I’d love to move my serious riding season to the fall but that can’t happen until I retire. It’s dark very early weekdays in the autumn here and most of the big bike rides I train for are in the summer months.
So I’ve been riding in the heat and trying to get used to it. See here and here.
This weekend we tried the first tip in the article mentioned above–getting acclimated. We rode Saturday and Sunday in heat alert conditions, but we didn’t ride very far (45 km one day and 33 km the next).
It’s also known as heat training. From NPR: “Heat training is not just for competitive athletes. It’s recommended for people in the military and those who work outdoors in hot weather. It could even be useful for generally healthy members of the public, O’Connor says. “People should not be afraid of the heat,” he says. “We can develop and add an adaptive response to help us succeed in the heat. But it’s got to be controlled.” Done right, heat training could help people stay a bit more comfortable in the long, intense stretches of heat marking the extraordinarily hot summer of 2024 and future heat waves expected more frequently due to climate change.”
We also wore lots of sunscreen, and Sarah wore her sunsleeves. I didn’t wear mine, but only because I can’t bear putting them on when I’m already sweaty. That’s tip number 2 from the Bicycling article.
We took it easy and didn’t push it too much.
We also put our water bottles in the freezer so they’d be cool to start and we both took one bottle of water and one bottle of Skratch (rehydration formula with sodium.)
After our rides, we sat in the shade in the backyard and finished our water and Skratch.
In the end, I think we thought our approach was a success. We’re going to keep building distances and sticking to the tips above.
CW: discussion of body shapes with a focus on the belly area.
So there I was, on Facebook, idling scrolling, patiently waiting for my favorite time-wasting reels (woodturning! love all the lucite and wood chips flying! dunno why exactly!) when I happened upon this headline:
caption inexplicably reads: 16 flattering dresses for women with a belly. As opposed to…?
Little did I know that this was a thing. Well, it’s a thing inasmuch as magazines and websites promote various styles of dresses as belly-hiding.
Both this puppy and I are confused at what “belly-hiding” dress could mean.Thanks Dex Ezekiel for Unsplash for puppy photo.
Alright, I admit that I actually do know what they’re talking about. Everyone has a belly, and they range in size and shape. When we wear dresses, some of them are looser, with more fabric, and some of them are more fitting, highlighting one’s body shape.
A lot of dress marketers are targeting people who worry about their bellies and offering dresses that “cover the belly”. This is the kind of thing they have in mind:
A bunch of nice-ish unsuspecting dresses, all of them perfectly unaware that they’ve been coopted into body-shaming women. All they want is to be worn and look pretty.
I mean, those dresses are perfectly fine. Sometimes, however, you want a dress like this:
A woman in a black form-fitting knit dress from side and back. Looking good!
Technically, this person’s belly is also completely covered. As are her rear end, hips and chest. But according to the body-hiding dress marketing industrial complex, she is exposed, showing her body parts. And tacitly, they’re saying we ought not to do this unless… unless what? We’re young? Thin? Tall? Equipped with flat tummies? And all the time? I’m skeptical about the coherence of the message.
I mean, we could just opt out of the whole debate by wearing this:
Suffragettes had many revolutionary ideas, including the sandwich board.A modern woman wearing a modern, customizable sandwich board.
The sandwich board is the OG belly-hider and also efficient advertising medium. Underused and under-appreciated, in my view.
As for me, I want options. Sometimes I want a form-fitting dress. Sometimes I want a swishy, loose-fitting dress. I say let a thousand dresses bloom.
But they all need pockets, okay?
I know I didn’t cover the issue of pom-poms on dresses. Please feel free to weigh in with your comments. Thanks Salome Jangulashvilli from Unsplash for the photo.
Image description: Outside shot of a woman (Christine) with dark medium long hair and wearing a short-sleeved shirt, holding a young boy while he climbs on a rope climber in a playground, with dappled light, a fence, and a tree in the background. She is looking up at the boy and the boy is looking up at the next rung of the rope. Photo credit: Viceth Vong.
“Why aren’t you doing another triathlon this year?” an acquaintance asked.
I gulped. “I’m having some, uh, health issues,” I said. I was keeping things vague out of necessity—I had no damn idea what was happening, only that I had a constant (and I mean 100% of the time) headache that reached an unbearable level by the time I left work for the day. I went to sleep pretty much as soon as I got home—not only because being in pain is exhausting, but because sleep was the only time I didn’t feel awful. My life goals had gone from: publish a book, rock my career in publishing, and finish a tri even though I can barely swim, to: get through the day.
