So let me be very specific here, what I loathe isn’t the existence of padded sports bras, it’s their ubiquity. It’s their domination of the sports bra market. Try finding a non padded sports bra in my size. Oh, and it shouldn’t have an underwire either. Good luck with that and call me when you’ve succeeded.
In the new data from the survey, of the 1,285 women who responded, three-quarters reported problems with how their sports bras fit. Chafing and shoulder straps digging in were the most common complaints, with larger-breasted women more likely to report problems.
In the previous study, which we reported on last April, lead researcher Nicola Brown, Ph.D., and colleagues found that the incidence of breast pain among the women marathoners was high even though 91% of them regularly ran in a sports bra. Brown told Runner’s World Newswire that sport bras don’t offer enough options in shape and construction to match the variety of everyday bras.
“Bra manufacturers need to do more research and work closely with scientists and women to design bras which allow women of all shapes and sizes to lead active and healthy lifestyles,” Brown said.
Compression bras are the basic sports bras we’re used to, the ones that give us that “uniboob” shape. But those bras don’t accomplish the main goal of a sports bra: limiting total breast movement. Compression bras only limit the in-and-out movement of breasts away from and towards the chest. But as researchers have found, breasts actually “arc through a complicated figure-8 pattern,” going down and to one side, then up and over to the other side. This movement strains the Cooper’s ligaments, the connective tissue that keeps breasts perky.
5. Oh, and good luck finding one if you’re wearing plus sizes or just have large breasts. Apparently women who wear sports bras just come in 3 sizes: small, medium, and large.
Given the very long comment thread on our post about sports bras–the post about padded ones linked above–women have a lot more complaints about bras.
I sense a business opportunity here.
I’ll take mine in a bright colour, with support, but without padding. My current fave is this one from Oiselle. But with Canadian import duties it’s not cheap.
Sam wrote about “Nipple Phobia and Padded Sports Bras” way back in the early days of the blog. There she lamented the ubiquity of the padded sports bra (indeed, the padded bra more generally). Where we used to be able to find lots of unpadded bras and sports bras, nowadays it’s a real search.
Part of the reason for this, hypothesized Sam, is that we are caught in the grips of nipple phobia. We don’t want to see them or show them. As Sam said, they’ve become what the visible panty-line used to be — an unsightly reminder of the natural bodies that actually live under our clothing.
Enter the Tata top. This bikini top got a lot of press last week on-line. From a distance, if you’re a white woman with an average sized chest wearing the light-tone Tata, it looks from afar as if you’re going topless.
Tata bikini top for light skin and pink nipples.
I say if you’re a white woman because the medium tone and dark tone Tatas are not yet available. They are expected to ship in mid-August. I say if you’re “average sized” because at present the tops are only available in small (A-B) and medium sizes (B-C). Anything larger than a C-cup is also on backorder, with this apology to larger women from the creators: “LARGE CHESTED LADIES…WE UNDERESTIMATED YOU BUT IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!”
The Tata top is supposed to help fight breast stigma, topless inequality, and nipple phobia. According to this Daily Beast article, it’s meant to help fight gender inequality. That makes it sound like a feminist statement if there ever was one. The article continues:
The underlying goal of the bikini, however, is meant to desexualize the idea of female nipples and eliminate gendered double standards. Why should it be laughable, or even uncomfortable, for a woman to bare her breasts in public?
“By censoring an image of a woman’s chest and not a man’s it doesn’t end with removing that image from your platform,” Graves and Lytle conclude. “Whether you like it or not you are confirming that YES, a woman’s nipples are indecent and are something that need to be kept covered. You are endorsing that train of thought. You take yourself out of the business of providing a forum for free thinking and place yourself in the position of deciding what is immoral and what isn’t.”
So why, then, is there such an outcry among some feminists about this top? Well, there are a number of reasons. The most common is that the first iteration — marketed to and for women with bodies that are white and slight — sends an unmistakable message about normative bodies.
The Jezebel article ends with this remark: “Like many aspects of modern-day feminism, right now, this one’s only available to women with light skin and disposable income. But the inventors of the Ta Ta Top promise that more colors are coming soon.”
The medium tone Tata top, available in mid-August.
The various attempts on the website to apologize, first to the “large-chested ladies” whom they “underestimated,” and then to women with “medium” or “dark” skintones don’t really succeed in overcoming the oversight. To the women with different skintones, they offered not so much an apology as a promise that the medium and dark tops will arrive and an excuse as to why they aren’t yet available:
Will you have other skin tones?
Absolutely but first we need to prove a market! Investing money and ending up with one TaTa Top is funny. Investing money in three tones and ending up with 2,000 TaTa’s is slightly less so. The more we sell the more tones and more styles we will able to offer. Take our TaTa Top poll to help us decide which direction to take next.
