Feminist reflections on fitness, sport, and health
It was July 5, but I missed it.
I didn’t miss my the photo of my friend Michaela rocking her bikini on July 6, though.
Nat has written about her bikini body H here and I have written about the challenges of finding good suits for different bodies H here and H here and showing off my own power suit H here
How much fitness is enough? At dance class last week, I did something that engaged all those lower ab muscles.
It has been ages since I had sore abs. I used to feel pretty good about feeling my abs because it meant I was working hard. Now, I am wondering whether I haven’t been working hard enough for a very long time, or whether my overall level of fitness is satisfactory (and therefore they don’t hurt).
And also, I’m almost 64 – who cares whether I have tight abs? If I’m honest, I do, sometimes, but I’m pretty sure no-one else even thinks about the state of my belly.
My Garmin tells me I have the fitness of an excellent 20 year-old. Aside from the grammar, what does that mean? Also, has Garmin ever considered talking to my knees? I’m pretty sure they would have a different story to tell, but that’s mostly because I have quad muscles that work way too hard.
I tried to find an amusing image of tight abs but the results were awful: diets, unrealistic workouts, probably photoshopped images. The least visually offensive was from a site with the word skinny in its name. If those are the role models, I’m definitely good, thanks!
I went out for dinner recently with two women who are dear to my heart but who didn’t know each other except as very casual acquaintances. I was privileged to watch it become a joyful celebration of girl power as the two spent a couple of hours talking about the martial art one loved and the other had loved but where she now was struggling to decide whether she ever wanted to take it up again.
I don’t do this sport. I have never even really wanted to do this sport. But I know just enough about it to follow along as they talked about all the issues that make the sport challenging for women:
Equipment that is hard to fit because of breasts and the difficulties of getting it adjusted because the people who make it are mostly men who don’t design for women’s bodies (though that is changing).
Equipment requirements put in place by men that make no sense for women (men absolutely need a cup for this sport, but a Jill is a hindrance and unnecessary).
The need many women have to be much more technical because they are fighting taller men with longer reach.
The different way many women process learning; they want more drills rather than just rushing in to bash their opponents and hope to learn something on the fly.
Representation matters! There were anecdotes about fan-girling over other women who do this sport, and the impact their presence on the field has made to women interested in giving it a try.
The feelings of inadequacy and discomfort with asking for help because you fear you are being a burden to others at practice.
The struggles to find time to practice because family responsibilities.
All the body issues: larger; shape has changed; returning after childbirth and years of raising that child; aging; injury.
It was joyful to listen to them talking through possible solutions. It was even more joyful to see them connect as they shared what aspects/positions/weapons forms they loved and why.
What was really striking was the universality of the issues. As these two near-strangers geeked out for hours, I could still join in with observations from the sports I do and the gender-based analysis work I used to do.
CONTENT WARNING: this post talks about Weight Watchers and medications used for weight loss.
We have been dissing Weight Watchers here for a long time, from Sam’s “I hate you, Weight Watchers” post more than a decade ago to my “Oprah: Eating Bread, Making Bread,” when Oprah took shares in the company and joined the board in 2016. It’s a business. Businesses are interested in making money. Oprah is a brand unto herself. She too is interested in making money.
The culture of weight loss and diet has a well-entrenched stronghold still today, but the oppositional voices are getting louder. Many of us here at the blog are fans of the Maintenance Phase podcast and host Aubrey Gordon’s book about weight loss myths. We’ve read Kate Manne’s Unshrinking and written about it. And we’ve consistently talked about body image, body acceptance, anti-diet perspectives, the disentangling of size and health, rejection of body-shaming — too many posts to count.
And so it was with interest and not a little bit of suspicion and skepticism that I tuned in to the Oprah/Weight Watchers YouTube livestream “event” the other day to find out what new message WW could possibly be peddling under the title: “Making the Shift: A New Way to Think about Weight.” Could they finally, finally be changing to a new narrative that, despite their brand, is NOT about weight loss?
