Dimensions of the Gaze: Lessons from Cambodia

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I could feel them immediately, the swarm of eyes gawking at me from every crevice of the airport the moment I set foot out of the plane. The stares were heavier on my body than the broiling summer heat even! I was travelling alone in Cambodia for two months, this part of the world I had never been before, and I had never felt quite so exotic in my entire life until that experience (and I have never felt that exotic since). Regardless of where I went, I was a spectacle. In “Staring: How We Look,” Rosemarie Garland-Thompson notes that, “The force of curiosity makes something into a curiosity” (64). Everywhere I went in the country I was met with people asking to take pictures with me and sometimes people asking to take picture of me. I was met with double-takes, pointing, staring, whispering and comments and questions of all flavors. Suddenly I would feel people’s hands plunged deep into my hair or swabbing my skin with their fingers to see if the black rubbed off. I even had awkward encounters with strange old men asking for my hand in marriage. It was as if my sun stained skin made me a lightbulb and they were moths so fascinated with my glow they could not help but be hypnotized, as if they could not help but want to engage with me.

Naturally, at first I was taken aback by my hyper visibility, but over time I became desensitized to it and even amused by it. The kind of gaze that was most often bestowed upon me while I was there was one of curiosity and of first exposure to an African person. It did not feel the same as the time when I was in a Walmart in New Jersey, waving and making doughy eyes at a cute toddler and her mother jerked her away. It did not feel the same as when I was wandering the streets of New York City and had a man throw his head out of the window and make slurping noises at me as he sped past. It did not feel the same as the kind of gaze I have slanted (and jerked away when I was caught) so many times at a homeless person sleeping on the A-Train in New York City or at a mentally ill person behaving in ways I did not expect on that same subway train or all these other forms of the gaze that left me aware of my social place as a black woman in the West or rendered someone else an object in my eyes with no hope of becoming subject.

The difference was that most of the encounters I had in Cambodia almost always ended in an interaction of some kind, whether it was people waving at me, or stumbling through our language barrier to ask me questions about my hair or about where I come from, or even something as simple as holding my gaze and smiling when I turned to look back. Do not get me wrong, I did not enjoy feeling strange or alien or “other,” and at times even feeling like an object of entertainment, but still, there was something different about the gaze that was an invitation to engage, a doorway to seeing the other beyond the eye.

Funnily enough, I spent much of my time in Cambodia critical of my own “Western Gaze” as a tourist in Cambodia. All the staring I experienced was juxtaposed with my own staring. I was brought to a place of deep reflection on being a tourist, and my own gaze on this place and its people, who to my western eye were mythical almost, objectified, exoticized - “orientalism as consumption of the East by the West without contributing to it” as described in a blog post by the Crunk Feminist Collective. I thought about the photographs practically gushing out of my camera of sacred temples, and monks, and festivals and floating villages, and a families on motorbikes. I thought about the visits to orphanages that were offered to tourists like me, as if they were museums. Few of those instances of gazing opened up avenues for interaction, and thus for a humanizing of the Cambodian people I was looking at.

There is an obscured power dynamic that exists in averting one’s gaze or in the disengaged stare, the detached and distant observing anthropological eye. Garland-Thompson remarks that while curiosity is “a blunt instrument…[it] overtakes; it mows down and gobbles up the object of its contemplation,” it is also a possible entrance into vulnerability and relationship that “puts one in another’s face”(65). The West’s fear of curious staring, preoccupied with politeness and is residue of historical middle class norms of propriety, makes is so that, “To stare, then, is to barge into someone else’s place, prying into someone else’s life,” (65). In other words, curiosity and looking remain an uninvited invasion into someone else’s world which ensures that the one who has been looked at remains an object of curiosity, and that the one averting the gaze has power over the interaction which makes him/her a subject. The gaze that seeks to probe without wishing to interact with and know the other as a subject is a gaze of power.

How much Muscle Can a Bodybuilder Build?

Well, turns out it depends on if you're competing in Women's or Men's.

Recent class discussions have centered around athletes: the rules their body must follow, or the behaviors they must perform to avoid others questioning their gender and place in their chosen sport. The way in which these athletes bodies’ “true nature” have come into question -- for being too masculine to be considered a woman, or too feminine to be a man -- made me question what the response would be to a feminine body that falls severely out of bounds. How do female bodybuilders navigate standards of gender performance and “authenticity”? Is women’s bodybuilding perhaps an arena where a woman’s body can defy all the usual specifications to “be a woman”? Question in mind, I sought an answer. What I found is: both yes and no, as in “yes, she can defy many of specifications for womanhood but that doesn’t mean there are no specifications”. Because I spent quite a bit of time researching this (I knew very little about bodybuilding, except that it involves a lot of muscles), I think a walkthrough is in order.

Iris Kyle, 2014 Ms. Olympia x

So: women’s bodybuilding. Not really something you see broadcast every day on ESPN or whatever your network tv station might be. It exists in the “public consciousness” -- that is, I would hazard to say that most all of us know that it is a sport, and people participate in it. In their own community, both men and women’s bodybuilding have strong followings, with international competitions, magazines, and all of those such things common to sports. So, knowing that it exists, and is an arena where women can have enormous muscles, incredibly strong physiques, and still have a strong fanbase, I was intrigued about how these women’s bodies might fit into the conversations of our class.

