The Myth of Balance

A perennial lifestyle meme/debate/whatever you want to call it that bugs the crap out of me has to do with the question of if and how one can "have it all," usually specifically whether women can "have it all." And e'rrrrbody's got an opinion.

Why does it bug the crap out of me? Well, for one, because the phrase "having it all" does NOT in fact refer to having "it all"; it's almost always used as short-hand for having a very specific subset of things: A high-powered successful career, a healthy social life, a reasonably functional relationship (if you feel like it), and of course, the absolutely non-negotiable pièce de résistance, children, because what normal woman could ever *possibly* hope to have a happy, fulfilling life without squirting some crotch spawn out into the world. (Mostly, though, "it all" seems to refer to a super successful career & kids.) Yes, I get that a lot of women do want those things and are sad if they can only have some of them, but those things by no means constitute "all" there is to have in life. It bugs me that society acts like they are. A woman could have all of those things and still feel frustrated and unfulfilled.

Have You Mocked A Lady Today?

I'm sure you've heard by now about the cancer patient recently mocked by SELF Magazine for running the LA Marathon in a tutu.

The tutus were made by her company, the proceeds of which were donated to Girls on the Run, for the record.

If you've read this post, you can probably guess my feelings on this matter. (And if you haven't, you might take a look -- it's one of my most favorite things I've ever written.) My brain was putting together the skeleton of the angry six-page blog post I would no doubt write on the subject when I came across Caitlin's post at Fit & Feminist. It turns out that she said pretty much everything I would have & more, AND did it in, like, two pages, which, the way I see it, is a win for all of us.

I highly recommend clicking through to read the whole thing, but there were a few passages in particular that really resonated with me that I wanted to highlight:

"[I]t doesn’t escape my notice that the race gear deemed most mock-worthy – running tutus, running skirts, pink and purple gear, flowers and sparkles – are almost always things that are overwhelmingly embraced by women. It’s like there is this refusal to take a woman seriously as a runner and an athlete unless she presents herself in clothes that are similar to those worn by guys. Running skirts and dresses are prissy, gear with pink and flowers encourages women to be less assertive, women who wear makeup to the gym are insecure...the criticism seems to be endless, but the end message is clear: that things normally thought of as feminine are inherently frivolous, silly and stupid. It’s basically textbook femmephobia.

WORD, Caitlin. Internet fist-bump.

Are there legitimate questions about the female apologetic (see also this) & the pinkification of all things lady-related (don't tell me you've missed the pink BodyGlide they charge you more for)? Of course there are. And we should absolutely continue to discuss them in a constructive, supportive way. But there's a huge difference between asking thoughtful questions respectfully in appropriate forums & straight-up publicly mocking someone for doing something that made them happy & hurt no one.

Once more, for the record: If you need to insult, mock, or make disparaging remarks about how other women dress for their run/exercise, you are doing it wrong. You can have your opinion. You can make judgements. Think or feel whatever you like in your sweet little heart. But don't inflict it on the rest of us.

Ladies & Their Running Clothes: The Tizzy Over Toplessness

Hello & welcome to Part 3 of Ladies & Their Running Clothes. If you missed parts 1 & 2, you may want to check out "The Scuffle Over Skirts" and/or "The Brouhaha Over Booty Shorts" for a bit of context before reading on.

Case Study #3: Sports Bra, No Shirt

So back when I first started having Strong Feelings about this issue in the early 'aughts, there was a LOT of bitching about it online & IRL, directed *at* female runners, *from* female runners, which just broke my heart (as it still does). Ten or so years later, it makes me incredibly happy that this isn't as much the case anymore, certainly not to the extent that it seems to be with running skirts or booty shorts. With sports bras, the majority of women runners polled on the topic seem to mostly just shrug their shoulders & go, "Dude, it's HOT out there!" or, worst case, "Well I wouldn't, but if you feel confident, more power to you, lady!" This is awesome news.

No; the main difference I've noticed when it comes to criticisms of running in only a sports bra vs the first two posts is that most of the criticism seems to come from non-runners. Certainly not all, but for the most part, female runners seem to get it, even those who don't feel comfortable going sports bra-only themselves.

By virtue of the fact that running in only a sports bra instead of a T-shirt or tank shows more skin / curves, many of the complaints tend to align with those about booty shorts -- "She only does it to get attention / look sexy / feminine / etc." or "That's not a flattering look for her / nobody wants to see that" or "It's slutty / trashy looking." We already covered a lot of that ground in the booty shorts post so I won't repeat it all here, but there are some points in which I feel like the discussion plays out a little differently.

So what new and different arguments are people bringing to the table when they tsk-tsk about ladies going sports bra-only?

• It is distracting to "some people" (and from context, it is usually clear that "some people" is men) + if you do it, you are complicit in the objectification of women (generally by men)
• You might offend people who have different modesty standards than you and are not expecting to have to have to "deal with that kind of thing unexpectedly," ie, a mother out with her child, an elderly person with traditional views, someone with strict religious beliefs around modestly/women's bodies (I am not even kidding that the statement in quotes is in fact an actual quote and the examples are basically cut & pasted from a popular running forum)
• You could be making other women with less confidence in their bodies than you feel bad.
• A sports bra is still a bra, ergo it is still underwear. Would you go out in public in just your regular bra? Would you go to the grocery store in only a sports bra? Would you go to the grocery store in just YOUR REGULAR BRA??