The “What’s Next?” poll on the Tata website focuses on extra small and extra large sizing and the turns to fashion, with four different piercing choices.
I also heard some people raising the usual questions about initiatives that raise their profile by aligning themselves with charities to support the already over-supported cause of breast cancer research. It might sound callous to roll one’s eyes whenever yet another thing promotes itself by raising money for breast cancer research, but the pink ribbon thing has many detractors, who complain about “pinkwashing”:
The term “pinkwashing” was coined by Breast Cancer Action in reference to companies that either promote breast cancer awareness without donating at all, are deceptive or not transparent about where any funds raised go, or put a pink ribbon on a product with known or suspected links to cancer.
By far the most interesting comment came to my from fellow feminist philosopher Kristin Rodier, who took issue with the claim that linked body exposure to freedom, and who very quickly asked about the range of sizes available. In order to further elaborate the point about exposure as freedom, she sent me Kelly Oliver’s paper, “Sexual Freedom as Global Freedom.”
The paper focuses on the Western “rhetoric of liberating ‘women of cover.” Oliver argues that we in the west have reduced women’s freedom “to freedom to to dress (especially in revealing clothes for the eyes of others), governed by market forces of fashion and consumerism.” She further claims that “this view of women’s freedom is used to justify military action elsewhere, and to reassure Western women of their own freedom at home. The rhetoric of liberating women elsewhere conceals women’s oppression here at home while at the same time reassuring us that we are liberated.”
How does the Tata top fit into this picture? By purporting to address the issue of women’s oppression through a top that mimics maximum exposure of women’s upper bodies. We may not (yet) have a achieved full gender equality because men can go topless while (for the most part) women cannot, but the Tata top is here to save the day.
I think the original limited offerings of this item only to light skinned women with pink nipples and A-C sized breasts demonstrates well whose nipple freedom “we” as a society will tolerate. Not everyone’s exposed skin is equally welcome, and when non-normative bodies are exposed, there is a different social meaning, a different kind of statement being made. It’s not just “fun.”
I get the impression from the website and different articles I’ve read that the company is not quite sure how to market the top. The equality card is one angle. But they also claim to be wanting to normalize the breast and nipple so that they’re de-sexualized. Somewhere on the site it talks about normalizing the sight of women breast-feeding in public, which certainly is a worthwhile cause.
But the website isn’t wholly on board with the desexualization of the breast, and in fact when I first went to the website last week it included a “warning” that said: ““Disclaimer: Wearers are cautioned to be prepared for the onslaught of pick up lines it is sure to elicit.” That message, which seems to celebrate the top as an expression of sexuality, has since been removed (or at least I couldn’t find it when I went back).
I also think that the top is likely to have more applications as a novelty item than as an item that plays a huge role in achieving gender equality. I think the size and skintone gaffes, as well as the more pointed perspective expressed in Oliver’s paper about how Westernized this idea of freedom through revealing clothing, raise serious questions about the top’s capacity to promote an inclusive feminist agenda.
Should we care about looking cute while working out? This week’s posts on monitoring fitness fashion, and past posts debating running skirts, show that this question evokes strong responses. Style, on and off the court, has become part of the branding process for professional athletes like Williams’ sisters. But for everyday women fitness style may have different meanings. I’m ruminating on these questions as, for the first time in many years, I’ve decided to take a group fitness class. Looking at my five-year-old faded, black Lululemon work-out top, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it is undeniably in great shape after regular wear (good buy!) and on the other hand it is greying and looks/feels kind of depressing. The prospect of shopping for something new isn’t terribly appealing, but I like the idea of having something bright and kind of…fun, so I’ll probably go shopping.
My thinking on fitness and fashion changed after I interviewed 47 women about their bodies for an academic project on being fat. Prior to this time I thought of fitness clothing as frivolous, and felt special disdain for spandex, sports-bras-as-tops, and short-shorts, because they seemed to trivialize women’s athletic endeavors. But the women I interviewed, who, in the early 1980s, established fitness classes “for fat women only,” felt frustrated by fitness clothing for different reasons. In the 1980s it wasn’t easy to find fitness clothing over size 14, let alone cute fitness clothing in those sizes. Even today, MEC, Lululemon and Lolë, for example, top out at size 12 and “XL.” Athleta, owned by the Gap, goes to a size 2X, and Old Navy’s to a 4X. Size diversity, it seems, continues to elude most of the mainstream fashion industry.
In any case, Large as Life (LAL), a fat activist group based in Vancouver, started the first fitness class for fat women in Canada when they hired a “fitness instructor from the YMCA, a little skinny thing,” in fall 1981. Initially, only a handful of women joined the class. After a few weeks, LAL hit upon the idea of training fat women to teach the courses. Members of the group took a certification course through the YWCA. Once large instructors began to teach, the program grew considerably. New classes were formed as demands in particular areas of the city warranted. By the end of 1984 LAL was operating fitness classes from ten different community centres across the Lower Mainland. Different iterations of the class, run by the group, and later as a business by a former LAL member, lasted into the 1990s.