Women’s bodybuilding is said to evolve out of combination of things including “strongwomen” circus acts, and “physique competitions” (bikini shows and swimsuit contests, really) that took place alongside men’s bodybuilding, and men’s bodybuilding itself. The first official women’s bodybuilding competition took place in 1977, with the judging criteria being, at least in writing, the same as in the men’s division: muscular development, symmetry, and physique presentation. From then, the sport grew, with the Ms. Olympia, an offshoot of Mr. Olympia (think buff 80’s Arnold Schwarzenegger) competitions being the main venue. Supposedly due to low popularity, Ms. Olympia was discontinued 2014, after which the Wings of Strength Rising Phoenix World Championships took its place. This quick history is more elaborately laid out in this article from Muscle-Insider, which briefly discusses the stars of women’s bodybuilding, and not surprisingly, the importance of magazine covers spreads (and a woman’s marketability) in the survival of the sport. So, take away Number One: to become a star in the sport, from the very start, a woman has have both muscles and sex appeal.

Strong, but still gotta be sexy...
Cover of the 1997 edition of Women's Physique World, a magazine covering
female bodybuilding and fitness from 1984 to 2006. 

This requirement apparently hasn’t changed, which judging criteria still allowing for marks to be taken off for cellulite of stretch marks, bad hair, or poorly done makeup, and marks added for poise and grace. Women’s bodybuilding clearly has a “beauty contest” aspect of it that extends much further than the “muscular development, symmetry, and physique presentation” that defines beauty in the men’s category. Female bodybuilders are both required to be muscular, and retain a “feminine” form. This goes as far as the encouragement of breast implants, with many competitors opting to get them to score better for their “feminine” form. Women also can be big and muscular, but not too big and muscular: in 2004, the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness (IFBB) passed a resolution stating that all female athletes “decrease the amount of muscularity by a factor of 20%”. With my suspicion that male bodybuilders’ size correlates to masculinity, I would hazard to say that perhaps the IFBB saw female bodybuilders as becoming too “unfeminine”, and too close to the men -- perhaps threatening a blurring of category boundaries. And here I think we can find Number Two: female bodybuilders must have a feminine body (read, breasts, makeup, nice hair, curves) to compete and succeed, and they can’t be so big that they might be masculine.

Look at all that muscle. I wonder, at what point, does a bodybuilder like him become too muscular?
                Phil Heath, Mr. Olympia 2014 x

So, women’s bodybuilding: a sport where women can be muscular? Yes. A sport where women can be masculine? No. This places female bodybuilders in an interesting spot. Outside of the bodybuilding community, they are gender outlaws, violating all of the expectations that a woman be small, soft, weak (and on and on, we know the drill), but inside the community, their femininity must be closely monitored in order to succeed, and even compete, in their sport.

Overall, a disappointing answer. It would be nice to have at least one arena in which a woman be simply be an athlete, and not a “woman” first. However, looking into women’s bodybuilding a couple of things certainly have caught my interest. Firstly,  the way that it stretches beauty standards beyond the norm, and secondly, the darker side of this: the fetishization of women’s muscles, and muscular women -- something that seems to be detectable in the treatment of female bodybuilders and fitness models by fans and media. It figures that asking one question would lead to several more. Perhaps at some point I will find the space to find the answers -- unfortunately, that might have to wait until another post.   

Throwing Like a Boy

Cy Perry

Professor Shaw 

WGSS 275

12/1/2016

Throwing like a Boy 

As a young boy, my parents have always told me that they think I will one day play baseball professionally. From the early days that I first began walking, my father has continuously made it a priority that I have a ball of some sort in my hands. My father and mother were both extremely athletic, (or at least through the stories of their “glory days” one would assume they were athletic), and have always been adamant about me playing sports throughout my lifetime. Through some trial and error, (a grueling experience with soccer and swimming), I picked out three sports that I thought I would want to play the rest of my life. Baseball, football, and basketball were my entire childhood growing up. Practices, games, and more importantly, pretending to be Kobe Bryant in my drive way as I played on a seven foot basketball hoop. As most everyone knows, kids starting at a young age clearly do not have a filter when it comes to what it is that comes out of their mouths. Calling someone a sissy if they mess up or are scared, or the most common of them all, “you throw like a girl.” This tends to create a sort of habit, more common in young boys I am sure, that is not easily dropped with the aging process. Since I am now playing college baseball, a male only sport, I think it should be appropriate that I touch on the topic of what it is to “throw like a girl.

The article written by Iris Mason Young entitled, “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology off Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality,” speaks out on what the issues are with the habit that is clearly still around. This article focuses on the issues there is with the naming of an issue with mechanics not only throwing, but other aspects of sports such as running and toughness in sports beginning at a young age. Obviously this article basically destroys what it means to “throw like a girl” and digs further into the other issues with other actions similar to that of the shaming of doing something in a feminine way. However, that is not what caught my eye in this article. There is a paragraph on page 139 of the article that made me as a male reader, really contemplate what it is our sex is doing when we say a term such as throwing like a girl. 