I'm not going to lie to you. Every time I read or hear this kind of crap, I feel like I'm about to channel Feminist Hulk (HULK SMASH!!). If the choice is between attempting rational, civilized discourse and investing in stretchy purple shorts, though, my way seems clear.

So let's get started.

"She only does it to get attention / look sexy / feminine / etc." + "It is distracting to 'some people'" + "You are participating in the objectification of women by 'some people'."

Part of this is just a matter of re-capping what we discussed with both running skirts & booty shorts.

• Unless she specifically told you that she wears x thing for y reason, then no, you don't know that that's why, and just because two or ten or two hundred women tell you that's their reason does not make it the reason for everyone.
• If it is the reason, so what? Big freaking deal. Some ladies like looking sexy / feminine / getting attention when they run. No one is making you do it, so chill.

Review Part 1 & Part 2 for more elaboration on these points.

But there's this other argument that seems to come up when people rail against sports-bra-only but oddly enough not usually with the booty shorts, and that's the one about distracting "some people," ie, men (I'm not saying non-man people might not also be distracted; I'm just saying that the subtext when I've heard or read this complaint has pretty much always been in regard to straight men), plus the yucky corollary that if you go sports-bra-only you are somehow participating in the Objectification of Women and Ruining Feminism and if men only like you for your body after that it's Your Own Fault.

2012 Olympics: These slutty slutty sisters better put on some real clothes around the menfolk; otherwise SEX OBJECTS 4 EVA.

Exhibit A: This blog post, in which a Catholic* man mansplains to young women why sports bra/no top is no good for them or him:

Can I ask you why you're wearing just a sports bra?

It's probably because you want to get noticed, isn't it?

...

You see, by wearing that sports bra, you're getting attention, no doubt! But is it really the kind of attention you want? I'll be the first to admit that when I saw you, my first thought wasn't, "Oh, she looks like a wonderful human being with a kind heart and a great personality, I should get to know her!". It was more like, "Man, look at that body".

...

When a girl wears revealing clothing, she doesn't get noticed...her body gets noticed. If you want to stop being treated as an object for sexual pleasure, then you can do something about it! I'm gonna be real with you for a second: When you dress immodestly, it makes it really hard to see you as a human being, and easier to see you as just an attractive body. The more skin you reveal, the further a man's imagination can go in thinking about what the rest of your body looks like. If you want to be treated as a human being and not just a body, then you need to do your part and dress in a way that reflects that. I'm not saying you're the reason that men objectify women. But I will say that if more women started dressing modestly, more men would stop objectifying women, and start loving them as human beings. It's a team effort, we both have to do what we can to help each other become the best version of ourselves.

I won't blame you if you had to go vomit once you finished reading that.

There is a profoundly dangerous & damaging myth operating in the world that goes like this:

• Straight men are animalistic creatures ruled completely by their libidos, which they are only *barely* holding in check at the best of times, and when they are around pretty ladies, they just *cannot* be held responsible for what their eyes/brains/hands do, therefore:
• It is the job of women to control the sexual thoughts/actions of men and not tempt/distract them with sexy clothes/body parts/facial features/hair/make up/words/movements/generally being a woman in public.

Not to get too heavy here, but when girls & women get told that it's on them to "cover it up" so they don't distract boys/men / "send the wrong message" / "attract the wrong kind of attention," the same societal standard that blames women for their own rapes or sexual assaults ("She wore a short skirt!" "She let him buy her a drink!" "She went off alone with him!") is in operation.

(*Catholic men: I don't mention he's Catholic to suggest you all think this way. I only mention it because his blog is centered around his religion, and he ties a lot of the modesty talk back to it. There are many lovely Catholic / otherwise religious people in the world who don't blame the decline of the western world on the bodies of women, and plenty of atheists who are patriarchal dicks.)

I am here to tell / remind you that that is the worst kind of bullshit.

Learning to deal with distraction is part of learning to function as a grown-up. Sometimes I work in my local coffee shop & the folks at the next table are engrossed in a fascinating conversation on a subject I have strong feelings about. Sometimes at races there are people wearing crazy, boisterous costumes. Both of these things = SUPER DISTRACTING!

But I don't get to regulate those behaviors. As a grown-ass adult, my distractibility is my problem to deal with, up to & including going somewhere else / looking somewhere else / not going to places & events where I'm likely to have to deal with them. Those are choices I have.** It is not the job of these other folks to solve this problem for me, nor is it the job of women to solve the problem of distractible men by figuring out what exactly those men prefer we wear in order to not distract them. (And let's be real; for some of them, it wouldn't matter anyway. Men who can only see women as sex objects are going to do that no matter what. Your clothes are not the problem.)

Not only is this thinking unfair to women; it's insulting to lady-loving men. Like just about everyone else in the world, most of them are fully-functioning human beings with all of their cognitive faculties intact. (I personally know many of them! They're great!) They have the same ability to tune out distractions and choose where they focus their attention as the rest of us. Like everyone else, some of them are better at it than others, and we all have some things that are harder for us to ignore than others. But just being a dude attracted to women does not make a person utterly helpless in the presence of a woman in a sports bra.

**(Obviously, there are extreme situations where creating a highly non-distracting environment is expected of everyone present, for the benefit of everyone present. You shouldn't wear a bikini to a funeral. You also shouldn't wear loud colors or belt out "La Copa Cabana." You shouldn't chew gum loudly or incessantly tap your feet in a standardized test. Those types of situations are different than what I'm talking about.)