When the classes began, finding fitness clothing in plus sizes was a major quandary. Some of the women I talked to crafted their own clothing. One woman I talked to modified yoga pants by sewing an elastic at the ankles. Another hired a seamstress to make her custom leotards. Others worked out in sweats and men’s t-shirts women were happy to work out in sweats and homemade clothing because they were not interested in leotards. Fitness clothing had a negative association for some participants in LAL’s classes, including one woman who described aerobics leotards as “little chu-chu spandex things” and another who explained, succinctly, “I didn’t wear spandex.”
Those who were interested compared notes on the availability of fitness clothing in fitness stores, as well as which stores across the border might sell Danksin’s “outsize” line of leotards. Noting the dearth of options in the Vancouver area a LAL member, Suzanne Bell, decided to start her own plus-size fitness clothing line. Bell took great pleasure in displaying, and flaunting, her big, beautiful body. As she told Radiance magazine in 1992, “…people notice me when I walk into a room. They can feel it: I really like me.” Bell wanted other women to feel how she felt, and to profit from it. Photographs of the era show women wearing coordinated leotards and tights. There is a wide range of styles in colourful fabrics. Bell’s customer’s recalled her fondly and explained that it helped them to “get into” exercise in a bigger way. One woman recalled a particularly treasured pink leotard set: “I had gotten to a stage where I was exploring my body and being bolder.” Fitness and fashion facilitated pleasure for the women I talked to. Having felt their femininity devalued and excluded from the fashion industry, it was exciting to find clothing that fit and allowed one to express their personal style.
For me, these conversations with self-identified fat women led to a reconsideration of the meaning of consumption. Where in the past I read consumption as a sign of a frivolous approach to fitness, aerobics for fat women only pointed to the ways that it could also be empowering. Women in sport are often sexualized, and even everyday women (i.e. readers of this blog) may feel unfairly monitored at the gym and on the streets. Buying cute fitness clothes isn’t an end in itself, but the fact that someone chooses to wear an outrageous outfit shouldn’t be taken as a sign of her lack of commitment to fitness. If we buy into the narrative that clothing tells us something fundamental (i.e. bad) about the gender identity or sexuality of the wearer, than we’re buying into the idea that external appearance matters. Consumption can offer a meaningful outlet for self-expression, a sense of security and a way to express community membership (I’m looking at you armies of cyclists-in-tunics). The meaning of fitness clothing for individual participants is not determined by popular culture images of femininity. I think fitness clothing can be feminist not because of what it looks like but because of the way we use these products.
Jenny Ellison is a Research Associate at Trent University. Her academic research analyzes visual and discursive constructions of the body, and the ways that diverse groups of women have responded to these messages. More posts on fatness, feminism, fitness and the 1980s can be found at her website. Or, follow her on Twitter @thejennye.
Skin cancer is on the rise in Canada, dramatically so. And we’re emerging from a particularly brutal winter so it can be hard to believe that the sun is our enemy. I think Canadians tend to not pay attention to skin cancer and sun because much of our year is so dark and cold. When I was cycling in Australia I was struck by the absence of sleeveless cycling jerseys. No one wore them. Not just because of silly cycling fashion rules either. They often wore full sleeve jerseys in the summer and/or white arm covers that protect you from the sun.
Here’s a blog post on arm coolers, as they’re called. They are designed for use in extreme heat and sun and have a high SPF and are supposed to help keep your arms cool. The post just mentioned reviews several brands but I haven’t seen them at all out on the road in Canada.
In Australia it wasn’t a joking matter. In pretty much every group of cyclists I met, there was someone being treated for skin cancer. (On the beach in Australia I was struck by two camps, the little children dressed in full length top and bottom bathing suits that looked kind of “hazmat” like, with hats, always with hats, and the older people, both men and women, in tiny teeny speedo style suits.)
Now here in cold, dark Canada I have a few friends with cancer and the norms are starting to change.
Skin cancer, one of the most preventable forms of the disease, is also one of the fastest-rising in this country, according to a new report from the Canadian Cancer Society that notes the death rate for all cancers combined continues to fall for most age groups.
“Melanoma is certainly increasing more than nearly all other cancers,” said Frances Wright, the head of breast and melanoma surgery at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. “They [rates] are increasing rapidly and it’s probably related to behaviour, related to lack of sun protection.”
When it comes to malignant melanoma – the type of skin cancer that is likelier to spread and kill – the rate of new cases has climbed significantly over the past 25 years. So has the melanoma death rate. Only lung cancer deaths in women and liver cancer deaths in men have increased at a faster pace, according to Canadian Cancer Statistics 2014, the annual compendium of cancer figures and projections published by the Canadian Cancer Society, Statistics Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada.
