Sometimes as a feminist who’s been around for awhile and has watched feminism diversify, become more intersectional, and strive for a kind of inclusivity that may or may not be possible, I (wrongly) think that some of the “old faithful” issues have fallen away. I think here of issues like normative femininity and the feminine beauty ideal. The imperative that women should be thin, lean, and small.

These issues are really old hat. We’ve been talking about the oppressive nature of the aesthetic of normative femininity for decades. But sadly, that doesn’t mean they’ve been resolved.

A stark reminder that body-shaming and the thin-lean-small ideal are still alive and well in the fashion and beauty industries came across my newsfeed in the form of two different stories this week.

First, there was Jameela Jamil against Avon. In case you missed it, Avon had an ad with copy that read: “dimples are cute on your face (not on your thighs).” Even as I read it I can hardly believe this would get through whatever approvals process an ad needs to get through before it goes public. I mean, if Avon is trying to win over women and sell products, shaming them in this manner is hardly a winning strategy.

Jamil called the company out on Twitter:

Jamil has a lot of influence and her tweet made the rounds, with over 10,000 retweets. That made Avon respond with an apology and a decision to pull the offending ad:

Jameela Jamil is great at calling out body-shaming and inequities without mincing words. She calls it as she sees it. That’s an admirable use of her social position and fame.

The other incident involved the fashion industry. For years feminists have been pointing out the unrealistic ideal represented by runway models and magazine models in high fashion circles. This week I read that Bebe Rexha reported that several designers declined to dress her for the Grammy’s because she’s too big. She’s a size 6-8. TOO BIG?!

Her response was spot on. She said:

“If a size 6-8 is too big, then I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t want to wear your f**king dresses. Cause that’s crazy. You’re saying all the women in the world that are size 8 and up are not beautiful and they cannot wear your dresses…So all the people who said I’m thick and I can’t wear dresses, f**k you and I don’t want to wear your f**king dresses,”

I love how these guys on ET Canada are saying how they don’t believe it’s still a thing. Right? I agree: why is this still a thing? Here’s a video of the ET Canada guys and how perplexed they are, and also of Bebe Rexha telling the designers who don’t want to dress her, “fuck you!”

Anyone who follows the blog knows that I’m not exactly an elite athlete. I feel pleased when I make it out of the bottom half of any event I enter, and that doesn’t happen a whole heck of a lot. So when I talk about “winning formulas,” I don’t actually mean formulas for winning. Instead, I’m talking about my formula for keeping at it with a reasonably good attitude.

Sam and I like to joke sometimes about how boring our message is. Have goal. Chip away at it. Better still if it’s a thing you like. We all posted yesterday about our favourite activities. I love that we all have favourite activities.

So what’s my winning formula? Consistency and forgiveness. I have some regular stuff I do, and I do it reasonably consistently. I run about 3 times a week. I weight train with my personal trainer twice a week. You’ll find me in the hot yoga studio once a week on Saturday morning. And in between I’ll walk to work or do some yoga at home or switch it up if I’m traveling by doing something more fitting to the local setting (like swimming or kayaking or stand-up paddleboarding or hiking).

But I sometimes don’t get in all the things that I normally like to do. Like this weekend when I went to the lake and it was absolutely freezing, there was no way a long run was happening on Sunday. No. Way. Yes, I went for a brisk and chilly walk with friends on Saturday. But I spent most of Sunday driving and eating BBQ potato chips.

This is where forgiveness comes into the picture. Because routine and consistency are all well and good. But they’re not 100% all the time. Monday came along and I had a lot on my figurative plate. But I can live with that because, whereas in the past I had more of an all or nothing attitude, today I know I can get back at it as soon as possible without a great deal of consequence. I’m not sure I’m going to get back at it today because I am teaching this morning and then Sam and I are giving a talk this afternoon (on why fitness is a feminist issue).

That’s okay. Because that’s life and oh well. I know I’ll get back on track on Wednesday, when I can fit in a tempo run and some weight training. Yes, I’m a little bit panicked about “falling behind” in my Around the Bay training. But as my coach Linda said to me this afternoon, I will be able to complete that 30K. It’s just a matter of how I will complete it. The more I stick with my training plan the better I will perform. But either way I will show up for the day, do my best, enjoy the moment, and show the results of the training I did.

Consistency keeps me moving forward. Forgiveness gets me back on track when I’ve fallen out of routine. They work as a kind of tag-team, forming the core of my “motivational strategy.” I use these values in workouts and in life more generally. Boring? Maybe. Effective? You bet!

How consistent are you? How forgiving are you?

Things in my newsfeed that I definitely won’t be ordering…how about “arm shapers.” The ad says, “GET SLIM ARMS IN SECONDS.” First thought: Hey, I worked for these muscles. But then, oh, right, I remember. There’s all that angst about having arms in good enough shape to wear sleeveless dresses. That’s what this is about.

Facebook algorithms, do you even know me? I am the author of Bingo wings and dinner plate arms: Let’s put our wit to work elsewhere. 

I am a fan of learning to love our bodies as they are. I am not a fan of the continual search for women’s body parts that must be improved. I won’t recite the list of unruly body bits. Reader, I’m sure by now you know it as well as I do. 

