I recently listened to an episode of Adam Grant’s podcast Rethinking, entitled “Life lessons from sports,” featuring Jody Avigran. Avigran is passionate, fast-talking ex-athlete and sports commentator who has a new podcast called Good Sport. This was one TED podcast boosting the signal of another.
Avrigan’s Good Sport podcast is about the deeper meaning of sports. In the Rethinking episode, he says stuff like this:
You’re telling me that the thing that is really fun to do, that like keeps me in shape, […] will also teach me like, how to be a better human and how to like trust others and how to build teams? And like is a place where I can also like, figure out all these things about the real world, which I’m gonna have to go back to anyway at some point?
I am on board with Avrigan’s idea that sports can teach us about how to be good humans, good team players, and a good supporters of others. It’s what FIFI is also about, in my view.
I also found myself interested in Avigran’s focus on not only the brilliance of top-tier athletes but also the communities that nurture athletes, the supporting role that high-impact coaches play, and those who are the keepers of team culture, which Avigran describes as the “glue guy”:
I’m very fascinated, and I like asking athletes of all stripes: who’s actually the person who, who brings you all together? Who’s actually the star in the locker room? You know, they call it “glue guy” […].
To illustrate, Avigran describes the Miami Heat’s Udonis Haslem, and Grant supplies former MBA player Shane Battier, as another example of a glue guy.
And I started thinking: Glue guy. Glue guy. Glue girl? When are these two seasoned podcasters— who are nerding out on the “life lessons” sports teach us—going to give examples of female athletes, female coaches, women’s teams, and gender (diversity) and sports? Why would a 40-minute episode on what sports teach us about ourselves and our world not reference a single person from over half that world? Did Grant or Avrigan even notice how this podcast advertising another podcast would appear so gender unaware?
I scanned the Good Sport episode titles and found one called The Past and Future of Gender in Sport. Okay, that sounds good. But, in 2023, are female athletes and women’s sports teams only mentionable in the solitary “gender in sports” episode, or can we also normalize gender inclusive examples in every episode?
I realize I am drawing conclusions about the enduring gender unawareness of sports media based on a single episode of one podcast and a quick scan of another. But if I want to learn more about glue girls in team sports (which I do), how many podcasts will I have to comb before I find that information?
@samanthabrennan has recommended to me The Gist, and I also found the Women in Sport podcast. FIFI readers, what other inclusive sports podcasts would you recommend?
Error and Update:
I apologize for including in my post an ableist expression to convey my negative view of sports podcasters who fail to include gender and gender diversity. The expression was disrespectful and has been removed. It’s an important reminder to me, as the author writing about the very topic of inclusion in the media, to be vigilant about ensuring that what we (including me) say and write in the public sphere does not exclude or diminish others.
Today I listened to Adam Grant’s Rethinking episode featuring soccer star, author, and podcaster Abby Wombach, which was brilliant and awesome and everyone should listen to it.
I once called my mother a whore. We were playing double solitaire. A game that, between the two of us at, was a full contact sport. Slapping our cards down with no mind as to whether the other person’s hand might be in the way. In this particular game, we were neck-a-neck, cards piling up in the center at the speed of light, then we were both going to the same stack with the same card and my mum’s hand was quicksilver, hitting the mark before me. You whore. I shouted loud enough for the house to hear. She laughed with gleeful satisfaction. I wasn’t even grounded. That’s how complicit we were in our intensity. Even calling her a whore was allowed. I don’t know why, but that was one of the insults au-courant between my best friend and I. We felt very dangerous and risqué when we used the word.
Now, I hate the word. I hate all its implications. Of women demeaned. Of the judgment reserved for women and never their client-suitors. So, when a Soul Cycle instructor used the word the other day in class, my whole body snapped to angry attention. Here’s the context. Into the third song of the 45-minute workout he asked, Are you all sweating like a whore in church? ‘Cause if you’re not, you should be working harder.
First, it took me a minute to figure out what the expression even meant. The word whore had sidelined my reasoning capacity. Then, as my mind picked back through the expression, it dawned on me. Oh. She’s sweating, because her work is deemed a sin according to the doctrine of the religious institution, whose pews she’s seated in. Sweating because she has too much to repent. Judgment Day is coming for her. Sweating because she’s a woman who leverages her sexuality. Sweating because the lord on high will be displeased by her presence. Maybe he will smite her.
Why (oh why) would someone use that expression in a room full of strong, modern women? A young gay man, no less. He could have substituted himself into the expression, the implications are the same. And he would, at least, have been making a joke on himself (still not a nice joke, though humor is more excusable when we make ourselves the butt of the humor). Instead, he regurgitated what was, no doubt, an expression he heard in his childhood. Perpetuating values infused with religiosity and thus with patriarchal misogyny. I’m going to hazard a guess that the largest proportion of the women spinning that day did not look to the church as their arbiter of moral values. I doubt that even the instructor looks to the church as his moral beacon. Yet, there he was quipping in support of organized religion’s apparent mandate to control women and their bodies.