The last full paragraph on page 139 explains what it is that this article is going to be doing and how it is going to be shown. There is a section of this paragraph that stood out to me. When Young mentions that the reason little girls and even grown women are forced into doing things a certain way is, “… it traces in a provisional way some of

 the basic modalities of feminine body comportment, manner of moving, and

 relation in space. It brings intelligibility and significance to certain observable

 and rather ordinary ways in which women in our society typically comport

 themselves and move differently from the ways that men do.” After I read this, I began to think back on some of the other issues we had talked about previously in this class. Women’s bodies, how they do things, and the reasons why the social norms have created these specific and simple issues, like walking or throwing a ball, it all became clear why it is that women are given this crude image when regarding doing things. It is simply because societal norms have created a specific norm for women. Body norms and the ideal body that we have talked about previously, were the first thing that came to mind. Especially considering the Farrell article that talked about the fat body, I found this connection important. 

Young is saying that the reason women throw like they do and do other things the way they do, is because of issues we see regarding the woman body. The fat and uncivilized body shaming that Farrell hits on, is a main reason for the somewhat awkward way a typical woman throws. Farrell uses examples of women contorting and doing grueling things to make sure they do not gain the extra space that fits into the category that is considered fat. They all constantly asked to take up as little as space as possible. The stereotypical way a girl throws and walks is very compact compared to that of a male. The connection between the social norm of smallness and the way that women think is the correct way corresponds exactly. Women basically have no choice in the way they throw because since the day they were born, they were taught to follow the social norm that has created the issues we have ere today.

However, there have been multiple exceptions, just like there are in males as well, that do not conform to the norm. Stand outs have always been an interesting issue to look at. Like we've discussed in class as well, Little League World Series star Mo’ne Davis is undoubtedly one of these standouts. Mo’ne was a dominant force throughout the world series and to simply put it, was better than the boys (here is a link to one of her games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhyb0KrPECc) . She simply went against everything that she was ever taught as a young girl and simply followed her dreams to become one of the best all around athletes we've seen on television in this era. She not only was a dominant pitcher, but she played arguably the most position on the field (shortstop) when she wasn't striking out her opponents. Simply put, she was a force to be reckoned with. Mo’ne is now a freshman on her high school basketball team, where she of course plays varsity. Mo’ne not only should be an example to those little girls everywhere trying to prove that women can be athletic too, but she should be a role model to any young athlete trying to become as best as they can at a game they love, boy or girl. Maybe Mo’ne could have taught some of the boys she played with how to throw like a girl.

From Freaks to Heroes: A New Cultural Narrative for Disabled Bodies

The Oxford Dictionary defines a ‘hero’ as a person

who is admired for their courage, outstanding

Josh Sundquist

achievements, or noble qualities. According to Kathie Lee and Hoda of the Today Show, the Paralympic skier Josh Sundquist is granted heroic status. Sundquist lost his leg as a child to Ewing’s sarcoma and has since become a bestselling author and motivational speaker, alongside being a Paralympian. In a news segment, Kathie Lee and Hoda praise Sundquist for crafting creative halloween costumes that embrace his disability. After presenting a series of images of Sundquist as a flamingo, the “Christmas Story” lamp, a gingerbread man with one leg bitten off and a table soccer player, the hostesses position him as an inspiration and ultimately label him a hero. While I do not doubt that Sundquist’s positive attitude surrounding his disability is beneficial to a large community of individuals who struggle with embracing their bodies, I am hesitant to accept the mainstream narrative that circulates around disability in American culture. Suggesting that fashioning a flamingo halloween costume is equivalent to an outstanding achievement seems laughable in comparison to the multitude of accomplishments that have made a life-changing impact. For example, prominent figures, such as Harriet Tubman, who are incredibly influential and whose actions have changed the world seem to be more aligned with the hero that is outlined by the term’s definition. I am not suggesting that individuals who live with a disability should not be recognized for overcoming a challenging situation, but I would like to emphasize that language used by mainstream media constructs a very specific illustration of individuals with disabilities.

Physical disabilities have been the site of a massive amount of prejudice and oppression. Professor Susan Schweik outlines the horrendous implementation of “ugly laws” throughout America’s history to showcase how perceptions and understandings surrounding disabilities have been shaped by law enforcement and popular discourse. Additionally, Eli Clare, a speaker and activist, explores the development and influence of the freak show, while also emphasizing how language can function to marginalize individuals. Both Schweik and Clare make it clear that an individual with a visible disability is immediately discriminated against and considered ‘less than’. Considering this historical foundation, it is surprising to see a recent increase in disabled individuals gaining visibility within mainstream media. GLAAD, a media advocacy organization for the LGBTQ community, released a report earlier this year that found that televisual representations of disabled individuals have almost doubled since last year. While characters with disabilities still constitute a small majority of prime-time television actors (1.7%), it is important to recognize that numbers are rising. While this should be noted as a positive development, I find it necessary to examine how this historically marginalized group is being placed within a new cultural narrative and what this shift in discourse means for our contemporary perceptions of disabled individuals.