In the year after the pain started, I had test after test. They all came back negative, which was a good thing on the one hand (who wants to have a brain tumor or Lyme disease), and utterly frustrating on the other. After each of my appointments at Boston’s various prestige medical clinics, I wanted to scream, Why can’t you just tell me what was wrong with me?
Eventually, through a process of elimination, they diagnosed me with occipital neuralgia (nerve pain in the upper neck) and idiopathic chronic migraines (idiopathic just means that they have no flipping idea why it’s happening.) I tried treatment after treatment (Botox injections, handfuls of pills, various psychologic therapies) but the headaches wouldn’t budge. I was in bed for the vast majority of most days. The body I toned through hours of training atrophied.
Eventually I went to the Cleveland Clinic for a three-week “headache camp,” as a friend called it. There they tweaked my medications but more importantly, they taught me more than I could’ve imagined about headaches and how to maneuver your lifestyle to live with—and hopefully eventually prevent—them.
One of their prescriptions was to get back to exercising. I had all but stopped as the pain consumed me. There were a few scientifically backed reasons for this recommendation: exercise has been shown to reduce the severity of pain in people with many chronic pain conditions; it also greatly helps with the anxiety and depression that often hits people with chronic illnesses of all stripes (and that certainly hit me).
For me, it also allowed me to get back in touch with that former triathaloning self. I started with walking—an exercise I still love. I added yoga and light weight training. Slowly but surely, I started to feel better physically and emotionally. Now, I walk for an hour a few times a week, do pilates at least once a week, and I’m currently attempting to reintroduce weight training after that fell out of my routine. On days I exercise, I feel less achey—and also like my body is my friend again, not something that revolted against me. I feel, too, that I am strong—I hadn’t realized how upsetting it was to my sense of self to think of myself as weak. Now, I am not just someone with a disabling condition, I am someone who can keep up with her son on the playground, who can squat down and lift his four-year-old body, who doesn’t have to fear the idea of trudging around a theme park all day.
I have greater exercise ambitions, too: I plan to conquer a ten-mile hike in the next few months, and an even longer one by the end of the year, with the eventual goal of walking 100 miles or so on Europe’s El Camino Santiago. I have no thoughts of trying for another triathlon, but thanks in part to regular, light exercise, I’m doing much more than just getting through the day now.
If you have a story about exercising during or after illness, we’d love to hear it!
Christine Junge is a writer living in San Jose, CA. She’s currently working on a novel, and blogs about parenting with a chronic illness/disability at ThanksForNothingBody.substack.com
Close-up of a hand grasping a freshly glazed donut oozing with icing, ready to satisfy a sweet tooth craving
A year ago today, I posted a blog here about the jarring effect of seeing a very thin Brie Larson, playing the lead role in Lessons in Chemistry, preparing food that she never seemed to eat. I was not alone in trying to puzzle through the strange effect that her appearance had in relation to the show’s rich stylization of food. FIFI stats tell me that at least 5489 readers clicked the link to open that post in 2024.
The nerve that the blog touched, perhaps, is the nerve hit, repeatedly, by the horrible lessons served every day to North American women for dinner and dessert. “You should be perfectly thin. If you are perfectly thin, we will adore and praise you.” But also, “You must not be imperfectly thin. If you are imperfectly thin, scaring us with intimations of death and disease, we will shame and shun you.” Putting food near the perfectly thin celebrity reminds us of what she eats, or maybe doesn’t eat, to look the way she does. We see the food, we see the body, and the red flags appear. The imperfectly thin body, we fear, serves as the star’s understudy. It’s like the optical illusion that has us looking at a duck—no, wait, a rabbit! The mind is not quite sure what it’s perceiving. Should we clap or hold the applause?
The trouble with making all of this explicit is that drawing attention to the problem may look like blaming the victim. I see the jutting collarbones and hear the rumours and turn away out of respect for the privacy of the woman whose life is so mercilessly mined for entertainment and exploitation. She may be naturally tiny or she may be suffering. It’s none of my business. Except it is, insofar as her body elicits a visceral response, reminding me of my own vexed relation to the story it tells, or doesn’t tell.