Sweating bottles (I chose this image because it is beautiful, IMHO, and I wasn’t keen on putting an image of a sweating whore), by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash
I contemplated speaking to him afterward. Trying to make light, yet still make clear what I’d found disturbing. I reasoned that he probably was not even aware of what he was saying, even that he might appreciate me pointing out the dissonance. Then I worried that he’d dismiss me as a cranky older woman. Then I worried that I was a cranky older woman, too easily triggered because my current life circumstance is high stress. And the result is that I have zero tolerance for any demeaning treatment of women.
What did I do? Nothing.
Except canvas various of my friends about their responses. Everyone, except me, had heard the expression before. While they all agreed it was offensive, when considered closely, they were split on whether I should have said something or not. Some agreed with my do nothing approach and others thought it was important to call such things out.
And, in case you think that calling women whores is a relic of church jokes, this happened to me and a woman friend the other day. We were out for a brisk morning walk together in a mixed-use bike-walk lane. Or so we thought. Until a cyclist zipping by said, Slut!
At first, as with the whore joke, we were both perplexed. We verified with each other that we’d heard correctly. Never mind that I was confused by the singular, when there were two of us. Was only one of us a slut? If so, which one? We deduced the angry cyclist thought we were infringing on the bike lane, after studying the available lanes more closely and noticing there was indeed a walking lane further over. I wonder if the insult applies only to women walking in bike lanes, or if it’s any woman doing an activity in an unsanctioned location. Push ups on a tennis court. Cycling in a walking lane. Is any unsanctioned activity by definition slutty? Does slut retain any sexual connotation? Or is the unsanctioned activity viewed as an indicator of loose morals? A gateway to turpitude.
What I’m sure of is that the cyclist wasn’t having a good morning.
There’s no true equivalence for whore and slut to describe a man. They are words with ugly intent. Normally I like to reclaim words and expressions and transmute them into a feminine power expression. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet with these words.
Currency, a display of wealth, and a way to store things,
Making clothing functional (such as jeweled clasps, pins, and buckles)
Symbolism (to show membership, status, political affiliation, or relationships)
Protection (in the form of amulets and magical wards), and
Artistic display (personal style, fashion, etc.)
I normally wear at least some jewelry for most of these reasons. When I exercise, I wear my fitness tracker ring (to “store” data?) and my wedding ring when I want to reduce the likelihood of being approached (a magical “protection” amulet?).
I’ve noticed that my (semi-) regular exercise has had an impact on the jewelry I wear these days: thin, flat, light rings and an equally thin, light, and short necklace that I don’t have to remove. However, I do replace big earrings with small sleeper hoops when I bike or curl or whatever. I don’t normally wear bracelets or anklets, and I have no other piercings (other than a tongue ring, which stays in).
You may have a different approach–you don’t wear jewelry of any kind, or you take take off some or all jewelry then put it back on after exercising. And, of course, it depends on the sport! But there aren’t any sporty people I know who leave on all their regular day-to-day jewelry on while exercising.
I wear some jewelry when I exercise because I like the jewelry I have and I lose what take it off. Also, the jewelry I wear allows me to exercise unimpeded. If I’m honest, I might also keep jewelry because I think it communicates that I am a recreational athlete.
My assumptions about exercise and jewelry
“A quick shot after getting wrapped for the boxing gloves, before the ring comes off and the gloves go on.” Photo by Sarah Cervantes on Unsplash
Somewhere along the way I picked up the idea that exercise and jewelry do not go together, that the more competitive the athlete the less jewelry they wear. Where did this idea come from? Practically speaking, jewelry can hinder performance and even increase injury risk. But I have also assumed that “serious” athletes care more about performance than appearance.
I admit to holding the converse assumption as well: the more jewelry, the more the exerciser cares about appearances. For sale these days is a bevy of “exercise jewelry” that is advertised as waterproof, sweatproof, and non-tarnishing. But do serious exercisers really go for these? The workout jewelry and charms on Etsy are cute but not all practical for the exercise they represent.
While I do not want to police what people wear, my immediate thought about the “strong AND pretty” message of workout jewelry is that it reflects what Andi Zeisler (2016) describes as “marketplace feminism”–reducing social movements and personal empowerment to beauty and fashion items for purchase.
Challenging my assumptions
Then, recently I saw a web news article whose accompanying image made me question these above preconceptions.
I was struck by the size and amount of jewelry worn by track and field athlete Sha’Carri Richardson in recent photos on the Yahoo news site. Richardson is photographed while competing at the 2022 USATF outdoor Championships at Hayward Field wearing multiple hoop earrings, nose rings, a necklace, a bracelet, and a belly piercing with a full chain (not to mention flowing hair, false eyelashes, and long fake nails). She did not qualify at that event, but later at a different international event, wearing similar jewelry she did qualify.