It's refreshing to hear that the myth of women & girls being "responsible" for men & boys' ability to concentrate is finally getting some legal pushback. Until very recently, students at Stuyvesant School in New York City were subject to a dress code where many, many more of the rules applied to traditionally female clothing (skirts/dresses, tights, close-fitting/sleeveless tops) than to traditionally male or gender-neutral clothing (pants, loose-fitting tops). The rules were also enforced in a way that made girls' outfits and how much of their bodies could or could not be seen about their sexuality. The Justice Department ruled that this constituted violation of Title IX under what is known as disparate impact, meaning an organization is using a neutral procedure or practice (student dress code) that has a disproportionate impact on protected individuals (girls). Because of the way the dress code was written and enforced, girls were essentially being harassed by their teachers and administrators in a manner to which boys were not subject.

The thinking behind the Stuyvesant dress code sends a dangerous message to young women – that they are responsible for the way in which society objectifies and sexualizes them. To quote the principle, “Many young ladies wear denim skirts which are very tight and are short to begin with, and when they sit down, they only rise up, because there’s nowhere else to go...The bottom line is, some things are a distraction, and we don’t need to distract students from what is supposed to be going on here, which is learning.”

Say it with me now: "It is not the responsibility of female students [or females runners] to mitigate the male gaze. You find female bodies “distracting”? That’s your problem, not women’s. Society teaches that women exist to be looked at, objectified and sexualized—it’s up to others to make sure that they don’t contribute to that injustice."

Mainsplainer extraordinaire Catholic helper man, that is exactly what you are doing in your blog post. She is not making running in a sports bra about sexuality; you are. The fact that you think only about her body when you see her, and are driven to distraction imagining what the rest of it looks like, and have trouble thinking of her as a human being and not a sex object is YOUR PROBLEM, dude, not hers. It is not the job of women to mitigate the male gaze.

The flip side of that coin: Ladies, you are not responsible for the thoughts of people who look at you, regardless of what you are wearing. You can't 'make' anyone objectify you anymore than you can make them not objectify you. Men (or whoever) who are going to view women as sex objects are going to do that regardless of whether they are looking at ladies running in sports bras or not. Men who look at women as whole people who they also may possibly find sexy-looking will behave that way no matter what you're wearing. You are not ruining feminism. It is not your job to mitigate the male gaze.

Which sort of brushes up against "You might offend people who have different modesty standards than you." (As an aside, how much do I love the comment from the super-conservative mom who was like, "What if I am out with my child and not prepared to deal with that kind of thing unexpectedly???" I can just see her rounding a corner with her five-year-old in their perfectly respectable neighborhood and OMG MIDRIFF AMBUSH!!!!!!!)

Again, I say: People just can't be responsible for how their clothes make people feel when they're just going about their business in a public space. (Can you imagine trying to manage this? For everyone you might encounter? All the time?) The lady in the sports bra probably didn't KNOW you feel that midriff / visible boob contour is amoral and specifically PLAN to ambush you & your child with it. She isn't going topless AT you. She's probably just doing her thing, in a way that makes her comfortable. The midriff-terrified mom and her kid are not a captive audience.

Note that this is not the same thing as "Everybody wear whatever you feel like all the time with complete disregard for others!!" Attending a funeral? Visiting a country with strict cultural norms? Absolutely, in those situations respect for the occasion or culture is clearly warranted. But people in your own city who are terrified of/can't deal with the female form? They don't own All of Outside. They don't even own the park where they take their walks/their kids play. No one has ever been scarred for life by bare midriff/boob contour.

On the flip side, just because you don't owe it to others to dress a certain way doesn't mean that you can't choose to wear something different out of consideration for them if you feel so moved. In college I had a friend who often ran sports-bra-only in the summer. She also occasionally ran with a group from her church that included several slightly older, more conservative women and on those occasions she chose to always wear a tank top in order to make them more comfortable. She was not obligated to do this; she didn't owe it to them (and I feel pretty sure that if they'd ever tried to institute some kind of dress code she would have been out of there in a second). She just felt like it was worth a marginal bit of discomfort to her on warm days in order to maintain good relationships with a group of women whose company she genuinely enjoyed.

While we're on the subject of not being responsible for other people's feelings, let's maybe slay the beast called "You shouldn't go sports-bra-only because it might make other women feel bad." At its heart, this objection seems to be less about the clothing involved and more about how some women feel about their own bodies, particularly in comparison to the bodies of others.

Ugh, this is such a hard one because we've ALLLLLL been there. At some point in our lives, we've all had the experience of looking around and comparing what we are or have to what others are or have. How do I stack up? Is my thing/situation/whatever better than his/hers/theirs or worse? How much better or worse? If I'm not extraordinary, am I at least pretty good? Am I at least not abysmal?

When you feel like something about you is not as good as the people you see around you or like you don't measure up, it never feels good. It's particularly bad when it's something about our bodies, since we live in a society that is constantly judging people by how they look against a fairly narrow, mostly unattainable standard of physical attractiveness.

Chillin' w/ Eleanor.

I have a lot of empathy with people who are in the habit of comparing their bodies to others'. We are socialized to do it from a young age and it is an incredibly difficult habit to break. If that's something you're struggling with, I have a quote to share with you often attributed to my girl Eleanor Roosevelt:

"No one can make you feel inferior
without your consent."

Read it. Memorize it. Repeat it to yourself every morning and every night. Feelings of inferiority require a willing victim. It takes a lot of practice, but you can choose not to be one.

