covering with same pattern headband.
A light and dark blue burkini with tank top pattern and stripes; head covering is dark blue.
When I was in Australia a few years ago, I went snorkeling and diving off the Great Barrier Reef. We were required to wear stinger suits, which are adult-sized onesies that look a bit like burkinis. Some have a hood, and they even have hand coverings so to avoid being stung by the tiny but potentially deadly box jellyfish (also called stingers).
In addition to protecting you from death, the stinger suit has another advantage, which is that you don’t need to apply sunscreen (except a bit to your face). Sunscreen has been shown to be destructive to coral reefs, so wearing a stinger suit is a twofer– good for you, and good for the ocean environment. I like the idea of wearing one for ocean swimming, as I get sunburned very easily and would feel more relaxed if I didn’t have to worry about reapplying sunscreen (except for my face, which is fine). Here’s a pic of me before diving in one:
Me in a blue stinger suit with a blue and yellow hood, before scuba diving.
I’ve since learned that there are many prettier ones than this one– the operator joked that we all looked like Teletubbies, which was pretty much correct. Here is a great example of stinger suits gone wild, as made by an Australian company:
A quartet of brightly patterned full body stinger suits with hoods: black and red animal print, pastel circular print, blue reptilian print, and purply geometric pattern.
No doubt I’ve missed some new styles of cool, beautiful, functional, funky or otherwise excellent swimwear. So tell us, readers: what do you like or not like in swimsuits? Do any of these options look appealing to you? Tell us what you think.
Instead of watching the US Presidential debate last night, I watched a terrific documentary about cargo bikes, motherhood, and feminism. I recommend it!
Here’s the trailer:
I confess I’ve always wanted a cargo bike for groceries and carrying stuff about town. When my kids were little they rode in the back behind me in a trailer, but whenever I travelled to places with cargo bikes I looked on in wonderment. That’s the way to do it!
In my dream commune/co-op we’d share a cargo bike for running errands. I don’t have enough need for one here in Guelph. And I don’t have little people in my life these days.
But still, they make me smile.
Have you ever ridden a cargo bike? Wanted one? Bought one? Tell us your stories in the comments below.
Think cargo bikes are just for men?
Think again.
Here’s a snapshot of Vancouver women representing at our Cargo Bike Championship over the years.
I’ve since seen my dentist, who I just love as we’ve had the most amazing discussions over the years, and gotten a night guard (aka bite plate aka mouth guard). I’m very privileged that my extended dental benefits covered the multiple visits and the appliance.
I immediately thought about how unsexy I felt. This was echoed by many folks who decided that this alone was enough to not wear a dental appliance.
That sat really poorly with me. This night guard is a minor thing, easily removed when needed. My muscles are relaxing as the appliance does its job. But yet it felt like such a big thing to myself and other people because of concerns around losing sex appeal.
Not rational and, for myself, not terribly examined.
The night guard is to alleviate numbness in my face caused my clenching of my jaw. Scarring on the inside of my cheeks and scalloping along the edges of my tongue were signs I was indeed a clencher. So is my sister Anj and my father. It’s likely gotten worse because of a change in my paid work that has increased my stress.
The benefits of wearing this little clear appliance are less headaches and a return of feeling to my face.
I think, at the heart of all this sex appeal talk, is a nugget of ableism. The idea that only bodies that don’t need assistive devices, dental appliances or any other supports are less sexy than able/unassisted bodies is deeply problematic and I need to fight that impulse.
The other part is our old frenemy, sexism and the idea that women must constantly strive to be sexy to all people, especially men, at all times.
You know what is sexy? Someone who has had a good night’s sleep instead of clenching their jaw into spasms. Self care is sexy AF.
Basically if someone dares tell you or me that our self care, dental appliances, accessibility supports or anything else we need to be well are somehow making us less sexy we need to flip those people the bird.
I had not biked at all this year but I was determined to have an active holiday with my partner. Sam recommended this delightful route and boy-howdy was it worth it.
The route is a reclaimed rail line that has a combo of asphalt and crushed stone surface. Since it was used by a train, it’s not too hilly and it goes from Mount Laurier to St. Jerome, delightful little towns north of Montreal. The route is about 200km and so serves almost every biking need.
There are multitudes of Bed and Breakfasts along the way, camp grounds and amazing restaurants. I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad restaurant in Quebec people. That province understands food.