Recently, jewelry wearing, jewelry design, and jewelry store ownership have all gained attention for their historical and cultural meaning and significance for African North Americans. I do not claim to know why Richardson wears what she wears, but I imagine her exercise “look” might go beyond personal beauty and fashion choices to deeper personal and cultural symbolism. A recent article on Serena Williams mentions her wearing Love earrings in her very last tennis match as a tribute to the game, and braids with beads she wore early in her career to honour African cultural traditions.
One of the only fitness activities that stereotypically show athletes with jewelry-like “accessories” in North America: yoga practice. But appropriating prayer beads is for another post. Photo by Mor Shani on Unsplash
Perhaps Richardson, Williams, and other non-white athletes wear their jewelry styles precisely to challenge dominant white-centric stereotypes of competitive athletes as de-jewelled and unadorned. Their accessories lead me, us to realize there is in fact a whole world full of athletes engaging in various types of sports and exercise while wearing jewelry and other body adornments.
Old habits, but some new thinking
I probably won’t change my own minimal jewelry-wearing habits while I exercise. But, this reflection has given more insight into what drives my current jewelry-wearing choices. Some of it is fashion, but mostly it is simplicity and convenience.
It has also invited me to confront the narrow range of imagery that reinforce what is “normal” for athletes to wear (or not wear) when it comes to jewelry. I’ll think twice about my ideas about the relationship between jewelry and exercise. Some competitive athletes wear jewelry for its social and political meaning, not (or not only) to make a fashion statement.
Every time the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue makes the news, I am newly and naively amazed that it still exists at all. In 2017 it made the news because it included a 63 year-old Christie Brinkley in a red bikini. I got on my high horse about that here: “Because if Christie Brinkley can pull it off so can anyone, right?”
That same year everyone applauded SI for including Hunter McGrady, whose fulsome curves defied the usual Swimsuit Issue body-type. Her inclusion was celebrated as a “breath of fresh air,” and I wondered whether anything having to do with the SI swimsuit issue is really a breath of fresh air. I don’t really think so, even if Hunter McGrady claims to be doing this not just for herself, but “but for every woman out there who has ever felt uncomfortable in their body and who wants and needs to know that you are sexy.” The same issue also included Serena Williams, a world-class athlete, to “prove” (to whom?) that a woman can be both sexy and athletic.
So this year we have a kind of repeat of all those themes — you can be curvaceous or in your seventies or have an unexpected “background” (their code for race or for ethnicity) and still we want to objectify you as a sexual object in one of our most popular issues of the year!
The editor in chief of this issue, MJ Day, doesn’t put it quite like that of course. Day says:
“We all deserve the chance to evolve. So in this issue, we encourage readers to see these models as we see them: multifaceted, multitalented—and sexy while they’re at it. The world may label them one way, but we want to focus our lens on all the ways they see themselves and how they own who they are. No matter your age, whether you’re a new mom, partner, sister, entertainer, athlete, entrepreneur, advocate, student, mentor, role model, leader or dreamer—or all of the above—we want to celebrate these women, their evolution and the many dimensions of who they are.”
But in the end, despite all of their many dimensions and talents, these women are just reduced to their sexy-factor. I should note that I am not opposed to sexiness. I and several of us from the blog have been open about our boudoir photo shoots. What gets me with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue is the context. This is a magazine historically designed by men for men. And its main purpose is to cover sports news. What, I ask, do women in swim suits have to do with sports news and for whom are they striking sexy poses? If they want to do it “for themselves” they can do a boudoir photo shoot.
Instead of celebrating the objectification of an ever more inclusive range of women, I can’t help but thinking a more positive step for women would be getting rid of the swimsuit issue altogether. I don’t know any women who would mind one bit, but I predict a huge outcry from the men who look forward to this issue and a subsequent loss of a sure-thing revenue item for Sports Illustrated. As long as we are willing to get on board with the objectification of women for an audience the vast majority of which is straight and male, to celebrate it as something empowering for women, and to congratulate it for “breaking barriers,” we are going to be stuck promoting that idea that women — all women — need to be sexy-to-men to be acceptable. Surely we can promote inclusion without having to piggy back on that relentless message about what makes women worthy.
An open air swimming pool glistening in the sunlight.
There was also the time I went to the pool to find three (!) less than mediocre male swimmers who were holding up all traffic in a highly populated pool because they thought they were entitled to being in the fast lane by virtue of being able to float (don’t get me wrong – it’s great that these guys are getting their movement in, but did they have to do it in the fast lane when they weren’t, I don’t know, fast?).
I mean, WTF? You, dear swimming, have been trying your hardest to ruin things. The racism and the sexism, it’s just not on. Get with the programme!
And yet, you somehow manage to redeem yourself every time I get in the water. You’re so meditative, splish splash, back and forth, breathe-two-three-breathe-two-three. You let my mind drift and get a fresh perspective on things. You’re exhausting in a good way. You make me feel free.
So these horrible things are not your fault, I suppose? They’re the fault of some people who are intent on ruining things for others, or who simply don’t care about the impact their behaviour has on their fellow humans. I forgive you, dear swimming, but I certainly will have a hard time forgiving those people.