We have been here before, where they have gone from “Weight Watchers” to “WW,” and where they have gone from “dieting” to “lifestyle” and “healthy habits.” None of these shifts has been enough to change their game entirely. I mean, in the end their users are joining to lose weight. What, I wondered, are they up to now?
The event started off inspiring confidence that maybe, just maybe, real change is afoot. Oprah, in her “girlfriend” way, started with a story of total humiliation during her first appearance on the Tonight Show in 1985, when Joan Rivers asked her how she gained “the weight” and had her promising to lose 15 pounds by the end of the show (after which she gained 25). She lamented her contribution to narratives of “weight loss success” over the years, including pushing liquid diets as a path to weight loss. She claimed that one of her career lowpoints, about which she is filled with regret, is that time she rolled a cart of fat equalling in weight the fat she’d lost, onto her stage.
But in her preamble, right after she told her stories, she identified obesity as a “disease” for which no one should carry shame. We should all, she said, love our bodies. She listed of a range of possible ways to go, none of which anyone is obligated to pursue. You do not deserve to be shamed, she said, “whether you choose to start moving more, whether you want to eat differently, whether you want to change your lifestyle, whether you want to take the medications, or whether you choose to do absolutely nothing.” To be satisfied the way you are, where you are, is totally “up to you.” Then the CEO of Weight Watchers, Sima Sistani, came on and apologized for her company’s contribution to diet culture and the harm it has caused to the people who did not reach their goals on their program.
This “event” is part of a series of media moments paving the way for Weight Watchers to start promoting the use of weight loss medications. This is not brand new news, but it was news to me. And I have to say, if you had asked me to predict that “we should all love ourselves without shame” would end up at “and if that includes taking medications to lose weight so you can conform to the cultural standard for acceptable bodies,” I would not have landed there.
With the diet/points program failing to help people achieve long-term weight loss (because diets don’t work), it had two choices: become irrelevant or start encouraging people to take medication. I’ve had it pointed out to me that in some ways this strategy is more on point with the truth of what is required for successful weight loss. And that may be the case.
What I find most egregious about the live-stream is the mixed messaging. I have never thought that the only reason diet culture is harmful is that it’s almost impossible to lose weight and keep it off. That is a harm, to be sure, if people are going to continue to chase an unattainable goal and support the industry that promotes it. But I continue to think that more serious harm is that it reinforces the idea that the only acceptable body type is slimmer. Whether through diet or exercise or medication, weight loss is still the goal. Are we resigned to maintaining this picture and keeping weight loss as a life goal?
This tweak to the weight loss narrative adds a further layer of personal responsibility onto a problem of cultural harm. Keep in mind too that the drugs work by making it easier to consume fewer calories. So in the end, they reinforce the connection between calorie intake and weight gain or loss, thus offering credence to the view that dieting would work but for the dieter eating more than they “should.”
If we could rewrite that conversation with Oprah and Joan Rivers, the gist of it would still be that Oprah should lose the weight, and if that means taking the meds, then take the meds. But is it not more concerning still, is it not, that Joan Rivers felt she had the right to call out Oprah’s size (at all, nevermind so publicly on national television)? Of course Oprah has now very publicly affirmed her use of the new weight loss drugs, like Ozempic, for the purposes of weight loss. And these have now been built into Weight Watchers’ business plan.
It’s tricky of course. No one wants to say we don’t have choices, and that if people opt for a certain choice that’s their business. But there is a tension in broadening the range of pathways to body-acceptance to include new forms of weight loss. It falls into the same category of tension, I think, as anti-aging cosmetic procedures like fillers and surgeries. The more people opt for these “treatments,” the more the prizing of youthful appearance and the rejection of aging faces and bodies remains the normative standard. Does that mean these things shouldn’t be available as options? No. But does it mean that there would be less harm and more opportunity for a healthier and more realistic range, if fewer people chose them. And it would be better if we didn’t feel that normative pressure so strongly. But it’s tough to be an outlier and it takes energy, effort, and awareness to reject the messaging.
