We blogged about MEC’s gendered gift giving advice, knives for men and blankets for women.
The post got tweeted and MEC responded.
Thanks!
Category: Uncategorized
Margaret’s plank challenge, Part Two (Guest post)
Margaret writes, “In spite of my injured ankle (which I’ve been walking, biking and doing yoga on for 5 months now), I intend to finish the plank challenge. Now at: 15 classes out of 20, 2 minutes holding plank, and 2 out of 3 social media posts. Yes, I can❣️🙏💪🏻
WarriorOne Yoga! Kim King Zamoff”
You can read Part One here.
Looking forward to Margaret’s full report at the end.
Margaret McLaren is a lover of yoga, travel, and social justice. She lives in Orlando Florida where she teaches philosophy, and sexuality, women’s and gender studies at Rollins College
‘Tis the season of gendered gift giving
Thanks Mountain Equipment Co-op.
Why do men need knives and women need blankets? What’s up with that?
Just give it a rest. Christmas is for people.
Margaret’s plank challenge (Guest post)
Margaret McLaren posted on Facebook: “I did it before, I can do it again: 20 classes in 30 days, hold plank for 3 minutes, and three social media posts. As of today: one post, 9 classes done, can hold plank for almost a minute 😃. #Warriorone #Warriorstrong Yes I can❣️ 🙏”
Love the photos and she’s promised us a full report after the fact!
Margaret McLaren is a lover of yoga, travel, and social justice. She lives in Orlando Florida where she teaches philosophy, and sexuality, women’s and gender studies at Rollins College.
Looking our age: Maybe we ought to, maybe it’s time?
If a group can’t be seen, they’re invisible. I think that matters and I’ve written about it in the context of bisexuality. (See Fashion and sexuality: Why recognition matters–that link is to the Wiley version but I’ve got a copy on the research repository here at Western–and here as well for my contribution to “Margins within the Marginal: Bi-invisibility and Intersexual Passing.”)
But how about age? I’ve written about midlife invisibility for women before on the blog. Here on the blog we are all about inclusion. Tracy has written, for example, about the importance of fitness imagery including older women. See here and here.
Does it make a difference though if the lack of recognition is because you are trying to hide? What if you’re not seen because you take steps not to be recognized? What if no one wants to represent the group of midlife women because all the midlife women are trying to look young? Sometimes I look around at university meetings and wonder, where are the senior women? Now sometimes, indeed often, that’s because there aren’t very many senior women. But also it’s because the women who are senior, don’t look it. They work hard to look younger than their years.
This issue is partly about recognition but it’s also about representation and responsibility.
I thought about that recently in the context of this article and this one from months ago.
The first, Working to Disarm Women’s Anti-Aging Demon, offers the case for letting go and looking older. “When women compete to “stay young,” we collude in our own disempowerment. When we rank other women by age, we reinforce ageism, sexism, lookism and patriarchy. What else we can we all agree on? This is one bad bargain. It sets us up to fail. It pits us against one another. It’s why the poorest of the poor, around the world, are old women of color.”
Ashton Applewhite, author of This Chair Rocks: Activism Against Ageism, writes, “So many women color their hair to cover the gray. Many resent the effort and expense, and it’s a major way in which we make ourselves invisible as older women. When a group is invisible, so are the issues that affect it. Suppose the world saw how many we are, and how beautiful, I mused. Suppose we morphed together, in solidarity: the Year of Letting Our Hair Go Gray! It would be transformative!”
The second describes women in their 40s and 50s and 60s as ageless, as having lots in common with teens and 20somethings when it comes to looks, style, and lifestyles. I think they referred to midlife women as “perennials.” Tracy blogged about the dilemma here. But surely there’s something distinctive about older women? Wisdom? Maturity? Fewer fucks left to give?
Like Tracy, I’m someone who looks younger than she is. Why? Four reasons I think.
I’m chubby and so my winkles don’t much show. They’re all plumped out with fat. See Oh no, skinny face! (I’ve gained weight again so there’s no more skinny face now. Phew?)
I’m an academic and while I like wearing serious clothes to work, I’ve never had to wear make up or pantyhose, or pumps. You know the trappings of gender normative professional middle age. They have passed me by. I’m not about to start figuring out foundation now.
I smile a lot.