So, Naomi Osaka. World #2, unbelievable tennis player, YOUNG PERSON (she’s 23 years old). She heads to the French Open, aka “Roland Garros” (we’re posh, peeps – we call the thing by the name bestowed upon the hallowed grounds, and there are tiny sandwiches somewhere, and patisserie, and LOTS OF BOOZE). She says: you know what? I would rather not do the press conferences this time, thanks. I am a tennis player at the elite level and barely an adult and my clay court game is a tricky work in progress. I need to focus, and also cope with all the feelings while focusing, which means I really don’t need to have to field a bunch of questions about my sexuality, or the depth of my human flaws, or other outright irrelevant crap after every match, thanks. For my mental health, you know, I just would rather not. It’s about the game, right?
Friends, she broke the internet. Of course she did.
Osaka in a blue-green Nike tank and black boxers, at rest, holding a tennis ball and smiling. THIS WOMAN KICKS TENNIS ASS. (This image is from her Wikipedia page, where you can also learn her native name in Japanese script.)
WTF cares if tennis stars do the damn press circuit at the Grand Slam tournaments? Their sponsors, sure. (Although the sponsors make their money back hand over fist regardless, and I’d bet my new racket that Osaka’s sponsors are finding this massive controversy, splashed all over the place online, is breaking their way.) The Grand Slam organizers too, yes: they have a vested interest in stuff always going to the plan they have so carefully wrought. So the money folks, they really care.
Beyond the economics, there are, from my perspective, two main reasons the world seems in a huge way to care about Osaka’s decision to refuse to do press at the FO. There’s the fairly basic answer, and then there’s the answer behind that answer – the nuances.
The first part – the basics – smarter people than me have already weighed in on. Writing in the Guardian sports blog, Jonathan Liew has pointed out that when stars like Osaka say ‘no thanks’ to the press, it’s another reminder – a billboard-sized, viral Twitter-shaped reminder – that the mostly-white-often-older dudes who still rule the sports pages in many conventional media outlets matter less and less and less. If Naomi has something she needs to tell me, she’s gonna tell me directly, on social. And that scares the bejeezus out of those dudes.
Here’s a screen grab of Naomi’s twitter. Go follow her. (Notice that she has 1M followers and is following 18 people. THAT IS BADASS.)
Meanwhile, also in the Guardian (NB: wholly subscriber-funded, not owned by billionaires! As a researcher it’s the paper I trust most in the world), Marina Hyde points out that Osaka’s “mistake” was to experience her mental health and address its needs while still actively competing and winning Slams – as opposed to, you know, burying that shit, blowing up in a spectacular and headline-inducing way, crawling off for a while, then coming back with a memoire. The media (hi Rupert Murdoch! Thanks for setting such an incredibly ethical example!) LOVE a case of celebrity mental breakdown and a subsection of this media will defend to their graves their exclusive right to report on these breakdowns in the most shaming and salacious ways, damn the consequences. (I urge you to read the whole Hyde piece; Marina is a comic genius and as far as I am concerned she is the reincarnation of Jonathan Swift.)
OK, now for the nuance-y bit. I’m a beginner tennis player and I only half-glance at the Grand Slams over my partner’s shoulder most of the time, but the Osaka story caught my eye because I’ve just finished going through the proofs of a new book chapter I’ve written about girlhood, gender identity, and sport. Its focus is the amazing 2016 play The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe, which follows a team of high school-aged soccer players, all young women, as they navigate a season. They are alone on stage until the very end of the play. Their pitch is their space to own and control and be messy and flawed and incredible and talented and mean little shits because they are TEENAGE GIRLS. They use that space to actualize who they are, to be better selves every practice, to dream up and then enact, in their shared embodiment, who they want to become. There are no media folks (nor anybody else) present.
A group of 9 young women in red soccer jerseys and black shorts mug for the camera on an artificial grass pitch against a black background: they are fake-posing sexy-model style with orange slices in their mouths. This is the cast of The Wolves from the 2018 Toronto production.
This is revolutionary. Why? Because, as my chapter argues, the history of women in competitive sport is a history of the male gaze freaking out like crazy. Add in girls doing their own thing, for their own benefit, and things get really sweaty in a hurry.
(I want to be clear here that “the male gaze” is a patriarchal construct, not a feature of biology attached only to actual men: it refers to how all of us humans who live under patriarchy – a social structure in which men are valued, culturally, above others – learn to look at bodies, including our own. Think about it: when you look in the mirror, as a strong and fit woman, what do you see? I see my perimenopausal hips and thighs and think, rats. What did I eat yesterday? BAM! That’s me looking through my female eyes with a male gaze.)
A graphic shows Christina Hendricks all in red, dressed as from Mad Men, with Don Draper-era guys in suits and hats looking at her. Arrows help us understand the trajectory of their collective gaze, in case we need help parsing the symbolism. THAT THING.