To me Oprah + Weight Watchers + weight loss meds is a scary trifecta. The mixed messages have hit a new low. Their contribution to the fear of being fat has not stopped. It has simply evolved with the times to generate a new and profitable income-stream.
I have terrible posture. I know that my slouching shoulders and downward gaze are directly related to the sore neck and back that have plagued me most of my adult life.
Thirty years ago I started to realize that I didn’t need to hunch over to hide my breasts. And yet… it has been (and remains) a huge struggle to undo the habit that came with with being a bigger girl in a world where role models were stick-thin.
Good posture would help me with all my fitness activities, especially dance and horseback riding. It’s really hard to engage your core properly if one half is stretched and the other half is squished.
It will be increasingly important as I age. A strong, straight spine will help with balance (and lower the risk of falls). It helps maintain a wider range of motion, increased lung capacity, and reduce pain.
Changing the habit is at least as much mental as physical. I do all my little stretches and rolling my shoulders down and back, but what really works for me is visualization. A favourite dance teacher used to tell my class to stand up straight and show off our jewels. The double entendre always made us giggle, but we did make an effort to look a bit more like this:
Imagining myself as a real queen helps too – my favourite is Queen Latifah. She looks so tall and confident in every picture I can find. Look for yourself and you too will be exclaiming “Queen!”
Remembering to hold my head a little higher and pull my shoulders down and away from my ears makes me feel more like a Queen!, or at least a queen. I can feel my abdominal muscles lengthening and engaging the moment I sit or stand up straight. I even get a little smile going.
I hope I have at least another 30 years to work on wearing that imaginary crown and showing off those jewels.
On Sunday, my world got just a little darker when one of my oldest friends died suddenly.
I first met Jennifer 37 years ago in the context of a medieval group I belong to. She was one of the first people I knew who broke the second-wave stereotypes of feminism. She was married for over 40 years to Henry. She studied classics at university. She loved to cook, garden and do textile crafts. She was a woman of faith who shared her love of music with her church community.
She also worked in the high tech industry, then moved on to run her own business as a career coach. She was a fierce defender of rights – for the disabled, for the LGBTQ community, for visible minorities. She taught me my example about grace, tolerance and the value of diversity.
On the fitness side, it was more complicated. Jennifer never looked stereotypically fit, and she had mobility issues, but did do her stretches and some yoga, in addition to gardening. In the spirit of this blog, she did what she could and accepted herself as she was. And she was pleased that I was contributing here.
In recent months, and despite all her precautions, COVID caught Jennifer. She had some long COVID symptoms and then a series of “cardiac events” and died less than 48 hours later. Was it COVID related? I don’t know.
I do know is the world has lost a big-hearted and generous soul. This will be the reality for all us aging feminists going forward, no matter how fit we try to be.
I have to say, every month as I settle in to write my blog post, I realize I am about to write about something that might seem totally unremarkable to many of our blog readers. I am, in fact, a work in progress when it comes to my relationship with activity, and with my body. I have written before about my mixed-relationship with exercise.
The truth is, I really value my monthly post here, for the opportunity to reflect. Since I was a never “good at sports,” I pretty much avoided using my body when I could. When I did use it, it was either painful physically or the experience challenged my self-confidence emotionally. So THANK YOU to Sam and Tracy for creating this space, and making it an inclusive one where people like me can share our less-than-glorious experiences with sport.
Recently I’ve told you about hiking at elevation (Thoughts on a New Hiker Hiking at Altitude), about skating (Back On the Ice for a Moment) and about tackling (and vanquishing!) the challenge of a giant staircase every morning On Gender, Stairs and Finding the Progress Where I Can). This month, my accomplishment came on a mat – I went to a yoga class!
Like many middle-aged, white women, I have heard about the wonders of yoga for a long time. Years ago I went to a few classes and got entirely overwhelmed by them. I wasn’t so wise then, and set myself up for failure by going to drop in classes where I was WAY out of my depth. And I gave up.