The report, released Wednesday, estimates 6,500 new cases of malignant melanoma will be diagnosed this year, with 1,050 expected to die from the disease.
I’ve been aware of the risk of skin cancer for a long time. Here at the B-F household we had our wake up call early. My partner Jeff had some pre-cancerous lesions on his hands in his twenties from years of sailboat racing. He was told to wear a hat and sunscreen at all times and signed me up for that plan along the way. Later we had some incredibly fair skinned children, of the sort who burned after minutes in the sun. We bought them full body bathing suits and big hats too.
An aside: This why whenever Tracy mentions nude vacations as an antidote to body image woes and as fun in their own right, my first thought goes to buckets of sunscreen. I rarely sit on the beach, even with all my clothes on! And then I think about a forested nude holiday, hiking in the woods maybe, and then I think about mosquitoes and tics. The fact is I’m happy with nudity and I love the outdoors but for me, I don’t see the two mixing. The World Naked Bike Ride isn’t for me.
But still, even after I adapted to the ways of the sun avoiders, I had some false beliefs about tanning.
I once had an argument with my thesis supervisor in the Philosophy department lounge over whether it was okay to go out in the sun for short period of time once you were tanned, and if you didn’t burn. He insisted that it was never okay and that a tan was just evidence of sun damage. One should never feel good about having tanned. He liked to argue, he was very good at arguing, he was married to a medical professional, and he directed me to Cancer Society resources.
Of course he was right.
The Centre for Disease Control says that “tanning does not protect against sunburn. In fact, a tan only provides a sun protection factor (SPF) of about 3 (CDC recommends sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15.), so a tan does not provide enough protection against the sun. The important thing to remember is that a tan is a response to injury: skin cells respond to damage from UV rays by producing more pigment.”
What about vitamin D? I rely on the Canadian Cancer Society for advice. (This is an area where paying attention to the credibility of online sources is particularly important as many are funded by the indoor tanning industry.) The cancer society says our vitamin D needs are easily met with a few minutes of indirect sunlight a day and that tanning is never recommended. Their slogan is “a little sun goes a long way” and they recommend Vitamin D supplements–never artificial tanning–in the winter.
Cyclists joke lots about our tan lines. I confess I use a lot of sunscreen (on my face year round, in fact) but I also use fake tanning lotion to avoid the pale legs thing. I feel bad about that as it perpetuates the summer tan norm but I can’t shake my dislike of my legs without.
In the last three decades, more people have had skin cancer than all other cancers combined, according to data from the Skin Cancer Foundation. And between 2000 and 2009, cases of melanoma (the deadliest form of the disease) rose steadily by almost 2 percent a year. It’s also the most common type of cancer in people ages 25 to 29.
Numerous studies have shown that regular exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun leads to an increased risk of melanoma and that outdoor endurance athletes are particularly susceptible to skin cancers. While there is little research on cyclists specifically, we are clearly vulnerable given the sheer amount of time they spend outside, says Prentice Steffen, MD, physician for Team Garmin-Sharp. One study published in the journal Dermatology found that during eight stages of the Tour de Suisse, riders were exposed to levels of harmful UV radiation that were 30 times more than recommended limits. Several factors compound the risk, say experts, including sweat, which increases the skin’s sensitivity to UV radiation.
Less worrisome but just as sobering, a staggering 90 percent of skin changes—like the fine lines and wrinkles that we attribute to just getting older—are caused by the sun.
I can attest to the age point. In visiting Australia and New Zealand I was constantly mistaken for a much younger person. And judging from the condition of the skin around me and the ages of my friends there, I don’t think they were joking. That too has prompted me to keep slathering on sunscreen and wearing nerdy sun hats. When prudence and vanity point in the same direction, it’s an easy choice. I might even order arm coolers this year.
It struck me as a terrific idea, still does. Long hair that you pull out when it’s useful, store away when it’s not.
Today this, 26 Badass Short Haircuts To Inspire Your Summer Look, came across my Facebook newsfeed and I was tempted to go shorter for the summer. But the thing is, I like my curls, and I only really get to appreciate them during the summer.
Here’s the winter problem: I’m at the gym, I workout and shower, and then there’s a polar vortex going on outside, and if I leave with wet hair, it freezes. I hate icicle head. So I blow dry it and then it’s straight. I don’t have the patience for marathon hair drying sessions so in the winter I keep my hair straight and short.
In the summer I have the luxury of letting it dry naturally curly, though I haven’t done the full on “curly girl” thing. So I tend to let it grow long and shaggy in the summer months, which kind of fits my not teaching, few meetings, some camping, lots of time on the bike summer program. Yes, I get lots of writing done but I can do that wearing summer dresses at work (see Riding bikes in skirts and dresses, totally fine if that’s your thing, here’s how) or shorts and tank tops at home. Not much of a dress code.