Sporty women are a huge problem for the male gaze. Why? They are STRONG. They are bulky – muscle-toned. They are working their bodies for a purpose other than attracting male attention – this is weird and taboo to patriarchy. (Check out stuff we’ve written here and elsewhere on the blog about Serena Williams, and also Sam’s great posts about women on bikes, to learn more.) Sporty women are also, of course, incredibly beautiful, graceful, powerful – damn fun to watch. So the upshot is: we want to watch them, with our patriarchally-trained gazes, but in the process we (even sometimes feminist humans like me!) experience serious cognitive dissonance. How can they be so incredible to watch while not conforming to patriarchal expectations about what incredible-to-watch women are supposed to look like?Are you even allowed out in public with thighs that strong?
From here – DIRECTLY – comes the now-infamous corollary dispensed by La Mostly Male Presse (again, see Serena, women on bikes, Megan Rapinhoe, you name the bad-ass girl athlete): if you’re going to compete at this high level, laydeez, we are going to reserve the right to judge you constantly, shame you continuously, and call all of your tactical choices into question. Otherwise, you make us look a bit too hard at the structures of our social systems and our heads start to hurt and we have to consider perhaps, um, making some serious structural changes. So we’re going to push you back down, down, down. Don’t be so uppity, miss tennis star. Who exactly do you think you are?
And here – HERE – is where the rubber hits the clay, so to speak, for Naomi Osaka.
Osaka at the French open in 2016, in a multi-coloured tank and black leggings, preparing to serve. She looks exhausted because she is playing intense tennis, people. Remember: this woman hits balls. Hard.
She’s young, and like all young people thrust into the limelight, she’s having to figure out some basic ontology (aka, who am I? What will I become?) while also competing at the most elite level, in the public eye. She is vulnerable and fragile like all young women who grew up under patriarchy, but to the Nth degree because tennis star (AND woman of colour, hello structural racism!!).
Add to that Roland Garros, which is a clay court surface and thus clashes with some of the strongest aspects of Osaka’s game, and both Naomi and La Presse know what’s most likely to come of any tete-a-tete post-game. Who the hell wouldn’t blame her for saying, you know, I think I’d rather play tennis than live out my existential fears on camera, so that maybe I can improve my clay court game. Ok with you?
Was her “hard no” to all press a bit OTT, maybe even a bit childish? Dunno – depends on your lived experience. When I was 23 I was only just recently not a child, so maybe a bit? #mostlynormal
Is Osaka a flawed human who let some probably nice people down in the process of making this call (for ex: occasional amazing female sports journalists who might have asked awesome questions)? Sure. She’s flawed as hell – have you seen her clay court game? Again, really not the point though, unless you feel safe tossing those stones.
What Osaka is asking, really asking, is that we hear her when she says: I’m supposed to play top-game tennis here and also face the press, all while keeping my shit together, and this combination of things is not, for me, actually possible. It’s not possible for some of my peers, too, and I wonder if perhaps we could take a look at the system and shift things so that maybe one day it could be possible, things could be kinder, and more fair for us all?
Funny how, when we ask questions just like that, the press corps and the Slam chiefs find it really, really hard to offer a good answer.
If you have been taking a much-needed mid/late summer break from social media: 1) Congratulations! What a great idea. You’ve not been missing much; 2) But, I have to tell you about this one thing you may have missed: the #medkini kerfuffle.
It initially started with a study published in the Journal of Vascular Surgery that purported to analyze the behavior of physicians on social media. The study, conducted by a team of researchers based at the Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Mecicine, was an attempt to classify the posts of trainees in vascular surgery as either professional or unprofessional.
So, what sorts of posts did the researchers consider unprofessional? From the now-retracted article (not linking to it):
Clearly unprofessional content included: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) violations, intoxicated appearance, unlawful behavior, possession of drugs or drug paraphernalia, and uncensored profanity or offensive comments about colleagues/work/patients.
Potentially unprofessional content included: holding/ consuming alcohol, inappropriate attire, censored profanity, controversial political or religious comments, and controversial social topics.
There are a ton of problems with the methodology of the article, but the #medkini twitter storm came about as a result of the interpretation of the “inappropriate attire” category. Apparently this included photos of vascular surgeons in bathing suits or festive costumes for festive occasions (like Halloween, for example). In particular, all pictures of female vascular surgeons in bikinis (not worn while performing surgery, but rather during leisure activity) were marked “potentially unprofessional”. And those doing the judging were a nearly all-male group.
Here are some of the photos the #medkini and #medbikin folks posted:
Twitter post of a female vascular surgeon showing pics of her performing surgery, speaking at a conference, and sitting by the ocean, wearing a bikini. All things women with jobs do.
Twitter post of a bunch of female docs on the beach in the Dominican Republic. Drs in the DR!
You can see the abstract here, and more importantly the big red “RETRACTED” stamp all over every page.
Abstract from the retracted article, with a big red “RETRACTED” stamp on the page.
Okay, so the authors really messed this one up. As did the editors and peer reviewers. The editors apologized here, if you’re interested.