Sometimes it helps to remember that, as with the conserva-mom & her kiddo, the woman running along happily & confidently in just a sports bra isn't doing it AT you (even if it feels like it sometimes). Most likely she has no wish to make anyone feel bad about their own bodies and would feel very sad to find out that had happened. But, just as she's not responsible for the impure thoughts of distractible men, she is also not responsible for the feelings her clothes or body invoke in others about their own.

It's not possible for another person to "make you" feel good, bad, smart, dumb, ugly, beautiful, fat, skinny, etc. No one else can "make" you feel anything. Ascribing that kind of power to other people is dangerous, because it takes you out of the driver's seat & puts your self-esteem and self-confidence at the mercy of other people. It's victim thinking. It's not the job of others to "make" you feel good about yourself through their choice of clothing. It's your job to create good feelings about yourself in a way that is not dependent on what the people around you are wearing. (I'm not saying that's easy, and I'll fully acknowledge that it's a much, MUCH longer road for some of us than for others. I'm just saying that's how it is.)

And, because I find it just so stinking precious, let us consider the semantic argument against sports-bra-no-shirt: "A sports bra is still a bra; if you wouldn't go out in public in just a regular bra, you shouldn't go out in just a sports bra." I find this logic utterly patronizing, not only as a runner but also as a martial artist. I remember reading about a male martial artist who was not used to training with women, and he was completely taken aback to learn that the women in his dojo wore only a sports bra--not a T-shirt or tank top--under their gi tops (which tend to be a bit floppy & loose). The women were like, "Do you wear an extra shirt under your gi top? "No, that would be hot and uncomfortable." "Then why would we do it?" "But what if your gi top comes open and I see your sports bra? AWKWARD AND/OR SCANDAL!!"

The attitude of these women martial artists was one of complete practicality. They viewed themselves as serious athletes dressing appropriately and comfortably for their sport. To them, a sports bra was just another piece of equipment, like a mouthguard or pads, that they needed in order to participate safely & comfortably. The objections of the male martial artist, on the other hand, were grounded in an idea of women as lingerie-clad-sex objects. At that point he was not capable of interacting with them first & foremost as athletes, of seeing them as anything but women first, as havers of breasts and lingerie & other lady/sex object things that made him completely uncomfortable. Once again, this was his problem to deal with, not theirs. It was not their job to take care of his awkwardness and embarrassment around their female bodies by making themselves physically uncomfortable. (Sensing a theme, here?)

The first-ever sports bra, made from two jock straps sewn together. Not joking.

A couple of years ago XLMIC posted about this article on the history of sports bras and the woman who first came up with the idea in the 1970s, Lisa Lindahl. It's a fascinating read and I highly recommend the whole thing, but germane to this particular discussion is this line:

"'I made a decision early on that this was not lingerie,' Lisa says. 'It was sports equipment, something you needed like you needed your shoes.' But sporting-goods stores saw the Jogbra as a tough sell, and their overwhelmingly male owners reacted squeamishly to sample cases full of sports bras. Lisa was fond of countering, 'You sell jockstraps, don't you?' That always stopped them cold."

I have a hunch that the squeamishness of the male '70s sporting goods purveyors at selling sports bras is not unrelated to the embarrassment of the male martial artist above: A result of seeing women first as female-bodied people with conspicuous, sexualized body parts and being unable to reconcile that viewpoint with women attempting to deal with those body parts in a completely functional, non-sexualized way. I have a hunch that this is why some people can't let go of the idea that sports bra = lingerie.

(I also think this attitude is in play when people try to argue that it's fine for a man to run shirtless but not a woman. If you really push people on that one, it pretty much boils down to women's chests being overtly sexualized and men's significantly less so. Ie, we can sometimes look at the bare chest/torso of a dude & think about something besides ALL TEH SEXXX; a woman in a sports bra? Not so much.)

Would I go to the grocery store in only a regular bra? Of course not. But I also probably would not go to the grocery store in a bikini top, even though there are many situations in which wearing a bikini top in public is completely acceptable. A sports bra is not lingerie anymore than a bikini top is; it's a specialized garment with a specific purpose, and there are absolutely contexts where it's appropriate & contexts where it's not. The fact that it's a bra is completely, entirely irrelevant.

Here endeth my rational, civilized exposition of how the phenomenon of women running topless except for a sports bra is not trashy, shameful, gross, ruining feminism, or responsible for the Decline of Morals in America^TM. If you've been thinking of trying it but hesitated because of any of that, go forth & bare thy midriff. If you've been talking trash about women who do it, I hope you'll rethink why and what it really accomplishes. And if you've been supporting the ladies in your life in wearing whatever lets them exercise in physical and psychological comfort, go on witcha bad self. To quote Diana E. Anderson's Modesty Culture and the Fear of the Confident Woman, "I am an average American woman, and I will dress in what I feel confident in. And that, to many, is the scariest thing I can do."