I started thinking about Brie Larson again because I’ve been thinking, lately, about elite women runners and the price they may pay to achieve their goals. Last year, I wished them all happy holiday eating in my post. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult, for me, to ignore the problem of disordered eating and running excellence. In some ways, it’s even harder to have this conversation than it is to talk about Hollywood celebrities. There might be a world in which actors could all gain weight and continue to play characters in movies, but could women marathoners carry any weight and still be competitive? And, if we want to respect both their professionalism and their boundaries, should we not simply agree that they are born lean, mean, running machines and move on? Only, reports concerning college women athletes suggest that it’s probably not just all good nutrition and good genes, all of the time. The idea that a decade after graduation, North American runners have grown out of whatever food-related issues they might have had as young women—well, I wonder. (A brave post by Kelowna runner Christy Lovig addresses this subject head on.)
Recently, I wrote here about a marathon that went sideways. One of the stranger thoughts I had, in the final excruciating hour of that race, was that donuts were to blame for my lack-lustre performance. In the cacophony of nasty voices that I had to listen to, one was louder than the rest: “Too many donuts.” To be clear, this was not a reflection on whether my nutrition plan might have failed me—that more protein and fewer simple carbs might have made for more muscle and less fat. No, this was a moral judgement: “You are a bad person because you eat donuts and now you are being punished for it.”
I feel lucky in not having had to struggle with disordered eating since brushing up against it as a teen. But like most women I know, I carry an internal critic quick to judge and shame my appearance and the appetite that has me relishing donuts whenever I can get my hands on a good one. Most of the time, I ignore her. But when I’m sad or vulnerable, there she is, observing that I want too much, whatever that “too much” might be—wanting to run a marathon or to eat a second piece of pie. I had better prove it’s all worth it–by running a BQ every time I take on the 26.2 distance, for instance–or make myself small.
So, this holiday season, I wish everyone enjoyment of their favourite festive food. But I also wish for honest conversation, at the family table, about the damaging lessons we learned as girls about appetite; about the casual comments made by friends and family that reinforce these lessons, decades later; about the runners, including me, who work to maintain the illusions of control and self-discipline that our culture values so highly, at such great cost.
Alison Conway lives and works in Kelowna, British Columbia, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan people.
How many of you out there used to do cartwheels when you were kids? I certainly did (with varying degrees of success but unvarying degrees of fun). Maybe some of you are still occasionally flying across space, arms and legs akimbo, in which case, yay for you!
As we have discussed at great length on this blog, physical activities often feel more comfortable with the right gear and clothing. For playing around outside, jumping and leaping, cartwheeling and handstanding, reason and experience dictate shorts, sweats, or leggings along with tops, preferably not too baggy (so as not to interfere with movement or vision). Makes sense, right?
Not according to a public charter school in North Carolina whose dress code required female students to wear skirts to school and prohibited them from wearing pants or shorts.
Yes, the school authorities really did say their dress code was designed to promote chivalry and traditional values. Am linking to definition, as most of our readers are not medieval knights.
Oh, I forgot to add that the actual quote by the charter school founder (reported by one of the plaintiff’s mothers) was “Well, to promote chivalry, because every girl is a fragile vessel.”
Hmmm. Just to confirm that I’m not the only person stupefied by this anwer, I googled “fragile vessel” to see what he could’ve been referring to.
A small boat on dry land.Structure in NYC called The Vessel.Pottery vase, cracked and worn.
Google clearly has no more idea than I do. None of the images offered up were of girls, either in pants or skirts.
Seriously, though: the messages that dress codes send can have a profound effect on our identity and our behavior, says ACLU Women’s Rights Project Director Ria Tabacco Mar. In an interview with my favorite comedian/activist/dad of three girls, W. Kamau Bell, she says:
Dress codes, unfortunately, can often be the site where we are teaching students what it means to be appropriate, what it means to be a girl, what it means to be a boy, that those things, those parts of ourselves are relevant to how we learn.
And what do our children learn when they are subjected to extreme sexist and racist dress codes? Here’s Tabacco Mar’s answer:
Our children are listening. This is what kills me. We’re talking about young children. With our skirts case, when we started, our youngest client was going into kindergarten. She was five years old. She’s in high school now. She wears pants. Spoiler, they all wear pants. We won. That’s the good news. But even at five, she knew. She picked up on the message. So nobody was using the word “chivalry” to a five-year-old. Probably she didn’t know what that word meant. But she knew that the message was that boys and girls are different. The boys are better. The boys can move freely in the classroom. The boys can sit crisscross applesauce and girls have to sit with their legs to the side. The boys can do cartwheels at recess and girls have to stand on the sideline chatting.