But here’s the problem: why did anyone even think for one minute this kind of judgment was okay? Scientific American has some things to say about it:
We don’t believe anyone had malicious intent. But that is exactly the point. One need not have malicious intent to cause harm. In the same way, the gender pay gap, though perhaps not intentional, affects women, and implicit bias of physicians impairs the care of Black patients. In this case, researchers harmed the medical community by suggesting that speaking up about social causes, consuming alcohol when not working, and wearing a bikini were unprofessional.
The point is not who these researchers are or even what they did in this particular study. The authors, the institutional review board (which is supposed to watch out for ethical problems), the reviewers of the article and the journal’s editors all thought this was worth publishing. This is because in the culture of medicine, harassment and subjugation of those who don’t look like the dominant group is not only tolerated, it’s the norm.
This is certainly common in medicine, but that’s not the only field in which women get judged as unprofessional for their clothing, activities, food and drink, etc. In the interests of solidarity, here are some of our pics:
Me. #bioethicskini
Samantha. #deankini
Martha. #writerkini
Dear readers, did you hear about the #medkini business? Have you been hesitant to post vacation or swimming pics on social media because sexism? I’d love to hear from you, and will respond with scorn for those people who were mean to you and support for you in whatever attire you choose.
CW: some talk about body weight, fatness and feelings that anti-fat micoaggressions can provoke.
tl:dr version:
NEVER.
N E V E R.
Never. that’s all.
Context: many/most/all of us have found ourselves in the gym, on a bike, running, or doing some kind of physical activity (or any activity, for that matter, but I digress), when we get told by some stranger, “great job! You keep it up! You go, girl! You got this!” or some such infuriating fit-splaining-ness.
As a person who identifies as fat, I have experienced this more than a few times, and also heard and read about it in many social media and other groups. Samantha blogged about hating people cheering her up hills, explaining why.
Now that you’re done reading her post, here are some modified examples commiserating on “good job!” unsolicited comments (I mean, there’s always unsolicited):
I was heading down from a hike and some people were like, oh don’t turn around, you’re almost there. I’m like, wtf, I had already been to the top… and now I’m heading back down.
I have done a lot of run/walking… Sometimes when a run interval is over and I go to a walk people yell “don’t stop keep going”. Like, leave me alone…
I once had a woman stop me to ask me if my heart was okay to run. Sigh…
I used get this hiking… “You’ll make it!” “Keep it up”. I wanted to pick them up and throw them off the mountain. Was hiking summits 3x/week. I take my time because I care less about speed and more about enjoying the hike.
We were walking around a small lake in a park, and a slim woman and her daughter stepped aside to let us pass. She asked if we were ‘walking around the lake’ and we said ‘yes’. She looked us up and down and said- oh, Good For YOU! We kept walking, looked at each other and realized we’d just been – I dunno, fat congratulated on our walk.
Someone told me I was “really good” at yoga. And then added, Especially for someone my size… she could’ve left that part out and also, yoga isn’t a competitive sport so I’m not looking for feedback, thank you very much.
I’ve been told, “Keep coming back!” at the gym. Yeah, I’ve been coming here regularly for years…
It’s hard to know how to respond in such situations.
WHAT AM I SAYING?! Of course it’s not hard to know how to respond. Here are my top 4 suggestions:
*uck you
F*ck you
Fu*k you
Fuc* you
Sorry/not sorry for the potty-mouthed list.
Seriously, it’s hard to know what to do in the moment because 1) you’re actually in the middle of climbing or cycling or paddling or running or lifting something very heavy, and you’re trying to concentrate; 2) these digs just show up out of nowhere, apropos of nothing, so take you by surprise; 3) they can provoke feelings of inadequacy, shame, fury, sadness, loss of energy– all sorts of things can come out.
Ignoring it is one tactic. Coming up with a snappy reply is another, but can be hard to produce in the heat of the moment. There’s my list, but it is rude and could provoke an unsafe reaction in the fit-splainer.
So, readers, what do or would you do in a situation like this? If you feel like telling us about a similar encounter and/or what you did, I’d love to hear about it.
“Let’s say someone wants to squat 500 pounds. It’s a big goal, but not unachievable. Lots of people get to 500 pounds these days.” (1)
“If you keep your bodyfat percentage too low, you’re not going to build as much muscle. If someone is trying to stay around 8% bodyfat, your body is going to want to partition more of that energy towards fat storage.” (2)
I love lifting weights. I enjoy the exertion, the challenge, and the self-confidence that it brings. I’m not alone–women are a growing number of the competitive lifters around the world. Women participate in competitive physique, strong”man”, weightlifting and powerlifting. And this reflects a boom in interest amongst us non-competitive folks, too, likely at least in part fueled by the popularity and accessibility of crossfit in the last decade.
And yet, the mostly male-dominated media space has not caught up. When lifters are discussed, there is an overwhelming tendency to treat “lifters” as synonymous with “men.”
And to be perfectly frank, it’s starting to piss me off. Every time a guy says “someone” and what they really mean is “men,” I want to yell, “HEY, I’m SOMEONE, too!”