Artie Abrams from Glee

With just a glance at popular media, it is clear that television, film, and advertisements, among other mediums, present a narrow depiction of disabled individuals. Overwhelmingly, the disabilities showcased in the media are limited to individuals in wheelchairs or those who require crutches or braces. Occasionally, an individual with a missing limb obtains recognition, but like every other disabled individual represented by the media, they are typically white and come from a privileged background. Television character’s such as Artie Abrams from Glee or Walter White Jr. from Breaking Bad do not entirely challenge the “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed...unsightly or disgusting object” that American ugly law’s sought to remove from public view. Even advertisements, such as Honey Maid’s “How to Make Apple and Cheddar Melts” commercial or Target’s catalogue that features a young girl

Walter White Jr. from Breaking Bad

with crutches and leg braces, contribute to the narrow perception that all individuals with disabilities are in wheelchairs or require crutches,rather than individuals like Victoria Ann Lewis, an American performer, whose disability was marked on her body through her different-sized legs. Popular media tends to produce a single representation of what it means to live with a disability. While I hope to see more and more individuals who utilize wheelchairs and crutches become celebrated by mainstream media, there still remains a massive disparity in the representation of other types of disabilities that may stray more from what we expect abled-bodies to look like.

Little People, Big World

Even when bodies that are more visually divergent emerge in popular cultural discourse, they continue to be positioned within a heteronormative framework and are still often treated as spectacle. For example, TLC’s television series Little People, Big World, centers on an a heterosexual, white, financially successful couple who seek to live a normal life in spite of their dwarfism. The show’s main attraction is its ability to produce a feel good story of people who experience strife, but beat the odds anyway. Just as Sundquist was labeled a hero for his creativity in regards to costume making,the “little people” on Little People, Big World are praised for their everyday accomplishment and are leveraged to create a spectacle out of ordinary activities, such as driving a car or going to the grocery store. Not only is the media responsible for painting a limited illustration of what an individual with disabilities looks like, but it also continues to frame anyone with disabilities - as long as they are white, upper-middle class, and heterosexual - as a hero. Media representations of disabled individuals are changing the way we think about disability and are creating a new cultural narrative. The impact that ugly laws and freak shows have made on our assumptions of disabled individuals may be diminishing as the media attempts to become more and more inclusive, but it is crucial to realize that popular cultural images continue to represent a selective collection of bodies.

Realizing Gender Differences in Sports

footybedsheets.tumblr.com

When I was younger, my best friend’s name was Harry. He lived up the street, and as the product of wealthy parents that had no other children, Harry had a plethora of toys and sports equipment. During the summer months, we hiked up to the field near his house, bat and baseball in hand, and set up bases around the field. With barely enough players to suffice as a “team,” our fathers played outfielders, and it was more about how powerful Harry or I could hit the ball, or if we could potentially achieve a home run. I loved baseball. I was only eight years old and hadn’t realized—yet—that I lived in a society that more or less prevented girls from playing the sport, instead making them join softball teams where the ball was literally softer, perhaps suggesting more delicacy for the “weaker” sex. This was one of the pivotal moments in my childhood that gave me a better understanding of men and women’s roles in athleticism.  I don’t really remember ever playing baseball again, but I was housing a deep anger within my veins that was never quite extinguished—who was it that ultimately “decided” women couldn’t play baseball? Why was I so upset? Was this the moment, my development into adolescence, that would forever separate me from enjoying athletics with my friends like Harry?

From what we have read recently in class, there is a lot of commentary on the body in terms of male and female performance in sports. I wanted to explore this area of research in this blog because in my opinion, sports reinforce the binary of male/female, thus excluding other attributes, and furthermore hit very close to home in terms of favoritism of male athletes. Author Erica Rand, in “Court and Sparkle,” writes that:

underexamined notions about gender criteria pervade sport, beginning with the principle on which policies and debates about the participation of transgender athletes most publicly rest: that sex segregation is the foundational criterion of fairness in competitive, and often even recreational, athletics…this principle is unfair from the start because…it erases and excludes people who do not fit into one of the categories. (439)

Though I’m not specifically discussing transgender athletes as Rand did, I did think her quote was important to add in this blog because she discusses the “segregation” of the sexes that so often unearths itself when it comes to athletics. It seems as though there is a clear, divisive line between male and female athletes, and I cannot help but wonder why this is still true today. In sports, males are stereotypically thought to be broad, strong, muscular, and enduring, while females are perceived as nimble, fast, and lean, but this only helps to reinforce gender binaries. Rand states that “…gender sorting simply does not account for all human variation relevant to sport. Males are not always tall. Height does not help in every sport. Numerous physical advantages—eyesight, hemoglobin levels, and many, many more—do not map onto gender anyway” (440).  More mystifying is the fact that female athletes are discussed in terms of what outfits they wear while on the field, whereas dress code usually never surfaces when commentating on men. In agreement with this is the difference between ESPN's magazine covers featuring men and women. Usually, men are photographed as being strong and professional, while women who make the cover are incredibly over-sexualized, or if they are not sexualized, their athletic ability is not at the foreground as men's usually is. So why are we, as a society, so obsessed with differentiating between male and female athletes, and why are these the only two categories that can exist within this realm? 