But last week, I went to a yoga class at my workplace. My employer provides the class and my colleagues were very encouraging with gentle invitations for a few weeks. So I got brave and went. My workplace has been quite stressful for me, and I thought if nothing else I would lay on the mat and breathe.
Well, let me tell you readers, that is NOT what I did. In fact, I did all the moves. I kind of rocked it, at least in my head 😊. I definitely wobbled a whole bunch and more than once looked up and realized I was bending when I was meant to be standing or something… but still. I managed to plank a bit. I downward-dogged along with everyone. I child-posed when I needed to. I even lizard-ed. I LOVED IT.
I have talked about my hip surgeries before – I’ve had 2 repairs in 3 years. This was quite a moment of excitement for me – my hips were a little sore afterwards, but now 4 days later I can say that they are totally fine. WOW. And it was fun. The teacher was kind and encouraging of everyone to go at their own pace.
So, as soon as I got back to my desk, I signed up for next week’s class. And I intend to be back every week that it’s running. I hope I can find the teacher off-campus and maybe attend another of her classes. Me at yoga? Wow.
A recent CTV article was very excited about a new Disney short called Reflect, about a young ballet dancer named Bianca, and its body positivity message. As the resident fat ballerina on this blog, I had to watch it.
Hilary Bradfield, the creator, says “I feel like I’m a body positive person in principle, but when it’s on a personal level, it’s a lot harder to be body positive. I feel this deeply: despite repeated self-talk, I sometimes hate how I look.
It’s so short that the introduction by the creator was almost as long as the film itself so I watched it several times. I wanted to love it. The animation itself was well-done. It had the kind of uplifting Disney “girl overcomes barriers and has a happy ending” story that makes me smile.
But somehow it didn’t, quite. Was it too short to engage me? Too unrealistic? I think it was the latter, which is deeply weird; it’s Disney – of course it’s unrealistic!
Bianca was too small/young to be dancing en pointe (kids should be at least 12 or so to prevent permanent damage to growing bones). Triple pirouettes are hard. And she was so round compared to the stick figure dancers in her class! Those other kids would not have been able to stand in real life, let alone dance.
In some ways, I wanted Bianca to do more ordinary things and be happy, and her classmates and teacher to at least notice her. I know that wouldn’t have been as much of a Disney story that satisfies kids.
But maybe it would have resonated more with adult fat ballerina me who has already learned not to notice anything in the mirror except posture and position. The fat ballerina who will never be any good dancer, but who loves dancing anyway.
I hear that others love Reflect and see themselves in Bianca. I am curious about what you think. Am I putting too much onto the shoulders of this young dancer to be a role model but also somewhat ordinary? What is the right balance of expectations for a plus sized or otherwise different person with talent?
Happy July! I hope you’re enjoying your summer as much as I am, or at least as much as I’m trying to.
I have pretty much let go of trying to get to my aquafit classes for summertime. I am sorry about that, since that’s ultimately the best way for me to get a “good” workout right now. I guess by good I mean my heartrate in the cardio zone on my Fitbit and getting me really out of breath. That’s the feeling that I’ve avoided since I was in Grade 1 and first got assigned a “morning run” (I wrote about that here). I’m afraid of that intense feeling, honestly, but I have also been able to enjoy it for the first time this year, as I wrote about back in spring.
So… I’m not getting to my “gym,” to get that intense feeling, because I’ve been busy! I’ve spent two of the past five weeks camping at my beloved Pinery Provincial Park. In that same five weeks, I’ve also played two concerts and a festival with my band – more than seven performances.
All of that, plus dog walking and gardening, has kept me pretty active and I’m trying to applaud my activity, while remembering my longer term goals are just that – long term – so they are not defined by a two month period. Also, I’m still only eight months out from arthroscopic hip surgery, my second in two years.