There’s also lots of very funky bike helmets out there. These from from the giggle guide are pretty cool.
But I’m still looking at the short hair pictures (though I know there atre advantages to pony tails they’re not my thing) and wondering how short I could go and still have curls….
Oh and I have complicated views about helmets. I’m opposed to laws requiring them for adults and in London I generally wear one. I don’t need a law to force me. But I rent bixi bikes happily in Montreal and go helmet free, ditto Amsterdam etc. I’ll blog about this issue sometime.
What’s your solution for combining an active lifestyle and summer time hair?
Though I’ve been a commuting cyclist for many years, it’s only recently I’ve gotten comfortable with riding to work in skirts and dresses. It’s a sweat thing mostly, not a modesty thing.
It’s hot here and I ride in cycling clothes and change once I get to work.
But the last few summers I’ve had lots of errands, lunch dates etc thing to do basically on my way to and from work. I also took my first stay at home sabbatical which meant more daytime errand running, on my bicycle. I started wearing my regular clothes on my bike and my regular summer clothes are mostly summer dresses and skirts. I love it. I like riding bikes in skirts a lot more than I like running skirts.
How do I do it?
Bike shorts under my skirts and dresses. That was key. No modesty worries then and I can’t imagine riding a bike without bike shorts. It also solved the dreaded summer thigh chafing problem. (See Thigh chafing and the joys of summer.)
I’m fussy about my bikes and seat height and I know it’s a bit “princess and the pea” like but my seat height is all wrong if I’m not wearing padded bike shorts. Fussy, fussy.
I also got a pair of SPD sandals for my birthday. That helped too. (My road bike has Look pedals, but my cyclocross bike has SPD) They are not the femme-est sandals in the land but they work. I keep fancy sandals, in colours other than black, in my office but often I don’t change.
A disclaimer: I’m probably not the best one to write this post because I really couldn’t care less what my bike helmet looks like or what it might do to my low-maintenance hair.
But, I am a big believer in bike helmets (and hats in the winter, for that matter!) because I have only one brain, I depend on it for my livelihood, and I’d rather have a few people think I look dorky (I guess that’s a thing with some people) than risk a head injury.
Sweden has come up with an alternative to the traditional helmet, called the Hovding. It’s an invisible helmet, more like a collar. The company calls it an “airbag for bicyclists.”
Many Swedes ride bikes as primary transportation but only 20% of the adults don helmets. If vanity is the reason for staying away from helmets (which I can understand because, based on my experience, Sweden has a high proportion of beautiful people), then this alternative might solve it. No more helmet head!
It’s an air bag — one that’s tucked away in a collar that cyclists fastened around their neck. When the collar’s internal sensors detect a specific combination of jerks and jags signifying “ACCIDENT HAPPENING,” the air bag deploys, sending out a head-hugging, air-cushion hood in a tenth of a second.
The video that accompanies the story is really worth watching to see what happens when the airbag deploys. At that point, vanity will go out the window for sure. But the helmet doesn’t just appeal to vanity:
In tests by a Swedish insurance company, Hovding was shown to be at least three times better at absorbing shock than conventional helmets (at 15 mph — this is a product aimed at urban cyclists). Hovding’s weakest point may be that it can’t protect riders from “direct hits” like overhanging branches and street signs, an issue that hasn’t prevented the company from winning Europe’s.
The article cites a couple of other downsides besides the lack of “direct hit” protection. In warmer climates, people aren’t going to want an extra collar around their necks. The company is working on a cooling mechanism to address that. An added cooling mechanism will drive the price up from its current $535. Oo la la!
I’m impressed by the safety testing. But I would be wary of accidental deployment. I wonder what the cost of getting it “re-set” is? And the initial outlay of over $500 seems a tad excessive. I’ll take my helmet, thanks.
And also, re. the vanity issue. The Hovding may be invisible as a helmet, but to me it looks a lot like a neck brace. Neck braces while necessary at times, aren’t much of a fashion statement either.
I’ll reserve making a definitive judgment on which is more hip–bike helmets or neck braces–but me, I’m leaning towards the bike helmets because at least they’re sporty.
To read more about the Hovding and see the video of the crash test, go here.
My father taught me an important life lesson: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Okay, that’s an exaggeration. He said it a lot but I likely didn’t learn the lesson for real until I spent my own money on something which claimed to do something it couldn’t. Can’t recall just what that might have been, sea monkeys perhaps? I did buy some. They didn’t look at all like the picture above. I could barely tell if they were alive or dead and I spent a whole week’s allowance on them. I never did get to use the training manual that came with them. But I did learn something. I imagine that’s why my parents first tried to talk me out of mail order sea monkeys from the back of a comic book and then later helped me do it. It was a cheap life lesson at the price of just one week’s allowance.
And now I try to pass the same lesson along to my own kids. Yet, I’m still surprised that products with these larger than life claims exist especially when they are targeted at adults.