            Beyond experiencing a fit of anger upon discovering I could not play baseball as a girl, I had to experience the utter sexism and disapproval of my gym teacher from first to fifth grade. I have to admit I was excited to talk about sports and gender in class because this was something I had grappled with during my youth, but never fully got to analyze. Obviously, one could argue, my gym teacher, we’ll call him Mr. M, favored boys because he perceived them as being stronger and more able to fulfill their “potential.” Maybe this is due to the fact that men typically exert all of their energy when playing sports, while women are less “aggressive.” Marion Young, author of “Throwing Like a Girl,” explores this by asserting that men “[engage] in sport generally with more free motion and open reach than does his female counterpart. Not only is there a typical style of throwing like a girl, but there is more or less a typical style of running like a girl, climbing like a girl…” (143). This term “like a girl” has pervaded the media as well as young children’s mindsets for years. When I was younger, to “throw like a girl” was to throw weakly, passively, without any passion or enthusiasm—to suggest that as a girl, I’d rather be shopping or painting my nails than exerting any energy in sports. I learned, after the baseball fiasco, that sports were mainly for boys. There were always more boys on my Dynamo soccer team, always who took the lead and asserted their dominance over me. A few of the girls from my fifth grade class took over a small field space to play soccer, but eventually Mr. M kicked us out and lent that space to the younger boys so they could toss a football around, while the older boys kept the only other open space on the asphalt to play kickball. It was a constant battle of boys coming up dominant in the world of sports, and, eventually, I quit altogether when Mr. M displayed me in front of my gym class after track tryouts to point out how “weak,” “skinny,” and therefore undesirable I was.

            This was the moment in my life that I became truly conscious of my body—and as Young suggests, “women often approach a physical engagement with things with timidity, uncertainty, and hesitancy. Typically, we lack an entire trust in our bodies to carry us to our aims” (143). That was just it. I had lost all confidence in my body, especially after being called weak, and did not feel as though I could put my best foot forward and try again. Why? Because I had nobody telling me that I could do it. Mr. M told a lot of the boys that if they tried harder, they would succeed. But he didn’t tell any of the girls—he didn’t tell me. In that way, he failed all of us. However, I, too, failed myself. I internalized the bad rhetoric behind being a girl and refused to fight it—instead, I played along. I never would have realized this had it not been for the readings and the exploration we did as a class in terms of sports and gender. While I did not specifically discuss transgender athletes like Rand, I still came to a better understanding of my own childhood and experience with sports, which I feel is important as the world of sports, gender, and athleticism continues to garner discussions and debates. What I have ultimately learned is that next time, I won’t just play along. Next time, I’ll make sure to fight it.  

works cited: 

Rand, Erica. "Court and Sparkle: Kye Allums, Johnny Weir, and Raced Problems in Gender Authenticity." A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, vol. 19, no. 4,                  2013, pp. 435-463. 

Young, Marion Iris. "Throwing like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality." Human Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, 1980, pp.                  137-136. 

#KeepPlaying, #LikeaGirl

                                                  Source: NYMetroParents

Between swimming, soccer, and softball, I have been involved in sports for as long as I can remember. I was raised in a very sport orientated family; I have two older brothers who were college athletes so growing up, quitting athletics never crossed my mind. When I found out girls stop playing sports twice as much as boys, I became concerned for my younger female cousins who are becoming more involved in athletics.

Yes, there were times when I wanted to hang up my goggles and walk away from the pool. There have been many races that have not gone as planned and at times it did not seem worth it anymore. Now as a senior who is forced to stop competing in three months, I cannot image what my life would be like if I decided to quit swimming. Being an athlete has taught me self-discipline, the importance of perseverance, and gave me confidence in my own skin (especially because I am in a swimsuit every day). The feeling I get after a personal best time in an event is indescribable. It is moments like this that make every 5:30 am practice and the endless laps in the pool while starring at a black line all worth it.

But how do you describe this feeling to girls who are considering quitting a sport? I would have never experienced the highs and lows of athletics if I stopped swimming in middle school. It’s not a coincident that 51% of girls stopped playing sports by the end of puberty (McNulty, 2016). Iris Marion Young discussed this phenomenon in her essay Throwing like a Girl. Young argues that the way females learn to behave and move their bodies is depicted in athletics. She states, “For many women as they move in sport, a space surrounds them in imagination which we are not free to move beyond; the space available to our movement is a constricted space” (Young, 1980).  If you watch a girl through a ball, you’ll notice she only throws with her arm will the rest of body is immobile. This is not because girls are weak; girls are taught to take up minimal space so using the whole body would be too invasive. In addition, as girls go through puberty, they become less confident in their abilities and approach obstacles with uncertainty and hesitation (Young, 1980). 89% of girls aged 16 to 24 feel pressure to conform to the way girls are supposed to feel and act (Wallace, 2016). Because of this, girls quit sports since it is seen as not lady-like and too dangerous.

Always, a feminine care company, created a #LikeaGirl advertising campaign to encourage girls to play sports. The company conducted a Puberty and Confidence Survey of 1,800 ladies aged 16 to 24 years old and found that seven out of 10 girls quit sports during puberty because they felt like they did not belong. In addition, two- thirds of the girls felt society did not support girls who activity participate in sports.  The latest video, Keep Playing, encourages girls to stay actively involved in sports even though they are consistently facing criticism from others. One girl was told she could not be a rugby player because she was a girl and another shot-put competitor was told she had to be girly and only do certain activities (Wallace, 2016).

Hearing these negative stories is concerning because of the positive aspects associated with female athletes. Keeping young girls involved in sports not only increases their self-esteem during high school but also influences their future employment status. In 2015, a U.S. consumer data study showed that women who play sports regularly were twice as confident as women who did not play sports (McNulty, 2016). Additionally, girls who play sports are more likely to graduate from college and find a job in male-dominated industries. A recent study conducted by EY found that among top senior executive business women, 94% played sports and 52% played at the college level. 75% of the women said that a candidate’s background in sports positively influences their application because of the strong work ethic associated with athletes (Brooke-Marciniak, 2016). The life lessons and skills learned through sports are relevant for academic and the workforce success.