There’s a review of them by someone who more practical, and less philosophical, objections to the very idea of arm shapers. She asks Would you wear arm tights?

” I, and everyone I know who has ever declared their bingo wings to be a ‘body hangup’, all have one thing in common. We only dislike our upper arms when they’re out. A sleeveless dress at a wedding, a spaghetti strap top on holiday – these are the times that you might want a miracle sartorial solution to swoop in and hold up any surplus arm jiggle. On a day that I didn’t want to show my wings, I would simply choose a dress or top in my wardrobe with sleeves to cover them. There would be no point in having a sucky-in, long-sleeved layer underneath that, unless the outer top’s silhouette was also skin tight. Any other shape would ruin the streamline illusion. “

Her answer is no. Mine too, even though I didn’t get to the practical considerations she sensibly raises.

More images of arm shapers modeled by people who clearly don’t need arm shapers. Never mind, no one needs arm shapers. So they might as well be modeled by thin women.

Last week, I wrote about the 6 week challenge I’m doing with my spinning studio that is a good, challenging blend of all the fitness things — working out, sleeping, hydration, thinking more mindfully about the things I’m putting in my mouth.  In my little burst of “trying new things” as part of this challenge, I noticed a new class on the Torq schedule:  a High Intensity Interval Training (+!) class.

Normally, I find most spinning classes aggressive enough for me, and I’m all about the intuitive movement these days, as I wrote about last week.  But I was looking for something to fit into a window of time for working out last Friday morning, and this fit my weird logic:  “I don’t love spinning first thing in the morning — it takes so long for me to wake up — but it’s only 30 minutes!  How bad could it be?  Then I’ll be done working out for the day!”  Also, I like Marawan as a teacher — he’s not shouty — so I got myself to an 840 class last Friday.

Because it’s a new class (and maybe because of all of the explosive language in the description), there were only four of us in the first class.  I had had a terrible sleep — still jet lagged and insomniac from my trip to Australia — and I had a busy day before I had to travel four hours the next morning for a family funeral.  I arrived a bit of a worn out rag, and gave all sorts of qualifiers to my Clear Intention Not to Work Hard.  Marawan was just gently encouraging — do what you can.

The class was… highly intense.  But in a really doable way.  I won’t say the 30 minutes “flew by,” but I was deeply engaged the entire time.  Marawan took us through a simple series of 3 patterns of about 12 minutes each, each marked by harder, more intense, intensest, briefly return to a hard baseline again again for a version of “recovery”, repeat.  We use torq sticks at this studio to increase and decrease the weight on the bikes quickly — moving the torq stick to the middle of the gear is similar to 1.5 full turns on the flywheel, to the right is like 3, then you can fling it back to your baseline quickly.  For part of the class, we used the monitor at the front of class to track our wattage output (total class average energy).

It was simple… and it did all of the things HIIT is supposed to do — pushes you hard with pockets of near-recovery, pushes you hard again, then you’re done, sweaty and pleased with yourself.  (A lot of people are HIIT evangelists, but there is a fair bit of argument among exercise researchers about whether it’s really “superior” for anything other than efficiency — but it’s definitely a way to get a really good workout quickly).

That class really stood out in a super busy week as my most intense, focused workout — I managed a quick run here, an exhausted trip to the gym there, a few self-guided yoga workouts.  But it was a week of a lot of driving and facilitating huge groups into the evening, and on Thursday night, I skipped my planned yoga class in favour of lying in bed, eating popcorn for dinner and watching netflix.  (See:  honouring what my body needs).

When Friday morning rolled around again, I had to really persuade myself to get out of bed and show up for class.  I am often daunted by knowing my workout is going to be intense, no option.  I try to fool myself into thinking “I can just take it easy.”  I know that in this class, there’s no room to coast — not in the structure of the actual class or the fact that there are so few of us.  I can’t hide behind the pole on bike 18, my preferred spot.

Yesterday, Marawan had us all (five of us this time) line up in the middle row and he sat in the middle, riding with us.  A really simple sequence:  three long climbs, with a tone going off every minute to increase the weight on the wheel by half to a full turn.  Within each series, sequences of hard, harder, intense, brief recovery, always to the baseline of the gradually increasing weight.  Between the three long climbs — 12 minutes, 10 and 7 — a minute of actual recovery.  (The pic is me in one of those moments).  In the last sequence, Marawan came around and had each of us work to our absolute highest output for 10 seconds as he encouraged us.

I was exhausted when I got on the bike, and energized when I got off.  I found the recovery I’d given my body by taking two rest days in a row, and felt… strong.  I was still well worn out, but in the best, internally glowing way.  I felt… human again.

I’m probably not going to do this more than once a week — but doing something this intense reaffirms for me that I’m engaged in a long-term project of fitness and health — and even when I’m mostly tooling around in lighter workouts, there’s a warrior inside me.  Marawan is the best kind of teacher — light touch, firm effort, kind.  And I got a blue star for nailing my first week of the 6 week challenge.

Fieldpoppy is Cate Creede, who lives and works in Toronto.