And finally, and this connects with the article above, I colour my hair. The thing is, I always have. In the 80s it was short and spiky and blond. Then the spikes were coloured pink and purple. For years, I played with red hair colour. Lots of people even thought some version of that was my natural hair colour. It’s not. Now it’s blonde again. Back to the 80s.
Here’s 80s me (note the typewriter!) and 2016 me! The 80s fauxhawk is the 2016 undercut?
The thing is I come from a long line of hair colouring women. People asked when I started going blonde if I was doing it to match my mother’s natural colour.
She’s not a natural blonde, I replied. She’s been doing her hair blonde until it turned white.
I come from a line of youthful women. I think my mum looks beautiful in her 20s and in her 70s.
But why do we equate ‘youthful’ and ‘beautiful’? Why do I feel good when people get my age wrong. I’m not happy when they get other things about me wrong.
You’re too young to be Dean. No actually, I’m not. But these days I’m also finding myself wanting to be seen as who I am, a woman approaching her mid fifties.
About five years ago in New Zealand something odd happened. At the church we were attending there someone mistook me and my daughter for sisters and Jeff, my partner, for our dad. They weren’t joking and it was weird. I kind of liked it and I kind of felt odd about it. We’re only two years different in age. While he’s older, it’s not by much.
But if I look at the two of us, hair colour is the big difference. He’s got greying hair, these days with a white fluffy beard. Mine is highlighted blonde.
Since then I’ve made one concession to hair and age. I’ve stopped colouring the undercut and I’ve come to really like the way the silver looks.
For now, I’ll keep highlighting the top I think.
But I like the idea of going beautifully grey in my 60s. See How This 64-Year-Old Woman Learned to Love Her Gray Hair.
How about you? What do you think about aging and the politics of representation?
Oh, how the mighty have fallen: Step counting with a busted knee
This summer during the workplace step counting challenge I was averaging about 18,000 steps a day. Woohoo!
That was partly a matter of rising to the challenge but largely a matter of living in a very big house and owning a dog that needs walking.
These days though my goals are much, much smaller. I’ve injured my knee and it’s been painful to walk. Stairs are the worst but even flat surfaces take their toll.
I’m not supposed to do anything that irritates my knee so that means no stairs. As a result I’ve been hunting down elevators in all the buildings I work in. It’s been eye opening.
My Garmin sets a step goal for me based on what I’ve actually been walking. The idea is that it’s a challenge but not too big a challenge to be dispiriting. I laughed today though when I met my step goal at 3,998 steps.
Further, I met the goal while walking around a large suburban shopping mall on the Southwest side of Chicago.
My knee is getting better. I’ve seen the doctor. I’ve had an x-ray. Physio starts Tuesday. And in waiting for an MRI. Injury is part of an athletic lifestyle and I’m taking care of myself. Who am I kidding? Injuries are part of life, part of aging. The physio clinic says that inactivity and sedentary lifestyles are worse for arthiritic knees than movement.
And look, while mall walking I bought this new leather jacket. I love the faux fur collar. Life isn’t all bad.
OMG. Will I even make it? #217in2017, #PenguinofDetermination
I’m at 179. (Of 217 workouts that I’m aiming to complete in 2017.)
There are 53 days left in 2017.
I need to work out 38 times in 53 days which includes end of the university term and the holidays.
I like this “push to the finish” aspect of the 217 in 2017 challenge. For the past few years I’ve done a holiday season running streak starting on American Thanksgiving and going through until New Year. See My holiday run streak complete! and I might try streaking.
That’s always put me over the magic number. But bad knee means no running right now. I’m barely walking.
Will I even make it? Luckily there’s upper body weights and abs and knee physio and I might stick my bike on the trainer.
I’m enjoying the Penguin of Determination right now.
Everyday exercise: Does picking up 65 lb patio stones count?
For the last month I haven’t been riding my bike much on the weekends. Instead, Sarah, Jeff, and I have been getting the house ready to sell. That’s related to my new big job. And we’ve all been helping Jeff get his boat ready to be put away for the season. It’s all been pretty tiring work though and as usual, it’s got me wondering about exercise and what counts.
It reminds me too of growing up with parents who worked jobs that were at times pretty physically demanding. There is no need for end of day exercise when you’re on your feet baking all the day.
Two places prompted me to wonder about the status of physical work as exercise. Place one was personal training. I showed up and told Paul I was tired because I was up at seven that morning to pick up cement stones and bags of stone dust to go under the stones.