As a current college senior, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on my past swim seasons and my life as an athlete. Being an athlete has shaped my life in many ways. I’ve learned the importance of goal setting and hard work. I've learned to keep my head up after every loss. I gained valuable leadership, time management, and teamwork skills, which are important in all aspects of life. If I did not swim in high school and college, I know I would be a completely different person. Therefore, I will #KeepPlaying #LikeaGirl, will you?

 References 

Brooke-Marciniak, B. (2016). Here’s why women who play sports are more successful. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2016/02/04/women-sports-successful/

Wallace, Kelly. ( 2016). How to keep girls in the game after puberty. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/28/health/girls-sports-puberty-likeagirl/index.html

McNulty, M. (2016). Why girls should keep playing sports #LikeAGirl. Retrieved from http://newsok.com/article/5508120                                                                                     

                        

Young, Iris M. (1980).  Throwing like a girl: A phenomenology of feminine body comportment motility and spatiality. Human Studies, 3, 137-156. 

My Mad Fat Diary and Fatness

Take a moment and imagine the whole world having access to your seventeen year old self’s journal. Terrifying, right? Rae Earl had the same reaction at first. However, she did just that. Her book, My Mad Fat Diary, is her actual diary from when she was seventeen years old. Recently, the book became available in the United States. Also the screen version will air on Hulu soon. Both take place in Lincolnshire, England in 1996. It begins with 17 year old, Rae Earl, just leaving rehab for an eating disorder. The rest of the series follows her journey figuring out the real world including boys and dealing with her body size. 

Throughout the series, Rae continues to struggle with her body as well as falling back into her old purging habits. She desperately wants to have sex but simultaneously feels extremely self-conscious about her body. Because of her body size, she doesn’t think any boy would ever find her sexual attractive or even pretty. In order to hide her body, Rae always covers herself in large, loose-fitting clothing.

One scene in the series displays the suffering Rae endures by simply weighing herself. It begins by showing Rae staring at her scale as it spins. Finally it stops. Among other phrases, the last one she says is “I am fat.” The rest of the video has music filling the space. Rae stares at herself in the mirror and reaches to the back of her neck where there is a zipper. As she unzips, a new body is revealed; one that is skinnier and wearing only undergarments. She then drags the “fat suit” down the stairs to her backyard where she throws it in a trashcan. Then takes out a match and burns the suit. The video ends with Rae back in her bathroom crying as tears drip onto her scale. 

This video shows the pain behind fatness. Those private moments of life that not many people see. Stepping onto the scale watching as it lands on a number that you are not proud of. Society screaming in your ear “you’re ugly”, “you’re lazy”, “you’re not good enough”, “YOU ARE FAT.” These moments are even more substantial for those with eating disorders, like Rae. 

Those who identify as fat would probably be annoyed at people who look like the girl coming out of the fat suit who call themselves fat. It makes fat people feel even worse about themselves. However, those girls looking like the one coming out of the fat suit often see themselves as fat. As a result, they call themselves fat. They look in the mirror and see the fat suit. Bones may be able to be seen protruding from their bodies yet they see only fat. Their body image is distorted.

Eating disorders can be linked to the societal implications of fatness. Amy Farrell (2011) points out that in the 19th and 20th centuries fatness was a bodily trait recognized as inferior. This makes sense since the show takes place 20 years ago

Even though this show takes place 20 years ago in a different country, women today continue to struggle with their body image. People who are fat, especially women, are considered sexually undesirable. The billowing of their stomachs and thighs rubbing together represents lack of self-control and laziness in American and English society (Farrell, 2011). It is assumed that person must not care about themselves enough to get to that point nor to change. People today must recognize that body shape and fatness is not an accurate depiction of health. 

In an interview of the real life Rae Earl, she says that she was terrified of having her journal published. However, seeing her teenage self on screen has helped her learn to love and even laugh at herself. I like to think this video of Rae shedding her fat suit as a metaphor for her freeing herself from societal standards of fat. That underneath all of those societal implications, she is beautiful. The video ends in the present day where society is continually telling her she is ugly because of her fatness.

http://mashable.com/2016/04/13/my-mad-fat-diary/#B0xE7Yx9GkqR 

Do I Need to Lose Weight to be Healthy? Nah

http://atrl.net/forums/showthread.php?t=739297

Thankfully, there is finally an activist movement pushing for not only the public, but healthcare to view individuals as greater than their weight. That body weight does not define their health, and certainly not their worth and value as a person. And that weight loss for overweight patients does not ‘easily’ equal a much healthier body.