**Post-script:** Just a quick reminder about the ground rules in terms of commenting: 1) Feel free to respectfully & thoughtfully express disagreement, and 2) don't be a dick. I won't delete a comment just because someone has a critical question or different point of view (I have gotten some interesting & poignant comments that did just that!), but I will not abide ranters and pool-poopers that insist on making things tiresome for everyone. Of course you guys are the coolest, and I've never yet had to resort to that. :)

References & Further Reading:

• Men Who Explain Things, by Rebecca Solnit. "Men explain things to me, and to other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men. Every woman knows what I mean. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence."
• A Cultural History of Mansplaining, by Lily Rothman. "The idea [of mansplaining] wasn't political in origin, and mansplaining happens in academia and offices and dining rooms. But it makes sense that politics brought it to the general public's attention. When it comes to politics, it seems men have been talking about the female experience since basically forever."
• Modesty As Fauxgressivism: Co-Opting the Language of Empowerment and Ignoring the Real Problems, by Diana E. Anderson. "It is not because of willingness to be objectified that women dress immodestly, nor is it because of an inability to stand up to sexualization that we wear miniskirts. The very concepts of what is modest or immodest extend from a patriarchal, cultural male gaze. As such, whether or not I wear a bikini or a one piece to the pool this summer has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not I will be objectified...I am not responsible for men deciding to objectify or sexualize me, just as I am not responsible for making sure they do not have lustful thoughts. The power to change the male gaze lies not with my clothing choices, but with the men who choose to see me as an object."
• Targeting 'Slutty' Students, by Jessica Valenti. "In addition to the violation of female students’ rights, the thinking behind the code sends a dangerous message to young women – that they are responsible for the way in which society objectifies and sexualizes them...It’s not the responsibility of female students to mitigate the male gaze. You find female bodies “distracting”? That’s your problem, not women’s. Society teaches that women exist to be looked at, objectified and sexualized—it’s up to others to make sure that they don’t contribute to that injustice."
• If You Don't Want Girls Judged by Their Hemlines, Stop Judging Them by Their Hemlines, by Amanda Marcotte @ Slate XX Factor. "Telling women to cover it up is just as surely a form of sexual objectification as telling women to take it off. Either way, you're reducing a woman to her sexuality instead of considering her as a whole person. Either way, you are, to quote Maya Dusenbery of Feministing, "looking at a woman and instead of seeing a full, complex, and multifaceted human being, all you see is ALL TEH SEXXX.""
• Stop telling girls their hemlines are too short, by S.E. Smith @ XOJane. "The hyperfocus on what girls are wearing with a healthy heaping of judgment sends precisely the opposite message, underscoring that girls should be constantly concerned about what they are wearing and who might be judging them for it."
• Your Body Is Never the Problem, by Hugo Schwyzer @ hugoschwyzer.net. "Have you noticed the way this works yet? If a girl is thin, she’s accused of being “anorexic”; if her weight is higher than the cruelly restrictive ideal, she’s “fat” and “doesn’t take care of herself” or “has no self-control.” If she wears cute, trendy clothes she “only wants attention” and if she wears sweats and jeans, she “doesn’t make an effort.” If she’s perceived as sexually attractive, and—especially—if she shows her own sexual side, she’s likely to be called a “slut.” If her sexuality and her body are concealed, she’s a “prude.” As you’ve probably figured out, the cards are stacked against you. You cannot win, at least not if you define winning as dressing and behaving in a way likely to win approval (or at least decent respect) from everyone."
• Seven Ways to Love Your Body, by Heather Corinna at Scarleteen.com. "This is not another diet guide. It will not show you how to lose ten pounds by Thanksgiving. It will not introduce you to a new set of "miracle ab crunches" or rave about the latest liposuction advances. And there will be no butt pads, silicone, or fat-free recipes to share. I'm writing this because I, like many women, used to diet until I was dizzy. I looked at my body and hated the parts that stuck out, and the ones that didn't stick out far enough. And I believed that having the so-called "perfect" body–at any expense–would guarantee success and eternal happiness. Do I need to say it? I was deluded."
• The Scarleteen Do-It, by Heather Corinna at Scarleteen.com. Scroll down to "Put a kibbosh on comparing & dissing."
• Modesty Culture and the Fear of the Confident Woman, by Dianna E. Anderson @ Faith and Feminism. "By not kowtowing to the male gaze, by asserting that she sees herself as worthy in ways that modesty proponents think she should not, modesty culture exacts a harsher punishment by demanding not only that she cover up those assets which are impossible to hide, but also reinforcing that she should do so precisely because she is exhibiting a confidence in herself that is not dependent on the male gaze...I am an average American woman, and I will dress in what I feel confident in. And that, to many, is the scariest thing I can do."

Ladies & Their Running Clothes: The Brouhaha Over Booty Shorts

Once I have a proper beast mode again, I am totally buying these.

Hello & welcome to Part 2 of Ladies & Their Running Clothes. If you missed part 1, you may want to check out "The Scuffle Over Skirts" for a bit of context before reading on.

A quick recap of my general position on ladies & their running clothes:

"If you need to insult, mock, or make disparaging remarks about how other women dress for their run / exercise, you are doing it wrong.

I'm addressing the ladies specifically because, in my experience, men are usually not the ones engaging in this behavior. Just about everything I can remember ever hearing or reading in that vein came from women, directed at women. (Sure, we've all furtively giggled at Short Shorts Guy at one point or another, but it's the rare lady among us that's actively nasty about it.)

I won't get into the infinitely more complex world of insulting/mocking/etc. lady clothes in general. I've tried writing that post (not on this blog) over and over and over again, and I can never quite get it right. But surely we can leave each other alone when it comes to a shared hobby where we're all just trying to have fun, get strong, & feel good about ourselves?"

In part 2, I want to talk about a garment that goes by many names.