Who knew Home Depot was open at 7 am? (Contractors know.)
And then I told him I had to go back after we were done personal training to get more. I explained that the bags of stone dust weighed 50 lbs and the patio stones weighed 65 lbs. It wasn’t just lifting them once, of course. It was getting them from the shelf into the cart and then into the car and then out of the car onto the front lawn. He said he knew. He worked on his own house. He also joked that I didn’t need personal training.
The other place that prompted me to wonder what counts is the Facebook group 217 in 2017 where we pledge to exercise 217 times in 2017. I included the patio stones but I didn’t include boat washing. Hull scrubbing didn’t feel like exercise. I’m not sure why. And pressure washing definitely wasn’t a work out.
Do you have a physically demanding job? Does it count as exercise? Do you do things on the weekend like paint your house, install new patio stones? How go you think about it? I’m curious.
Sam isn’t sure about personal training but she’s going anyway
Shortly after I bought my first house, the phone rang. It was a salesperson asking if I’d considered “duck cleaning.” I declined his offer of one time free duck cleaning and laughed it off as something rich people must do.
Isn’t it okay if the ducks on the property are dirty? And further, we don’t even have ducks.
Of course it wasn’t duck cleaning at all. It was duct cleaning.
I tell you this story just so you can understand that in my mind there exists a category of actions that fall under the description, “things rich people do.”
And since I live in different financial world than the one I grew I up in, I sometimes struggle with whether these are things I want to do. To be clear, in the world I grew up in mostly people didn’t own houses, let alone houses with ducks. We rented apartments and then rented houses and it wasn’t until I was a teenager that my parents bought their first house.
My world is different. I’m on my second house, soon to buy another, and I got my first pedicure recently. That’s definitely on the “things rich people do” list.
What else is on the list that I haven’t tried? Car detailing. Having more bathrooms in your house than there are bedrooms. Catered dinners. Having clothes made for me. Having my make up done.
But also, there is personal training. It’s something that I sometimes have done but about which I remain ambivalent. I’m conflicted. It’s expensive.
My Y membership costs $50 a month. Personal training costs almost the same per hour. (Okay it’s not that bad. It’s $45 an hour but that goes down to $35 an hour if you book 10 sessions. But still.)
This isn’t my first time paying for personal training. I did way back when, when I started getting fit, at the age of 38, heading into my 40th birthday. That was the year, I lost 60 lbs and worked out a lot. I was triathlon training–running, swimming, and biking. I started weight lifting with a personal trainer named Randy at the Y. He was a big guy and a pretty serious lifter himself. He really enjoyed seeing me get stronger and faster and he liked that I wasn’t just running. Like lots of people who train primarily for strength he had a certain amount of disdain for thin running-only types. He taught me about interval training for speed and showed me how to perform some Olympic lifts. I loved that he taught me how to fail, how to drop weights rather than risk injury, and not worry about the fuss.
After a year or so of working out with Randy at the Y, I felt very much at home in the gym.
I did personal training again the year before my last sabbatical at a small studio close to campus. I wanted to arrive in Australia fast and fit since I was only there for a few months and didn’t want to spend the fist weeks getting into good enough shape to ride with my cycling friends there. But even then I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the choice. I still felt I ought to be able to go it alone.
I’m not claiming any special status to the items on my list of things rich people do. It’s an irrational list. After all, I pay someone else to colour my hair. That’s certainly expensive. I own expensive glasses and shoes. And don’t get me started on my favorite expensive hobby, cycling. There are bikes and shoes and cycling clothing and bike computers. All expensive.
But for some reason paying someone to work out with me feels like a self indulgent luxury. I don’t need someone to rack the weights for me. I don’t need someone to count reps or hand me the bar. In an ideal world, I’d be working with a training partner. But I don’t have that right now. I’d also love to train with a strength training club with a coach. But that’s not easily available. Bottom line is that I hate working out alone.
What do I like about personal training? It’s fun. It’s easy to just show up and have someone else make the plan. No motivation required. In that way it shares features with CrossFit and with the boxing gym. Someone else sets the workout. It also helps that someone else can help me work around my problem knees. It’s not the coaching I object to or the idea of expertise in this area. It’s the one on one part that makes me feel spoiled. Personal training feels halfway between physio and going it alone. Right now, me and me injured knee are happy with personal training.