No one is more vulnerable than someone who believes she needs to change herself to be worthy and so the worst of these products aim to sell thinned, toned bodies to people who don’t currently have them.
First, it was the wobbly toning shoes. I laughed when they were first on the market, quietly, since a friend had bought some. Since then of course we’ve learned that the miraculous wobbly toning shoes are a scam. They do nothing for toning your legs. You just look silly and feel wobbly.
Sketchers just paid $40 million in damages over its toning running shoes. Read more here. You can also read the Runners Works story here. Similar suits are now underway against Reebok and Vimbram five finger shoes for claims they make about the health benefits of their footwear.
Now, the wobbly shoes didn’t just make false claims. It looks like they also actually hurt people.
Consumer Reports says this:
“Most of the reported injuries were minor, including tendonitis and foot, leg, and hip pain. But 15 complaints reported broken bones, some of which required surgery. Our medical experts say that those types of shoes have rocker-style bottoms that are designed to cause instability, forcing users to engage muscles that are not normally used while walking. But that instability might also lead to turned ankles, falls, and other injuries if the user is not careful. The rocker design is not unique to Skechers, which was cited in most of the reports. Other brands with similar designs include Avia, Champion, Danskin Now, and New Balance, and shoes sold at Sears and Kmart. Reebok has a toning shoe that’s designed differently, but it also causes instability. The above-mentioned brands were also named in injury reports filed with the CPSC.” Read more here.
I’m hoping this sends the wobbly shoe trend to its grave. I have noticed that the thrift stores are full of them.
But like weeds that won’t die, another trend in weight loss clothing has popped up. This time it’s skinny hot pants. The claim is that they burn 11 percent more calories while you exercise and 13 percent more calories even after you stop. I first came across them as a sponsored ad in my Facebook newsfeed.
It seems like a recycled idea to me. In the 1970s you could buy plastic ‘sauna suits’ to do your housework in while losing weight through sweat. Body builders used to use saran wrap to accomplish this effect even though experts say it doesn’t work. You can wrap plastic around your waist, sweat, and lose some water weight but the minute you have a drink it’ll be back.
The new hot pants seem like the same old idea to me. But then maybe much of the target audience weren’t alive through the 1970s.
Note there’s no research backing up the manufacturer’s claims that has been published in refereed scientific journals and all the obesity researchers interviewed expressed skepticism.
Surprise, surprise.
Oh, and the hot pants also claim to help with trouble areas. You’re supposed to lose more inches in the areas where the special heat panels are located. That sounds a tad unlikely too. Potential buyers ought to read Newsflash: Spot Reduction/Spot Training Does NOT Work.
When will the first lawsuit begin?
Now I’ve already gone on record as being a bit of a grump about pricey exercise clothing (see Just walk slowly away from that rack of $100 yoga pants) because I think it’s a dangerous myth that fitness requires specialized expensive clothing and pricey personal trainers. However, at least Lululemon claims only to make your butt look good. It doesn’t make any claims about helping to shrink it. Oh wait, there was the Lululemon seaweed scandal. Yoga pants were supposed to contain seaweed which would release amino acids and marine vitamins and minerals into your skin while you worked out. However, tests showed the pants contained no actual seaweed. Smells like sea monkeys to me.
When I saw this “How to get a beach body” instructional flyer on facebook, I smiled. Yes, of course, take yourself to the beach and you’ve got a beach body.
It’s exactly the right way to think about the beach and the body needed to enjoy. And yet, sigh! If only it were so simple.
This is the time of year in the northern hemisphere when lots of women, young and not-so-young, start to panic about being “beach ready” or “bikini ready.” The media comes at us from all directions, with countless articles (none of which I will link to here) about how to get that bikini body.
The assumption, of course, is that the vast majority of us do not have it already. More than that, implicit in this rhetoric lurks normative femininity and the imperative that, if you plan to wear a bikini, you had better have the body for it.
Because bikinis are primarily worn in public, unlike lingerie, the idea of judgment is even more real and frightening. In a society that faults fat, cellulite, stretchmarks, pimples or hair anywhere but on our heads, it’s a miracle any of us can pick up the courage to step outside in such a revealing piece of clothing.
She hits it pretty well right on the head. It’s one thing to say, “go ahead and wear a bikini even if you don’t have the stereotypical bikini body. You’ve got every right.” I believe that. I really do. But it takes a lot of courage to don that skimpy little swimsuit. Courage and self-confidence. And we are socialized not to have courage and confidence in the bodies we have. I don’t think it’s an underestimate to say that a good 90% of the women I know (and I know lots of feminists!) are either wishing or actively seeking to change their bodies.