Case Study #2: Booty Shorts

You've probably heard them referred to a few different ways--booty shorts, boy shorts, bike shorts, bunz, hot pants, etc. My internet research informs me that some people and brands and companies actually use these different words to refer to distinct garments--slightly shorter or longer, some closer to cycling shorts & others made more like underwear--but for the purposes of this post, I'm going to use the term "booty shorts" to refer to anything you wear on your lower body that's perhaps a bit shorter than traditional running shorts and is more or less skin-tight.

Based on some of the blog posts and forum comments I've seen about female runners and booty shorts (and it is just about exclusively female runners), you'd think that they were solely responsible for the Moral Decline of America^TM.

Full disclosure: I occasionally rock the booty shorts.

Left: Bad Bass 10K, July 2011; Center: Oakland Half Marathon,
March 2012. Right: Windsor Green Half Marathon, May 2012

Left: Oakland Half Marathon, March 2013
Right: Healdsburg Half Marathon, October 2012

Not in all circumstances, but often, and I almost always race in them.

The reason I'm putting that out there is because I generally don't rock the running skirts, and I want to be clear that neither of these posts are about me, my habits, or my personal opinions about the garment itself. I didn't write it because I'm concerned about what people think or say about me. (Believe me--if you can think it up, I've probably heard it before.) No; these posts are only nominally about items of clothing. What they're really about is how women treat other women in a shared sport.

Most of the grumbling I've heard & read about runners wearing booty shorts seems to boil down to a certain set of opinions:

• They're slutty-looking.
• Women only wear them to look hot/get attention, and running should be about performance/toughness/etc., not about looking hot/getting attention.
• They're uncomfortable for running and anyone who says otherwise is lying (and probably wearing them to look hot/get attention).
• They don't flatter everyone who wears them. (One person went so far as to suggest we subject ourselves to the "slap test" in order to determine whether we should wear them. I'll leave the details of that to your imagination.)

Brace yourselves because I'm about to have a field day with this. :D

We'll cover slut-shaming first just because it's such a well-documented topic and relatively easy to call out & dismiss. On the off-chance that you're not familiar with the term, "slut-shaming" refers to the practice of labeling someone (almost always a girl/woman) a slut or slutty based on her behavior or perceived behavior, or on something about her appearance (clothes, hair, make-up, body type, etc.). There is no excuse for it, ever, and it is unequivocally misogynist and destructive. Plenty of ink has already been spilled on the general topic and its implications, so I'll refer you the links here & at the bottom if you want to read more.

I can only assume that booty shorts get characterized as "slutty" (or "inappropriate" or "sending the wrong message" or whatever the code phrase du jour happens to be) because they are short and tight and thus more revealing than traditional shorts. So you might reasonably assume that any piece of clothing that shows that much skin/contour would be considered slutty, right?

Not quite. When was the last time you heard a female swimmer's racing suit referred to as "slutty" or "sending the wrong message"? Or a female gymnast? Surely those outfits leave less to the imagination than a pair of boy shorts on a runner.

Which brings us to the heart of what slut-shaming based on clothing is really about: "Publicly or privately insulting a woman because she expressed her sexuality in a way that does not conform with patriarchal expectations for women" (Slut-Shaming vs. Rape Jokes, Choices Campus Blog). It's not how much of her body she's revealing in absolute terms; it's that 1) she's showing more than the person doing the slut-shaming expects or is comfortable with in that particular situation, and 2) when a woman does that, the default position is to sexualize it--to assume that she's dressed the way she is in order to express her sexuality. To quote Amanda Marcotte from her fantastic Slate XX Factor article If You Don't Want Girls Judged by Their Hemlines, Stop Judging Them by Their Hemlines, "Telling women to cover it up is just as surely a form of sexual objectification as telling women to take it off. Either way, you're reducing a woman to her sexuality instead of considering her as a whole person. Either way, you are looking at a woman and instead of seeing a full, complex, and multifaceted human being, all you see is ALL TEH SEXXX."

Sluttin' it up at the Olympic Marathon Trials, obvs. Put some pants on, YOU ARE RUINING AMERICA!!1!1

Swimmers and gymnasts don't get accused of wearing "slutty" outfits when they compete. Even more notably, competitive college and professional runners don't either. (I've even read blog posts railing about booty shorts where, when presented with the case of school or professional racing uniforms, the author admits that "That's different." YOU, with the 26:00 5K, look slutty; YOU, in the same outfit but running a 16:00 5K, do not).

Those outfits are expected and normalized. When dressing a certain way is the norm and possibly even a requirement, there's no reason to assume a woman is dressed the way she is to express sexuality; she's supposed to wear that. But if it's not the norm, if she did choose it of her own free will, then nevermind any other possible reason she might have; the default assumption is that she's doing it to show off her body and get sexy attention.

This is no more evident than in responses from the booty-short haters to women who claim that they wear booty shorts or boy shorts or buns or whatever because they just like them or find them more comfortable (ie, they don't bunch up, stay in place, don't chafe as badly, feel lighter / less bulky, are thinner & cooler, we're used to them from college, or they just feel svelte & speedy). More often than not, the haters express deep skepticism--that cannot possibly be true. You MUST be lying, to cover up your good & proper shame about trying to look hot at a road race.

(Olympic beach volleyball players Kerri Walsh Jennings & Misty May-Treanor know something about this conversation. I also love that their response pretty much comes down to, "We're not the ones making beach volleyball about sex; you are.")