I want to see myself in the programs put out there. I want trainers to give me potential solutions to the challenges I face in reaching my goals. I want to know that my needs and concerns have answers. I want realistic metrics to which I can compare myself and help with goal setting. In short, I want representation.
Instead, there’s an endless parade of articles and other media around men’s insecurities and challenges–how to get 6-pack abs! Build your squat to 3x bodyweight! How to get to 12% body fat and stay there!
The physiology of someone born with female parts is different than the physiologies of people born with male parts. We have more essential levels of fat–requiring higher body fat levels in order to function healthfully. Our hormone profile changes how we respond to lifting, with only 5-10% of the testosterone of a typical adult man making building muscle a potentially slower process. Our smaller joints and bone structures change the size of our muscular potentials. Estrogen is protective in many ways, making women and other people who produce more of it, more resilient to higher-rep lifting, possibly meaning we require shorter rest periods. Some research on Olympic level athletes suggests that our abilities to recover even changes throughout our menstrual cycles. And none of this gets into the nuances of lifting around pregnancy, childbirth, menopause, hysterectomies, mastectomies and so many other experiences shared by so many people with a uterus.
But I’m not asking that every article, interview, podcast and blog post dig into all of these caveats every time they want to offer me 5 new ways to do push-ups. No, I just want the language used to be inclusive. I want pictures of strong people of all genders doing the work. I want it to be clear that I am a potential member of the target audience. So many trainers complain about how women are afraid of lifting weights, that we’re afraid of the barbell, that we’re afraid of the results we might get. But if 90% of the images we see are men on gear working on showing off that 6-pack, why should we expect a majority of women would be drawn to that? (To be clear, I have no problem with lean, muscular women with six-pack abs, I just recognize that they are a subset of the population.) We need to be represented in order to imagine it as a real possibility.
So in absence of another solution, I propose a simple test to determine if women are being acknowledged as people who do serious strength training. Blog post, podcast, article or interview, let’s call it the Hundtoft-Bechdel Test (3) which asks that fitness experts:
one. Directly mention women and/or include them in images. two. And ensure that any goals and/or metrics referenced include those appropriate for women and other people born with a uterus.
So, back to the quotes at the top: “Let’s say someone wants to squat 500 pounds. It’s a big goal, but not unachievable. Lots of people get to 500 pounds these days.”
This may be true for men who lift seriously over time. It is not ever true for women. I just checked the current raw powerlifting records for women, and the drug-tested, open world record for squat for women is 502 pounds. So women are excluded by the speaker and he fails the Hundtoft-Bechdel Test.
“If you keep your bodyfat percentage too low, you’re not going to build as much muscle. If someone is trying to stay around 8% bodyfat, your body is going to want to partition more of that energy towards fat storage.”
The second speaker also fails the test, since an 8% bodyfat is nearly unattainable even by the most competitive female bodybuilders. It is certainly not a “walking around” level of leanness for most women, when it might be for an especially disciplined, genetically gifted, and/or possibly just highly neurotic man.
In comparison, a recent article on Nerd Fitness (on the Star Wars workout) passed the test easily. Images of women. No metrics of success that are gendered at all. Steve Kamb did a great job of using entirely neutral language so that any reader can see themselves in the article.
Another win goes out to a great podcast, Stronger by Science. In their recent discussion on gut health and training nutrition, they interviewed a female expert and used gender-neutral language throughout. When it was appropriate to specify male vs. female metrics, both were included.
A quick search of recent Bodybuilding.com training articles finds some sort-of wins and some straight up losses. For example, this article on shoulder exercises does a good job of using gender-neutral language, but fails due to exclusively using men in the images.
T-Nation fairs not even as well as that. There are many examples to pull from, but here’s a training article that even the title (“The V-Taper Workout and Diet Plan”) excludes women as a target. The “V-Taper” is a shape of shoulders and waist that is specifically identified as a desirable male attribute (think comic book Superman with his wide shoulders and impossibly narrow waist). Notably, the author never acknowledges that he’s writing for a male audience. Major fail.
Not surprisingly, women lifters and authors consistently do a better job including women. Some female trainers are directing their business at other women as their primary market, and so they explicitly include women in their media. However, there are also female trainers and bloggers who do a good job of inclusive, but not female-centric language. A standout example is Meghan Callaway.
Women lift weights. We like to track our progress and gauge our success against other lifters. We want to know reasonable goals for goal setting and to see ourselves represented in media aimed at folks who strength train. Representation matters, and it’s well-past time for fitness authors, podcast hosts, and trainers to make a more consistent effort to represent women equally in their spaces.
(1) Maybe not an exact quote, but definitely the gist from a recent interview with Dr. Mike Zourdos on the Iron Culture podcast, which incidentally, is an awesome podcast! But I know they can do better with representation.
(2) Not going to link to this one, as the podcast I was trying out became so fat-phobic in a rant that I don’t want to encourage others to listen to it.