Why does this make sense for me right now? Well, I’m super busy with work and the new big job. I’m worried about my knee. And I’m not paying for bike coaching at the moment. I’m seeing Tracy’s personal trainer Paul, Definitions Fitness who also works for this blog’s Kim, as well as for lots of other midlife women faculty members. He’s a great guy and I’m getting stronger. I like his focus on strength, not on my weight, and that feels good. I like being pushed to increase weights. He’s got lots of experience and he’s been doing this for years. Also, Paul’s studio is near my house, just 1.6 km away, so I bike there most times. If I was staying in London, I might even look at sharing the time with someone and going more often. It’s all good. It’s an indulgence but right now with all that’s going on, I’m okay with it.
As you can tell from this post, as someone who grew up in one set of financial circumstances but who lives in another, I’m challenged by choices.
I sometimes wonder if I could afford to pay other people to do things in my life, what things would I farm out? Definitely driving. I’d much prefer to be driven. Though, truth be told, I’m also happy biking and in transit. I think I just hate cars. Next up is cooking. I’d love to come home to dinner made for me.
Where does personal training fit on that spectrum for you? I seem to be drawn to it when I’m time crunched or I’ve got a specific goal or problem. Judging by my history I do it every three or four years or so for 6 months to a year. I guess I should be thankful and happy I can do it.
Knee pain, I hate you, but look, there’s our book
This blog isn’t all sweetness and light, glitter and unicorns, puppies and rainbows.
There are sad things, hard things in our lives too. And I’ve written about lots of those sad things. Mostly death and also about autumn sadness. See Struggling with September Sadness.
Nine years ago this week, my sister died and I still struggle. Since we started the blog, my father died and so did both of my parents-in-law.
See On counting almonds, searching for Devil’s Claw, and remembering Avis.
See On “special weather,” bike commuting, and missing certain people.
See One of the hardest parts of getting older.
The list goes on. Sarah’s mother, who I felt I was just getting to know, died. Rob’s mother died.
I also lost two dogs, one to cancer and the other drowned. That’s a lot of death. And I don’t have happy views about death. I think death is bad.
Despite holding a lot of dire views about death and its badness, and having very sad things happen, I’m generally a happy person. My cheerfulness is robust and irrational. I joke with my teenagers about hedonistic nihilism. None of it has any greater meaning but that doesn’t mean there isn’t beauty in the world and a lot of pleasure to be had along the way.
Lately though I’m less happy. And the twin causes of my misery are far less serious than death.
First, it was the hot flashes, accompanied of course by middle of the night dread and anxiety. That’s gotten better now I know what’s going on. No panic, less dread, I just go back to sleep.
Second, on came the knee pain. I’ve been struggling with knee pain for years. I’ve been doing physio for years. I ran the Pride 5 km with knee pain and I ride my bike from Toronto to Montreal with knee pain.
Lately though it’s been getting a lot worse. I’m still able to ride and I’m still able to hike. It hurts most at night, in bed. I can’t go to sleep and then when I get to sleep I wake up in pain. I’ve had an MRI. I’ve seen the knee surgeon.
It’s not really fixable. It’s osteoarthritis. Severe grade cartiledge degradation, is what the MRI showed.
I’m not anywhere near ready for knee surgery. Just ibuprofen, ice, and physio.
I’m in pain and I hate this.
So it’s back to physio. It’s not a particularly exciting training goal but my goal for this winter is focusing on minimizing knee pain. Woohoo!
I’ve been reading lots about the connection between menopause and osteoarthritis.
See Why More Women Have Osteoarthritis and Osteoarthritis associated with estrogen deficiency.
I wish I had more exciting news. Complaining about sore knees doesn’t make for the most exciting of blog posts.
As a result of my sore knees, I’m starting to get unsolicited advice from people about weight loss. Interestingly, I don’t hear that so much from medical professionals. The physio people say they see as many thin people for osteoarthritis as they do overweight people. They also worry, with good reason, that people who set out to lose weight often end up weighing more.
So, definitely physio. Maybe, maybe lose some weight. I don’t know. I’m going to keep riding over the winter, logging some hours on the indoor trainer too. I’ve also started weight training with a personal trainer. (I’ll blog about that too.)
On the bright side, I’m excited about our book!
Mark your calendars and hold the date. Saturday afternoon, April 28, 2 pm, at the Landon Branch of the London Public Library. See you there!