Believe me--people are imminently comfortable in *plenty* of items that I find or suspect I would find utterly miserable. Overalls. Granny panties. Chokers. Gladiator sandals. Ski bibs. Collared shirts. Mittens. Spanx. You will not find me wearing these things. But if someone else tells me that they could happily live in collared shirts and overalls for the rest of their life and be perfectly comfortable, there is just no rational reason for me not to take them at their word.

Not unless I am heavily invested, for some reason, in believing something else.

Girls, I wish I could tell you that wearing longer, looser shorts would guarantee your fellow runners would approve of your appearance. But it just isn't true. As finallyfeminism101.com points out, "As long as gendered slurs like 'slut' continue to be weapons casually wielded against girls and women by both people from all walks of life, any female who acts in a way that another person doesn’t like is at risk for being slut-shamed." (FAQ: What Is “Slut-Shaming”?) To quote Hugo Schwyzer, "The cards are stacked against you. You cannot win, at least not if you define winning as dressing and behaving in a way likely to win approval (or at least decent respect) from everyone."

That, alas, is the world we live in.

Of course, some women do wear the booty shorts because they like the way they look and/or it makes them feel good about their bodies and/or they want attention from others. Which brings me right back around to the same response I gave last time to people who accuse women of wearing running skirts to look feminine and cute.

So what?

So what if she's wearing the booty shorts to look hot and sexy and/or get attention from guys/girls/everyone? Who cares? Is it a crime to look sexy as hell and run a sick PR at the same time? Should we be arrested for being like, "Yeah; I just crushed 26.2 and I'm lookin' super hot. NBD."?

Lolo Jones

Again, I think this mentality goes back to how, particularly in the US, we can see women as "this" OR "that," feminine OR tough, sexy OR seriously competitive, but not both at the same time. Some of us just can't hold two ideas about a woman--"she wants to look hot" / "she is super serious about her running"--in our heads at the same time.

Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones knows something about that. In an August 2012 article, the NY Times pointed out that sure, Ms. Jones may be possessed of "exotic beauty" and has been invited to do sexy photo shoots for several magazines, but c'mon, guys; she "barely made the 2012 Olympic team." Apparently Lolo missed the memo declaring that you can be sexy & attractive or taken seriously as an athlete, but if you seem to be accomplishing both at once, someone will be along shortly to take you down a notch (ie, by pointing out that you barely made the Olympic team, ie, you pretty much suck. Seriously, what kind of an insult is that?). I guarantee you that if she had the same level of talent and accomplishment but hadn't gotten so much attention for her looks, the Times wouldn't have ripped her to shreds the way they did.

Women can be two things at once. Not everything is either/or. This is a battle women have been fighting for decades; if you're not going to help, the least you can do is not actively undermine those of us who are trying.

And, as with the skirts, there is also implicit here the issue of what running is "about" and what we "should" be focused on and thinking about when we're running. "You're running, you're not 'supposed' to look cute / feminine / hot / sexy / whatever right now. Running isn't 'about' that." Again, let's remember that we are not the judge of what someone is "supposed" to be focused on while they're running or what running is "about" for them.

One blogger actually had the gall to claim that "slutty" running outfits like booty shorts/boy shorts/buns "lower the tone" of the races she participates in.

No, my sweet little angel face; you are lowering the tone by slut-shaming your fellow runners. You are the one badmouthing other women who are hurting no one. You are the one seeing sexuality everywhere you look and turning an event that should be about good-natured competition and/or getting strong and/or being social and outdoorsy and/or just plain having a good time into Project Runway. You are the one sending the message that a woman showing more of her body than most others around her can't possibly be anything but sexual and the rest of us best forget about what makes us feel comfortable or fast or strong or attractive & cover up before someone passes moral judgment on us too.

The slutty booty shorts are NOT the problem here. Deal with your shit.

Finally, let's address the "Booty shorts are not flattering on some people" argument.

As with all opinions, you absolutely get to have yours. But do think twice, please, before you inflict it on others.

And, since this particular opinion--booty shorts are okay for YOU but not for YOU--is far from innocuous and neutral, I want to wade into it a little more deeply.

Let's call a spade a spade. When people say the booty shorts are "unflattering on some people" or that some women "shouldn't be wearing them," they're making it clear that it's not the shorts that are the problem; it's the bodies of some women who choose to wear them. Which is already starting to feel a bit ookie. Rock-like, moderately-proportioned rear and thighs that look more or less like the girls in the Nike ads? Booty shorts approved. Pooching too much or in the wrong places? Not enough thigh gap? Visible cellulite? More than 12% body fat? NOBODY WANTS TO SEE THAT. (Because really....when people say, "Those shorts don't flatter her," what they're really saying, usually, is "Nobody wants to see that.")

So let's talk about the damage that is done by the "Nobody wants to see that" construct. (This could be a dissertation--and probably is somewhere--so I'll do my best to keep it concise.)

Just about everyone recognizes that the society we live in has created a canon of what is attractive / beautiful / sexy / etc. etc., and we're inundated with it every day in a thousand different ways (billboards, TV, movies, magazines, ads, clothing models, etc.). Even if you actively understand that that's what's happening, and even if you do your best to fight it or ignore it, it's incredibly hard not to fall into the trap of believing that certain physical characteristics are objectively attractive / beautiful / sexy, and others are objectively not.