…People often said, “What’s the big deal about skirts? Did you really have to sue them over it?” Well, if the skirts are not a big deal, then why didn’t they change the dress code when we asked them to? Because it is a big deal. It’s communicating really important messages about what it means to be a student — what it means to be a boy, what it means to be a girl — and it’s teaching us that those things are relevant in ways that they, frankly, should not be.
Bell’s interview with Tabacco Mar includes discussion of other dress code cases, many of which send racist, sexist, anti-trans, homophobic and xenophobic messages. You can read or listen to it here. There’s a lot to digest, and the issues they discuss reveal a bigger picture of injustice.
To focus back on a small part of that picture: the main message I want to send kids is that it can be GREAT to be one. One of the big advantages of being a kid is the license to explore the world using the abilities and senses their bodies have. Not all of us do cartwheels. But denying kids the chance to flip around because they’re stuck wearing a dress is, well, just silly.
Speaking of silly (this time in a good way): if you would like a tutorial on assisted cartwheels, and in fact a double cartwheel, look no further than below.
Readers, I wish you comfortable clothing and some leisure time to explore the world, your bodies, and fun with both. Let us know if you have cartwheel or other fun movement stories to share.
Image description: abstract photo of a bridge railing in a diamond patter, captured using ICM (intentional camera movement) to create blur. Photo by Tracy Isaacs
CONTENT WARNING: this post talks about Weight Watchers and medications used for weight loss.
We have been dissing Weight Watchers here for a long time, from Sam’s “I hate you, Weight Watchers” post more than a decade ago to my “Oprah: Eating Bread, Making Bread,” when Oprah took shares in the company and joined the board in 2016. It’s a business. Businesses are interested in making money. Oprah is a brand unto herself. She too is interested in making money.
The culture of weight loss and diet has a well-entrenched stronghold still today, but the oppositional voices are getting louder. Many of us here at the blog are fans of the Maintenance Phase podcast and host Aubrey Gordon’s book about weight loss myths. We’ve read Kate Manne’s Unshrinking and written about it. And we’ve consistently talked about body image, body acceptance, anti-diet perspectives, the disentangling of size and health, rejection of body-shaming — too many posts to count.
And so it was with interest and not a little bit of suspicion and skepticism that I tuned in to the Oprah/Weight Watchers YouTube livestream “event” the other day to find out what new message WW could possibly be peddling under the title: “Making the Shift: A New Way to Think about Weight.” Could they finally, finally be changing to a new narrative that, despite their brand, is NOT about weight loss?
We have been here before, where they have gone from “Weight Watchers” to “WW,” and where they have gone from “dieting” to “lifestyle” and “healthy habits.” None of these shifts has been enough to change their game entirely. I mean, in the end their users are joining to lose weight. What, I wondered, are they up to now?
The event started off inspiring confidence that maybe, just maybe, real change is afoot. Oprah, in her “girlfriend” way, started with a story of total humiliation during her first appearance on the Tonight Show in 1985, when Joan Rivers asked her how she gained “the weight” and had her promising to lose 15 pounds by the end of the show (after which she gained 25). She lamented her contribution to narratives of “weight loss success” over the years, including pushing liquid diets as a path to weight loss. She claimed that one of her career lowpoints, about which she is filled with regret, is that time she rolled a cart of fat equalling in weight the fat she’d lost, onto her stage.
But in her preamble, right after she told her stories, she identified obesity as a “disease” for which no one should carry shame. We should all, she said, love our bodies. She listed of a range of possible ways to go, none of which anyone is obligated to pursue. You do not deserve to be shamed, she said, “whether you choose to start moving more, whether you want to eat differently, whether you want to change your lifestyle, whether you want to take the medications, or whether you choose to do absolutely nothing.” To be satisfied the way you are, where you are, is totally “up to you.” Then the CEO of Weight Watchers, Sima Sistani, came on and apologized for her company’s contribution to diet culture and the harm it has caused to the people who did not reach their goals on their program.
This “event” is part of a series of media moments paving the way for Weight Watchers to start promoting the use of weight loss medications. This is not brand new news, but it was news to me. And I have to say, if you had asked me to predict that “we should all love ourselves without shame” would end up at “and if that includes taking medications to lose weight so you can conform to the cultural standard for acceptable bodies,” I would not have landed there.
With the diet/points program failing to help people achieve long-term weight loss (because diets don’t work), it had two choices: become irrelevant or start encouraging people to take medication. I’ve had it pointed out to me that in some ways this strategy is more on point with the truth of what is required for successful weight loss. And that may be the case.