(3) Named in homage of and to give credit to the Bechdel Test which gives a simple way of identifying if women are present in film.
Marjorie Hundtoft is a middle school science and health teacher. She can be found reading about strength training, picking up heavy things and putting them back down again in Portland, Oregon. You can now read her at Progressive-Strength.com .
Photo description: The torso, arms and legs of a woman holding a weight plate in a gym. She is wearing a black t-shirt and shorts, and she has defined forearm and quad muscles.
I’ve played in a fair number of competitive athletic events— tennis tournaments, squash tournaments and league play, bike races of various stripes, and even a couple of triathlons (there was also that one disastrous intramural D league volleyball match, but I’d rather not discuss it).
In the course of competing, I’ve won a few medals and ribbons, the odd trophy (tennis tourney when I was ten), and of course swag— bike gloves, cans of electrolyte drink mix, even a blinkie on one occasion. Usually these non-money prizes are donated by sponsors or local sporting goods stores, so they tend to be sport-specific and sport-themed.
It turns out, though, that I’m a bit behind the times, as some tournament promoters have expanded the range of their prize offerings for women competitors to include vibrators.
Yes, that’s right. Vibrators.
At the recent Asturias Squash Championship tournament in Oviedo, Spain, the top four women received trophies, as did the top four men. But for the women, there was a little something extra for them: a vibrator for the winner, and for the others, either a hair removal kit or electric foot file.
An instagram photo of the trophies plus the other special prizes offered to the top women squash players.
From the article in Newsweek: The athletes wrote to the Royal Spanish Squash Federation demanding answers over the treatment, which they felt promoted sexism. The organization then instructed the local federation to launch a formal investigation, along with the Asturian Women’s Institute.
“We were very surprised, very shocked,” Sadó was quoted as saying by the BBC. “We think it’s very sexist. We wanted to explain it to everybody because we think […] there’s a lot of discrimination [against women in sport] and things have to change.”
It’s worth noting the various responses to their formal complaint.
From the regional federation: “It’s the height of sexism,” Maribel Toyos, a spokesman for the Asturias Squash Federation, was quoted as saying by Spanish daily El Pais. “We had no idea the women were going to receive these gifts.”
They appear to be shocked, shocked to discover this happened.
Then there’s the local club, whose officials actually went to all the trouble of selecting, obtaining and proffering the vibrator and depilatory aids. Here’s what they said:
“We understand the reaction and deeply regret this unacceptable incident,” said official statement signed by president Nacho Manzano and acting president Barbara Fernandez.
This is weird. It’s the kind of reaction you would have if say, a dog had gotten loose in the club and chewed their squash rackets. It’s as if it had nothing to do with them. And they joined everyone else in denouncing it as unacceptable.
There weren’t pictures of dogs eating squash rackets, but this dog apparent made a mess and then denied it by looking away.
Except they’re the ones that did the unacceptable thing, which required ill-intentioned forethought and planning.
Then comes the non-apology apology:
“The club reiterates its apologies to players, the Federation and people or entities offended by the discomfort caused by inappropriate gifts and that should never have been delivered.”
Let’s unpack this. They apologize to those offended by the discomfort caused by the inappropriate gifts; and then say they shouldn’t have been delivered.
First, they’re trying to put the blame on the gifts themselves, which strikes me as grossly unfair. I mean, some vibrator was just sitting around, minding its own business, when it gets bought by a sexist and malicious squash tournament promoter. That’s not its fault.
Second, vibrators aren’t inappropriate; people who buy vibrators as athletic tournament prizes for women athletes are inappropriate. Likewise the other products.
Finally, there’s the bit about “should never have been delivered”. Again, it’s a weird attempt to distance themselves, as if it’s the fault of UPS for delivering these items to the club for distribution.
It’s totally not this guy’s fault.
The responses all around are a tour de force of the passive voice.
But this wasn’t passive at all. It was actively mean, an attempt to humiliate women who had the temerity to excel in squash. Why didn’t the person whose idea this was take responsibility and say they were sorry? This is what I’d like to read:
Wow. Yeah, this was a total dick move on my part. I thought it would be funny. We all did. But of course it’s not— it’s insulting and demeaning. Squash is largely male, and I guess we haven’t owned up to how toxic this environment is for women. And here we are.
Now it’s time to apologize and get some help on making structural changes to squash organizations at the local, regional, and national level.
I am sorry I thought this, said this and did this. Our club will be sponsoring a free girls’ squash clinic every year, with the goal of recruiting girls into competitive squash and supporting them. We hope this program will be a first step in addressing the harms suffered by women in squash.
Now *that* would be a prize worth claiming.
Readers: have you encountered any misogynistic shenanigans like this in your competitive experiences? Let us know, and we will rain scorn down on the perpetrators and support you.
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/entertainment/stage/review/2018/10/13/the-wolves-is-a-gloriously-frank-and-intense-depiction-of-extraordinary-young-women/the_wolves_still.jpg?w=663&ssl=1)