Health At Every SIze (HAES) is a revolutionary take on body weight that includes a medical lens. As the movement points out, the war on obesity is lost. With 35% of adults and 17% of children falling into the obese category, with rates that have only increased over the years, fighting obesity is not working. American culture had made that very difficult, despite the dominating prevalence of thin public figures. So the real question is, which is what HAES works to promote, what is healthy? American culture has evolved to equate thin bodies as healthy ones, both externally and internally. Fat bodies are signs of gluttony, greed, lack of willpower, and diseased organs. Are they though? Can you tell someone’s physical and mental health from just one look at them?

https://caloriebee.com/motivation/What-is-Health-At-Every-Size

Of course the answer is no. And healthcare professionals are starting to agree. As Burgard reports, healthcare professionals caring for their patients find success when “the focus is on the day-to-day activities that help individuals at any size flourish.” Because working on daily nutritional eating is important. Daily exercise and body movement is important. Because being well rested and mentally satisfied and prepared for the day ahead is important. But weight loss is not. Constant berating of physicians to get their patients to lose weight does not quickly make them healthy. A daily focus on self care might, though.

HAES centers its work around respect, critical awareness, and compassionate self-care. Burgard poses a number of questions about healthcare and medicine that undermine the idea that fat bodies and BMI are concrete predictors of health problems. Questions like “if fatness causes health problems, why does it not show up in all fat people?” because if fatness was the cause, that’s what medicine would see. She wonders if “the prescription of weight loss dieting one of the biggest iatrogenic disasters of our time?” if so many people can’t lose the weight despite high internal and external pressure. HAES realizes these concepts and works to promote a change in provider-patient interactions.

This movement is truly great in its desire, and hopefully success, in fostering respect and understanding between people and healthcare providers. The foundational respect allows the relationship to really focus on finding ways to create and maintain healthy practices for individuals.

There is, however, one significant issue HAES does not seem to address. In a healthcare setting and even when individuals discover HAES outside of medicine, there is a strong underlying assumption of access. In a medical setting, using HAES assumes that everyone can access medical care. And that the medical care being provided has heard about HAES and the mentality and medical approach behind it.

Even more significant is the assumption that everyone who wants to pursue HAES has the ability and means to carry it out. Particularly for individuals who have low income. How can many people justify buying nutritionally packed yet more expensive food over larger quantities of food that’s cheaper, even if it’s less nutritional? If you’re already working long days just to support yourself, do you have the time or the energy to be physically active every day?

Particularly when the HAES movement and the body positive movement work together, which they should, this issue becomes even more prominent. These two sources of understanding your body and appreciating it for what it provides and does for you everyday feed off each other to really give people the chance to look into themselves for acceptance and comfort, rather than to the people and concepts around them. Together, they promote a mentally and physically sounds existence.

https://thinkprogress.org/the-wealth-gap-between-rich-and-poor-
americans-is-affecting-our-diets-a43c9cceb742#.5uu4au78y

Yet. For those who don’t have the means to access the nutrition and physical activity they should strive for and have fat bodies as a result of that inaccessibility, is that really okay? Is it really okay to expect people to feel confident and embrace their fat bodies if their bodies are a result of poverty or institutional bias? Or does it become a cycle of wanting to love and care for your body yet being constantly reminded that you realistically cannot manage or attain those health goals?

Of course none of this desires to pin blame. People who are victims of the cycle of poverty and any number of combinations of institutional ‘isms’ are victims. Although these movements strive to include everyone in them, promote healthy living and body image for all, the success of these movements is limited by realistic parameters.

Unfortunately, the only solution I can think of is a huge overhaul in the food industry and capitalism. And those are incredibly complex and massive undertakings. So for now, it seems to be best to work within the realistic parameters of your life in order to feel comfortable and healthy in your own body.

The True Definition of Health

It is easy to get convinced by the weight loss industry that you are overweight and should be partaking in the latest fad diet or weight watcher program. I have fallen for this scan so many times. Apparently, according to the Body Mass Index, I am overweight; I have been labeled as overweight since high school. Because of this, I used to constantly worry about the number on the scale and the size of my jeans. I exercised every day and constantly watched everything I ate, often denying myself foods that I was craving. As a swimmer, I exercise about 4 hours a day and often times during practice I used to catch myself thinking that I should be swim faster and longer so I can burn more calories. This was not a good mentality; I should have been focusing on my desire to become a better athlete instead of becoming smaller.

Yet, after exercising and eating healthy, I still was considered overweight. So I started the Beach Body 21 day Fitness program in hopes of becoming skinny and finally categorized as a normal weight. I followed all the work out programs and ate only the foods that were approved by the company. After a week or so on the program I noticed I was going to bed hungry, became moody, and felt guilty every time I wanted to have bread. This is not okay – both for my physical or mental health. I wanted to lose weight to feel better about myself and have more confidence but the process was doing just the opposite. Yet, I became obsessed with this industry because I was convinced it was going to make me skinny. The company advertised so many before and after pictures so it must be guaranteed to work, right?

Wrong. People forget that every human is genetically different and not designed to have the same weight or appearance. This can be difficult for individuals, especially women, to grasp when dealing with their weight.  Deb Burgard uses the metaphor that humans are like different dog breeds and we can only determine our breed based the natural weight we fall into if we live a good life. Therefore, since we do not starve dogs to turn them into a different breed, we should not starve ourselves to make an unnatural weight seem normal (Burgard, 44).

Nevertheless, powerful institutions, like the medical field, have created this constant obsession over weight. For instance, Pinterest has its own Health and Fitness tab that offers pages on top of pages of tips for quick weight lost, body transformation, and recipes for detoxing and metabolism boosters .  Since this section is called Health and fitness, it illustrates that in order for an individual to be considered healthy; they must lost weight by following certain dieting and exercise programs without taking in to consideration individual differences, the physical and mental problems it causes, and the journey to having a health lifestyle – it simply implies health as being skinny.