What I find most egregious about the live-stream is the mixed messaging. I have never thought that the only reason diet culture is harmful is that it’s almost impossible to lose weight and keep it off. That is a harm, to be sure, if people are going to continue to chase an unattainable goal and support the industry that promotes it. But I continue to think that more serious harm is that it reinforces the idea that the only acceptable body type is slimmer. Whether through diet or exercise or medication, weight loss is still the goal. Are we resigned to maintaining this picture and keeping weight loss as a life goal?
This tweak to the weight loss narrative adds a further layer of personal responsibility onto a problem of cultural harm. Keep in mind too that the drugs work by making it easier to consume fewer calories. So in the end, they reinforce the connection between calorie intake and weight gain or loss, thus offering credence to the view that dieting would work but for the dieter eating more than they “should.”
If we could rewrite that conversation with Oprah and Joan Rivers, the gist of it would still be that Oprah should lose the weight, and if that means taking the meds, then take the meds. But is it not more concerning still, is it not, that Joan Rivers felt she had the right to call out Oprah’s size (at all, nevermind so publicly on national television)? Of course Oprah has now very publicly affirmed her use of the new weight loss drugs, like Ozempic, for the purposes of weight loss. And these have now been built into Weight Watchers’ business plan.
It’s tricky of course. No one wants to say we don’t have choices, and that if people opt for a certain choice that’s their business. But there is a tension in broadening the range of pathways to body-acceptance to include new forms of weight loss. It falls into the same category of tension, I think, as anti-aging cosmetic procedures like fillers and surgeries. The more people opt for these “treatments,” the more the prizing of youthful appearance and the rejection of aging faces and bodies remains the normative standard. Does that mean these things shouldn’t be available as options? No. But does it mean that there would be less harm and more opportunity for a healthier and more realistic range, if fewer people chose them. And it would be better if we didn’t feel that normative pressure so strongly. But it’s tough to be an outlier and it takes energy, effort, and awareness to reject the messaging.
To me Oprah + Weight Watchers + weight loss meds is a scary trifecta. The mixed messages have hit a new low. Their contribution to the fear of being fat has not stopped. It has simply evolved with the times to generate a new and profitable income-stream.
I’ve complained here before about not being able to have an avatar that looks like me, size-wise, in Zwift. In Zwift, your avatar is highly customizable but features such as size used to depend on your IRL weight. How’s that work? See here.
But Zwift announced a big change on February 13th. You can now choose your own size. If you don’t make a choice it will still work as above, based on the rider’s actual BMI.
Yet, I still can’t choose my size since in Zwift it’s still true that men can be small, medium, or large and women can only be small or medium.
That’s me in the bright pink cycling cap, above.
Her size has bothered me for awhile.
See Meet virtual Sam: Avatars, gender, and identity: “My avatar has grey blonde hair that’s about the length of my actual hair. She’s got an athletic build, solid, and I like that. This is the first time I think I’ve created an avatar who sort of looks like me…I have one complaint about my Zwift avatar. She’s medium sized person and I’m a large sized person. That’s odd because avatar size is based on your actual kg. It turns out that in Zwift women only come in two sizes regardless of how much we weigh. We’re either small or medium. Men come in three sizes, small medium or large. Here’s an explanation of avatar sizes. So when Sarah and I ride together in Zwift we’re the same medium size. That’s weird because IRL she’s medium and I’m big.”
So when I first saw the story. “Zwift has big news: Choose any avatar,” I got excited. But no. Not yet.
“We are evaluating the timing for adding a larger feminine body shape in the future to be more inclusive and fix this imbalance.”
Is it just about the timing, really? I wondered if Zwift wasn’t sure what a large athletic woman’s body looks like. The larger men’s bodies in Zwift all look like beefy football players. That’s true even if the 250 lb male cyclist doesn’t look like a football player. I can’t imagine anyone objects.
I was imagining the larger women’s bodies also looking athletic.
Like this,
Or this,
But maybe they’re worrying that some women will complain about the new, brawnier avatars.
Me, I’m just looking forward to looking like a bigger rider, so when I fly by people downhill in Zwift, as I do in real life, people will know it’s because I’m larger.
Now they also say that “Every person on our platform should be able to represent themselves as they feel they are. This is one step towards making Zwift a more inclusive space as we continue to build a platform where everyone feels represented.” So maybe there’s hope.
Here’s some more images of me, in Zwift, again with the pink hat.
Thanks Microsoft Copilot for the blog title! (I hate writing titles. Copilot is great at suggesting a half dozen, or more, to choose between. )
1.Who here used to sell Girl Scout cookies? Anyone? Anyone? I did.