I had a lot of favourite things about this trip and it was very different from substantial bike riding I had done in the past. My partner is an occasional biker and he is not a road biker so we took hybrid bikes on this trip. His was a pretty fancy aluminum frame with a famous name. I had a steel frame that has served me since I bought it second hand in 1990. I also had the pannier holders. Because the grade never exceeded 3% none of this was an issue. We scheduled the trip to take 4 days and none of them were farther than 60k. We also had a shuttle service that took out stuff from place to place so we weren’t weighted down with kit. I would totally do this ride in a self sufficient way though, now that I know where all the camp sites are.
Biking is so delightful for so many reasons. It can be a solitary pursuit of meditative aloneness or it can be social in ways that running never matches for me. When you bike, there is always a choice to go hard or not. I don’t have that kind of option when I run, it’s always hard, so I’m always more focussed on my discomfort than being social. Biking equalizes me and my partner too. I’m experienced and he isn’t so I get to revel in that and he is very gracious to let me take the lead in all things bike. As we peddled along the forested route that first day, smelling the pine needles and enjoying perfect weather, I was astounded that I forgot how much I love it. Last year was a year of running, a half marathon and a fast 10k. Now I’m content to leave that behind. I’ll run again but I’m only running so I can bike better. I just don’t like running much, it’s a fact.
I may have hooked my partner on biking. He is wondering about doing a longer trip, elsewhere, maybe Newfoundland? I so want to do this trip.
I will end this rather jaggedly written post with two stories of the trip, one poignant and then weird and one hilarious.
The story of Jannette (name has been changed):
One of the B&B’s we stayed at had a magical feel. There were endless gardens and exceptional buildings, obviously built with love and care. Our host, I’ll call him Mark, was, well, a bit dour. The place was so meticulous and perfect and he obviously worked all the time. He was also particular about the schedule, the times for check-in, for driving us to town for dinner, for breakfast. The place was for sale and my partner was trying to create some conversation with the man in the car on the way to dinner. He told us that he wanted to get back out in the world and hike. He had been a very accomplished adventurer. I noticed he only used a singular pronoun.
When we got back that night, we were looking at the things in the common room, the photo books and the art on the wall. Jannette was mentioned everywhere. The notes were signed “Jannette and Mark”. She was in all the pictures. She was in the oil painting with Mark in their beautiful and sacred garden. I suddenly felt as if I knew what happened, that Jannette had died, probably of breast cancer and Mark was grieving. He was selling the place and keeping it up so meticulously to honour her but once he found a suitable buyer, her was going to walk to the end of the earth until he died of a broken heart. I know, I was a dramatic story, but it fit. I felt more compassion for his demeanour, poor grieving Mark.
The net day we arrived for breakfast in the main house. I was weird to have Mark preparing us breakfast in the kitchen he and Jannette shared. I felt her spirit everywhere, in every perfect detail of the place that Mark had not changed, and would not change, until he walked away into some wilderness forever.
Near the end of the meal, my partner looks up and says, “Oh, thank god, there’s Jannette”.
And there she was.
She whirled in, said hi, ran upstairs, came back down, had a conversation with Mark in French that we didn’t understand because they talked so fast and then she left again. Very alive was that Jannette.
I still don’t know what was up with Mark, maybe it was divorce, maybe this is his nature, who knows. Anyway, I was glad she wasn’t dead. The place is totally worth going to even with the slightly dour host. If you are interested, pm me somehow, I have a Facebook Page, and I’ll tell you. I feel bad naming him as dour in this post, but the story was too good not to tell.
Second story. . the derailleur:
Oh, people who are cyclists already know there is a bit of a poop-show coming.
We were on our last day and it was raining. We were coming into St. Jerome and there was a lot of stopping and starting. During one start, I heard a terrible sound behind me, the sound of skidding and clanking. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m good but I think I have a technical problem. Oh yes, definitely a bad technical problem.”
The derailleur was shorn off and the chain was destroyed. One big man crank too many I guess. Anyway, the good news was were were only 3 k out and it was mostly down hill. So, we scootered in the last bit, a fitting end to a glorious adventure.
Interested in the trail? Here is a link to start you off.
Two happy people in bike helmets and sunglasses. Seriously happy people.
Rivière Du Nord in the background and a birch tree with a smiling bicyclist wearing a maple leaf shirt in the foreground.