A couple of years ago, Jezebel posted “If I Hear One More Word about Beach Bodies I’m Gonna Strangle Someone with a Tankini.” Sam has posted on swimsuit anxiety already, right on this very blog, wondering why it’s so severe. Her guess is that we tend to compare ourselves to the models in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, and also that beauty pageants have cemented the association between swimsuits and sexy.
So if you’re not sexy, you shouldn’t really be in a swimsuit, especially a bikini.
My concern isn’t so much why we have the anxiety in the first place, but rather why, even if we reject the idea of normative femininity as an imperative for ourselves, and even if we agree that the whole idea of a bikini body is infuriating bullshit, it’s still hard for many of us to wear a bikini and feel good in it. I myself wear bikinis through the summer, though as I have said here before, I prefer to be nude. But I really need to talk to myself at the beginning of the season to convince myself that it’s okay to wear the bikini. I’m never going to look anything like the swimsuit models in Sports Illustrated.
I can also say in all honesty that I have had the bikini body at different times in my life. I can only say this in hindsight because at the time I didn’t feel good in my bikini. The standards I set for myself were so impossibly high that probably the swimsuit models don’t even attain them without photoshop.
What does that tell me? It tells me that it’s more about self-acceptance than about anything else. In “If I Hear One More Word about Beach Bodies…,” Lesley, the author says,
Where I live, beach season comprises roughly one-sixth of the entire year, and if you think I am going to waste one second of that precious span worrying about whether the colorblocking on my suit is going to trick people into believing I’m shaped like Gisele Bundchen, then think again.
She gives a few tips for how to get over the anxiety, including “Your body is fine” and “Body-policing is never okay.” I think she’s totally right. She’s probably also right that mostly people aren’t looking at me anyway. We much more need to tell ourselves that our bodies are fine than to defiantly shout it out to other people. And it’s the body policing that we impose on ourselves that’s the most crushing.
It’s not all that easy to become immune to the cultural messages we receive about who gets to wear “sexy” clothing and who doesn’t. But there is something incredibly attractive about women who are comfortable in their skins. And yet, sadly, that level of self-acceptance is so elusive for so many of us, even those who, on an intellectual level, reject the notion that we need to conform to a narrow standard in order to be acceptable.
I had the privilege of attending the Feminist Porn Awards on the weekend. I have never in my life seen such an inclusive range of representations of people claiming their right to enjoy the bodies they have, not the bodies that mainstream society tells us you’re supposed to have. The films represented them and their sexuality and sensuality beautifully, as sexual agents taking pleasure in their bodies. It was truly eye-opening and inspiring on many levels.
I had been thinking about this post that day, not yet sure what I wanted to say exactly. But what I want to say is this: my ideal beach would be a beach full of the actors and filmmakers who are producing feminist porn. They do not judge or make assumptions about what we are supposed to look like to be worthy of embracing our physical selves. They actively seek out bodies of all genders, shapes, sizes, and abilities, representing them equally without fetishizing those that depart from normative standards of the mainstream. They seek to empower, not to shame.
And I am certain that their beach body is no more or less than the one they take to the beach.
As Sam pointed out some time ago in her post about body positivity and the queer community, there actually is a diversity of desire out there. Even among straight men there is a range of body types that they find attractive. Sam references John Devore’s article about the types of women that “really turn men on” on this point.
I’m not saying that we need to be a part of or even watch feminist porn to accept that the bodies we have today are beach ready no matter what they look like and what they can do. Rather, we can think of it as one model, among many, that’s strikingly more body positive, both in terms of size and disability, than the usual norms about beauty and the beach.
“That bike riding might be sexually stimulating for women was also a real concern to many in the 1890s. It was thought that straddling a saddle combined with the motion required to propel a bicycle would lead to arousal. So-called “hygienic” saddles began to appear, saddles with little or no padding where a woman’s genitalia would ordinarily make contact with the seat. High stems and upright handlebars, as opposed to the more aggressively positioned “drop” handlebars, also were thought to reduce the risk of female sexual stimulation by reducing the angle at which a woman would be forced to ride.”
In “Reframing the Bicycle: Advertising-Supported Magazines and Scorching Women” Ellen Gruber Garvey (American Quarterly) writes that both advocates and critics of women’s cycling used medical arguments related to women’s sexuality and reproduction. Anti-bicyclists claimed that riding would ruin women’s sexual health by promoting masturbation while pro-bicyclers asserted that bicycling would strengthen women’s bodies and make them more fit for motherhood.
Heaven forbid that we argue for cycling on the grounds that women enjoy it. Isn’t it enough that bike riding makes women happy, and provides a way for us to get around?
Garvey is struck, like me, with the amount of ink that was spilt on this particular problem and the amount of detail regarding masturbation and evidence of masturbation that the doctors describe.