Health at Every Size argues that becoming healthy should be a lifelong process that focuses on an individual’s emotional and physical well-being, self-acceptance of one’s shape, size, and physical features, and the enjoyment of exercising and eating health (Burgard, 42). Health at Every Size does not focus on physical appearance or weight of all individuals but instead the process of becoming healthy. Simply focusing on a lower BMI and the health label causes an emotional toll on the individual, decreases self-acceptance of one’s own body due to constant comparisons, and turns exercise into a chore or obligation.  In ”What is ‘Health at Every Size?”, Deb Burgard provides an example of a scenario where the medical field supports weight loss techniques used by overweight individuals but they diagnose these same techniques as an eating disorder in smaller individuals. How can this be acceptable? This leads to individuals constantly worrying about food consumption patterns on a daily basis, feeling guilty after over indulging in certain foods and then feel obligated to exercise for many hours a day to burn off extreme amounts of calories.

Instead of encouraging individuals to solely focusing on weight lost as the ultimate goal to health, the medical field needs to encourage individuals to learn to appreciate their body and create a health and happiness mentality. Over the past few months I have started to shift my way of thinking away from my constant fear of weight gain and physical appearance. Now I focus on exercise as a stress relieve and eating healthy as enjoyable. I would much rather go for a run or eat a salad than sit on the couch and eat ice cream because I personally enjoy these activities way more. I do not deny myself food when my stomach tells me I am hungry or when I am having the occasional sweet tooth craving. This is the true definition of health living. I do not find myself constantly stressing or feeling guilty about the various foods I consumed or feel obligated to go to the gym. Living a healthy style has made me healthier than any diet or exercise program I attempted in the past. 

References

Burgard, Beb. (2009). What is “health at every size”?. In M. Wann (Ed.), The fat studies reader. (pp. 42-  52).                  New York, NY: New York University Press. 

Redefining Beauty and Health

Some of the more impactful documentaries I have watched over the years have been in regards to the food industry and how it is setting up our populations for failure when it comes to eating a well balanced diet and losing weight. More and more children are being considered overweight and because of how we view health, these children are encouraged to go on strict diets and intense exercise regimes. Despite the best efforts of parents and doctors, children are not losing weight. The associations that come along with being fat is that people are lazy and have no self control. However, the fat children in the documentary Fed Up are far from lazy and lacking self control. They take it upon themselves to try and take the necessary steps to lose the weight, but simply cannot. The kids featured in the film needed to change their diets and do a bit more exercise in order to obtain the important nutrients and increase cardiovascular health, however, most got frustrated when their hard work did not pay off. They viewed themselves as failures even though the odds were completely against them.

The lack of weight loss of the kids featured in the film is no fault of their own.  More and more we are learning that this lack of weight loss and continued prevalence of obesity is a result of the amount of processed food and the deception by major food companies. By false advertising or requiring consumers to read labels very carefully and truly understand the advised daily values of each component on the nutritional label, food companies lure consumers into buying products that might say “Low Fat” but in fact contain more of the highly addictive substance that is resulting in weight gain; sugar. 

While our society tells us that thin is healthy and fat is unhealthy, Health At Every Size aims to dissolve this belief. Many people pose the argument that fat is directly related to health and being thin can be equally as harmful. Many people do not realized that anyone who does not eat a well balanced diet can be malnourished whether they are over or underweight. We need a better way to measure health aside from focusing on weight and the BMI system. Health needs to encompass mental health, physical health, diet, exercise and sleep patterns. With an increase in malnutrition, which can lead to obesity, I think the Health at Every Size program will be incredibly helpful in improving the health of our children without putting the focus on weight. However, this program also needs to be in combination with education of what foods are healthy and which are contributing to fat. Along with education, we must work to send the message that all bodies are beautiful regardless of size.

With a better understanding of how health can truly occur at all sizes and that to be thin is not indicative of health, we can use this to promote healthier beliefs when it comes to our body. The Adipositivity Project and the FullyBeauty Project are online photo campaigns that strive to “broaden definitions of physical beauty” in which fat women pose often without clothes in a way that they feel comfortable. This allows everyone to gain an appreciation for the many different body types. Because fat is seen as ugly and unhealthy, it does not appear in the media, which perpetuates the taboo. These women show that they are comfortable in their own bodies, so others should be too regardless of size. This can help change the way our society views the physicality of bodies and help promote health instead of size. This is a complicated issue because it incorporates what it means to be healthy and not just what people look like, and because of this I believe it is important to tackle the issue from all angles.

In order to steer away from weight as a sign of health and beauty, we need to put an emphasis on healthy eating to nourish our bodies and attempt to undo the work of food companies, which make it even harder to eat well. By teaching people to eat well, this will prevent any issues that may arise from a poor diet, which can go hand in hand with malnutrition. We need to focus on health holistically and work towards a goal of feeling better as opposed to weighing a certain amount. While focusing on leading healthy lives and enjoying the lives we are living, we can do as the Adipositivity Project and the FullBeauty Project are trying to do and expand our beauty ideals to encompass women of all shapes and sizes. By focusing on these three components, critiques of each cannot argue against the movement as a whole because it addresses health, redefining health, weight and redefining beauty in regards to weight.