2.Who here has looked forward to Girl Scout cookie season (especially the thin mints)? No need to be shy– feel free to step on up. I’m already there.
3.Who here wants to transmit their admittedly-hard-to-get-rid-of feelings of body policing and food restriction on a bunch of little girls, otherwise excited to do some business with the public for the very first time? No one? Good. Not me, either!
If you answered yes to 2. and no to 3, you’re in good company. And, the Girls Scouts are happy to help you out with some tips. Here they are (copied from their Insta page)
Honestly, this advice is good for virtually any situation, and virtually any person.
Who here loves the fact that little girls selling cookies can help the rest of us remember that sometimes (actually, all the time), a cookie is just a cookie? ME!
Oh yeah, we all want in on this.
But you’re not limited in what else a cookie can be: it can be a thin mint, lemon, toffee, or whatever you can dream up and whip up (and buy up from your local troop). Here’s their list for this year:
The 2024 Girl Scout Cookie Lineup
If you want to read about one mother’s experiences with body- and diet-conscious messaging during her daughter’s first cookie sales, read here. If you want to find out where and how to buy Girl Scout Cookies during the season, check it out here.
Or, you could decide to bake or buy or borrow some other cookies to enjoy at your leisure. It’s up to you. Enjoy…
For the past two weeks, I’ve been teaching fallacies in my critical thinking class. You know, those bad argument forms with latin names like post hoc ergo propter hoc and tu quoque. Philosophers ’round the world teach them so students can see more clearly how much bad reasoning is swirling around them, why it’s bad, and how not to fall prey to it. Not bad work if you can get it.
On Tuesday, while discussing the appeal to authority fallacy, I pulled up a slide with examples of cases where someone endorses a claim who is portrayed as an authority, but who, in reality, isn’t one. Enter Oprah.
Oprah giving a speech about WW, the rebranded name of Weight Watchers, in which she was financially invested.
As I tell my students, Oprah isn’t a nutrition authority– she’s not a nutritionist or dietician. That’s sufficient to illustrate the fallacy. But what I don’t say (because I’m teaching logic, not feminism or socio-cultural analysis) is that Oprah kind of IS an authority on weight loss (and weight gain), inasmuch as she’s done it dozens of times, all in public view. We’ve written about her a few times on the blog. You might check them out.
And there’s my post from 2017 featuring fallacies, Oprah and the risks of celebrity meal plans and cookbooks. Take a look below and let us know what you think. Is WW on your radar screen? Is Oprah? What are you seeing and thinking? Let us know.
Every chance I get, I share the dance song “I like to move it” video from the animated movie Madagascar. There are several reasons for this:
it’s got a killer dance beat
it’s funny
the animals all dance in interesting and animated-body-appropriate ways, but also in very different ways, depending on their bodies.
Watching it recently (yes, I shared it in this post) I was struck by how watching the hippo dance (apologies, I forget her name) puts me at a crossroads. I can laugh… or I can enjoy and appreciate the exaggerated ways her animated self expresses joy in movement.
Gloria– that’s her name– the hippo in the movie Madagascar, doing her booty dance to the end credits.
And then there’s Melman the giraffe, who also dances, sometimes with Gloria:
Hippo Gloria and giraffe Melman dancing cheek to cheek.
Giraffes probably have the textbook exaggerated and ungainly body– both in life and in cartoons. But they run and bend and stretch and (at least in movies) dance. Their repertoire of movements are also fascinating.
Which brings me to physical therapy. On Wednesday I was doing my hip exercises for sciatica, looking around the room to see what everyone else was up to. What did I see?
an older person with lots of flexibility stretching her hamstring;
a teenager recovering from an ankle sprain, bouncing a ball while standing on one foot on a foam cushion;
a 40-something, new to PT, doing gentle shoulder range-of-motion in work clothes;
an older person, one month after knee replacement, getting flexibility checked;
and me, working hard, sweating, enjoying the effort of strengthening my 60-something body.
All of us were there with different bodies with their own structure, vulnerabilities and history. We were all there to improve our movement while healing. We didn’t all like to move-it-move-it, but we did (move it, that is). We were all using the bodies we came in with and getting help with strength and flexibility and stamina.
I’m almost through my round of PT, and I’m happy with the results. I’m just as happy to get this infusion of body acceptance. And of course, to be reminded of those fabulous dancing animals… 🙂
Readers, have you danced this week? If so, let me know. If not, how about putting on a track and moving your body, however it does that?