In an outpouring of numerous articles in medical journals, physicians went into extensive and virtually prurient detail about ways the bicycle saddle might produce sexual stimulation: The saddle can be tilted in every bicycle as desired…. In this way a girl… could, by carrying the front peak or pommel high, or by relaxing the stretched leather in order to let it form a deep, hammock-like concavity which would fit itself snugly over the entire vulva and reach up in front, bring about constant friction over the clitoris and labia. This pressure would be much increased by stooping forward, and the warmth generated from vigorous exercise might further increase the feeling. This physician reported the case of an “overwrought, emaciated girl of fifteen whose saddle was arranged so that the front pommel rode upward at an angle of about 35 degrees, who stooped forward noticeably in riding, and whose actions … strongly suggested … the indulgence of masturbation.”23 Although the patient is evidently worn to a frazzle by her fevered indulgence, the imagery of this physician’s first passage seems to reflect concern that female masturbation is a kind of indolence or relinquishment of vigilance: the leather is “relaxed”; the vulva rests in that signal article of Victorian leisure furniture, a hammock.
It’s not just the seat itself that’s at issue. Doctors were also obsessively concerned with rider position. The same position that with men was associated with going fast and racing, was seen with women as an obvious aid to masturbation. Men who like going fast ride stooped over to dodge the wind but when women adopt the same position, doctors assumed it was a means of getting more pressure on the clitoris from the bike seat.
Writes Garvey:
The tell-tale riding stoop of the second passage, however, raises a different issue: the “scorching” position-that is, the bent-over- the-handlebars posture adopted by speeders. In male riders, it might be criticized or mocked. But for women, fast riding was condemned; deviations from upright decorousness and graceful riding are more serious, and bicycle-riding posture could be a significant measure of propriety and sexual innocence. Another physician complained that “except when one rides slowly and erect” the “whole body’s weight … rests on the anterior half of the saddle.” Here, not only the saddle and its adjustment but also speed is at fault, and the punishment for stepping out of line is pain and pathology: The moment speed is desired the body is bent forward in a characteristic curve and the body’s weight is transmitted to the narrow anterior half of the saddle, with all the weight pressing on the perineal region…. If a saddle is properly adjusted for slow riding and in an unusual effort at speed or hill climbing, the body is thrown forward, causing the clothing to press against the clitoris, thereby eliciting and arousing feelings hitherto unknown and unrealized by the young maiden and painful and debilitating “granular erosion” or “polypoid growth” will result…..Similarly, medical books had warned for years that the signs that girls “are addicted to such a vice . . . [are] only too plain to the physician” and that the “habit” of masturbation left “its mark upon the face so that those who are wise may know what the girl is doing.”
So we can see two problems here with bike seats, the first is their shape and position, but the other concerns the posture of the rider. Sitting upright makes women go more slowly and is apparently less likely to provoke sexual excitement.
Did anyone consider that the flushed face and the obvious excitement of sitting in an aerodynamic racing position came from the thrill of speed? Probably not.
One of the things I’m interested in seeing is whether the attitudes to women on bikes in the 1800s have entirely gone away. What I argue, in the course of a longer paper on the subject, is that they haven’t. In fact, I think some of the same attitudes pose an obstacle to getting more women on bikes now.
But surely the fear of bike orgasms has gone way? Right?
Sort of. I’d say it’s still a topic that gets more interest going than seems merited by the phenomena. Every few years a version of the “Women have orgasms while exercising” story goes around. Here’s this year’s version from Live Science: No Sex Required: Women Have Orgasms at the Gym,
“Of the women who had orgasms during exercise, about 45 percent said their first experience was linked to abdominal exercises; 19 percent linked to biking/spinning; 9.3 percent linked to climbing poles or ropes; 7 percent reported a connection with weight lifting; 7 percent running; the rest of the experiences included various exercises, such as yoga, swimming, elliptical machines, aerobics and others. Exercise-induced sexual pleasure was linked with more types of exercises than the orgasm phenomenon.”
The triple threat of sexual pleasure, women, and bike seats is still a source of humour among cyclists. I was once on a ride where we encountered a section of what locals call ‘corduroy road,’ kind of halfway paved so still bumpy. It wasn’t quite cobblestones or dirt and it was easily doable on our skinny tired road bikes. It was a time when you noticed a difference between aluminum and carbon frames (aluminum vibrates more). After we got to the end of that section of road, one of the men at the front yelled back, “Do you girls want to ride over that section of road again?” Nervous laughter ensued.
The issue of contact with bike seats hasn’t gone away altogether either. Contrary to what most people think the best seat for fast riding is not a big wide, comfy sofa of a thing. Instead it’s a narrow, racing-style seat, see Live Strong on choosing a bike seat. Ideally for comfort you want as little contact between your body’s soft parts and the seat of a bicycle.
The cut away styles of the 1800s are making a bit of a resurgence, and comfort, not fear of orgasm is behind their sales. But sometimes I look at the cut out seats and think back to the 1890s and wonder if the doctors of the day would have smiled approvingly.