In late September 2021 I had a “rim trim” and labral repair on my left hip. Apparently I have “deep” hip sockets; in photographs my labrum looked like a feather, completely shredded to nothingness. I had the same surgery in 2019 on my right side, and that surgery gave me relief from a debilitating level of pain. My left side was already less of a problem, but the surgeon felt that since my right side had improved, the left was also likely to benefit.
The repair involves cutting away all the damaged cartilage and then cutting a ‘notch’ in my hip socket to allow my femur to swing more freely…Sounds intense right? It is, but honestly my life is SO much improved! And it just keeps getting better. That is, I just keep feeling better. I hiked 16km one day in June, and I was basically just fine. I’m finding, in fact that I’m much more comfortable after hiking and camping than after a week at my desk teaching online.
All of that is to say that I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t continued with my intensive cardio, but I am sure thrilled I can enjoy and be really active in other ways. I had to take this photo of the staircase on the hike I took in June. I ROCKED IT in a way that I could never have before my hip repairs!
I also really enjoyed being to give five performances in three days at the Home County Festival without having to pop Tylenol-3s and Advil as I have in the past… Most of all though, I’m working on that mental shift – seeing my behaviours, my activity and my body as my own. I’m about to embark on a cross-continental driving trip to Alberta and British Columbia to hike and see my family. I don’t know how far up those BIG mountains I can get, but I sure look forward to telling you about it!
For now, here is a photo of me with my husband, having a great time at the Home County Music and Art Festival. I hope you enjoy the rest of your summer.
It is summer swim season! I know this because I see on my Facebook feed “beach body” memes and a dramatic uptick in swimsuit advertising.
I normally don’t pay much attention to swimwear ads because swimsuits are not that important to me. However, I can understand the appeal of shopping online: no store assistants, no dressing rooms, no drama with wrestling with ill-fitting suits.
But this year, I have noticed that a few swimwear ads that feature either 3D-drawn images or the actual suits put on photoshopped-out mannequins. I don’t remember seeing before ads with these hovering bodies that are legless, armless, torsoless.
Tracy has noticed how the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated gives women equal opportunity to be objectified. Obviously that’s not good. If sexified suits objectify women regardless of age, and if a steady diet of these images still perpetuates body ideals, then is no body in the swimsuits our inclusive and evolved solution?
The decision to dis-embody models in these ads is likely far more economic than activist: I’m sure it’s cheaper to use realistic pictures or torso mannequins than to hire real people, and shoppers may have an easier time imagining themselves in the suit without a real body in it for comparison.
And maybe I’m making too much of these ads, but they weird me out. They make me think of Kevin Bacon as the Hollow Man in a tankini. The disembodied swimsuit model–as imperfectly resembling a human being in a way that causes “uneasiness and revulsion”–should be added to the graph visualizing the uncanny valley hypothesis.
From my feminist perspective, the no-body in these ads is not equivalent to everybody: it removes the one thing people need to wear these suits in the first place. These ads may avoid replicating images of so-called ideal bodies, but they also remove the bodies people have–complete with colour, fat, wrinkles, blemishes, scars, and hair. Ironically, the absence of real bodies features the ultimate normative body, one that is stripped of all uniqueness of size, shape, and mobility differences. In the case of the leaky, hysterical cis-female body so feared and scorned by patriarchy, what body is more “perfect” than the one that does not exist at all?
I tried to find answers to my questions (except the last one, which was rhetorical) with more Internet. While many web articles give advice on purchasing swimsuits by size, fit, fabric, style, cost, coverage, quality, versatility, quality, and “features” (like pockets), none described whether I should buy online a suit modelled by a real but photoshopped body or by an invisible but perfect fake body. I did notice that a few articles–such as Teen Vogue and TripSavvy–used these body-less swimsuit images in their feature banners as well.
For the record, in all this web searching I did notice more body-diverse swimwear than I have seen in the past. After staring at row upon row of swim-suited no-bodies, I was comforted and excited by these all-too-human ads.
Then, I realized that online shopping has its own trappings, and I closed my laptop altogether. Maybe going into an actual store to try swimwear on my own body is looking not be so bad after all.