Remember how in the running skirts post we talked about how women have historically been expected to be kind, gentle, demure, subservient, etc., that in some ways those things have become emblematic of what women are "supposed" to be like? Well, for a bunch of historical and athropological reasons I won't get into here, the same thing applies to beauty and attractiveness. Just as women have historically owed it to society to be kind, nurturing, polite, and deferential, we have also historically owed it to society to be physically attractive.

Put those two things together, and we have a situation where women who don't match what we've all been taught is attractive and sexy are seen as breaking the social contract they have with society as women. That is where "Ew, nobody wants to see that!" comes from. We tend to give women a little bit of a pass (but not much) if they have the decency to at least hide whatever it is about their bodies that doesn't measure up, but when she doesn't hide it, when she puts that part of her body out there where other people have to see it, society and history have conditioned us to feel kind of betrayed. She isn't holding up her end of the bargain, and she's not properly ashamed about it. The nerve.

So the next time you catch yourself thinking, "She shouldn't be wearing that" / "She doesn't have the [body part(s)] to pull that off" / "Nobody wants to see that," maybe ask yourself why her body inspires in you the reaction it does, what you'd prefer she wore instead, and why.

(For more on this topic, I highly, highly recommend "Modesty Culture and the Fear of the Confident Woman" by Dianna E. Anderson. I totally heart her blog.)

And finally....Let's just remind ourselves for a moment how HUGE a problem body hate and body image anxiety is for women in general, even those who do look like the Nike ads. While it's heartbreaking to me that so many women initially get into running and other forms of exercise for that reason, I am happy they are here. I hope it helps them find a way to feel good about themselves and their bodies that is based on what they can do and what they accomplish rather than how close they are to looking like a Nike ad.

When we criticize what a woman is wearing in a way that is connected to how her body looks, we need to recognize that we could be making it harder for her to stay in the sport. We could be making it hard for others who may have just recently made enough progress with their body image to go, "Hey, if she can wear that and feel good about herself, maybe I can too!" We could be making it harder for a woman who is right on the brink of trying out a sport like running but is self-conscious about putting on running clothes of any kind. By quietly saying about some other woman who doesn't look like a Nike ad, "She should *not* be wearing that," we may be confirming her fears that no, the sport of running is not welcoming to to everyone, and yes, she will be judged for the way her body looks and how her clothes look on her if she doesn't get it just right.

(Seriously...I have had at least half a dozen conversations with women where they've basically said some variation of, "Oh, I could never start running/do yoga/go to the gym/whatever. I'm too fat/not athletic-looking enough for workout clothes. People would make fun of me." Frankly, if someone is going to make comments that contribute to women continuing to feel this way, I don't think we can be friends.)

So what does this all come down to? In a lot of ways, the same things as the running skirts discussion. We need to:

• Be careful about the assumptions we make about people based on something as superficial as clothing.
• Be careful about bringing our own stuff to someone else's situation & projecting it on to them (and aware of when we are doing or find ourselves tempted to do this).
• Think about (or, at the very least, be aware of) all the cultural baggage behind those assumptions & projections & realize that a lot of it is rooted in some pretty nasty sexism.
• Remember that none of us are the supreme authority of what running is "about" for anyone but ourselves.
• Think about the long-term consequences of voicing our opinions on running clothes for a diverse community of runners.

I get that some of this may be stuff we're not all used to doing or thinking about. I have faith that we can get there, though, with practice.

**Post-script:** Just a quick reminder about the ground rules in terms of commenting: 1) Feel free to respectfully & thoughtfully express disagreement, and 2) don't be a dick. I won't delete a comment just because someone has a critical question or different point of view (I have gotten some interesting & poignant comments that did just that!), but I will not abide ranters and pool-poopers that insist on making things tiresome for everyone. Of course you guys are the coolest, and I've never yet had to resort to that. :)

Read Part 3: The Tizzy Over Toplessness.

References & Further Reading:

• FAQ: What Is "Slut-Shaming"?, from Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog. A basic overview of what slut-shaming is & what its effects are for people who are not familiar with the term.
• What Is Slut-Shaming?, by Linda Lowen @ About.com Women's Issues. Another good overview that emphasizes how slut-shaming doesn't necessarily have anything to do with a person's sexual behavior.
• Slut-Shaming vs. Rape Jokes, Choices Campus Blog. "When a woman enjoys her sexuality without hurting anyone else, but someone finds out about it, the response is to insult her, shame her, bring her down and make sure she never does it again. But the response to rape, and 'jokes' about rape, which trivialize and normalize violent, traumatic and sometimes life-threatening acts against women is--somehow--to laugh?"
• 'Slut': Gender Policing As Bullying Ritual, by Elizabethe C. Payne @ The Huffington Post. "As kids approach adolescence, increased value is placed on gender conformity and heterosexual desirability....A significant portion of the expected gender conformity for girls includes managing relations to and with boys. Social worth for girls becomes less determined by their individual accomplishments in arts, academics or athletics, and increasingly they are evaluated by their success in attracting, maintaining and regulating the attentions of boys in "acceptable" ways. Girls straddle an often unclear line in appearing sexually attractive (desirable) and receptive (thus not "gay") yet unavailable (not "sluts"). Girls who cross the line, appear to have crossed it or are rumored to have crossed it are marked as transgressing gender norms and disrupting moral order."
• If you want a world that respects women, stop slut-shaming them, by Nico Lang @ Thought Catalog. "This isn’t about Miley Cyrus, Angelina Jolie, Kristen Stewart or Hillary Clinton, but a society that expects different things out of men and women — one that enables toxic masculinity and blames women for not being good enough. If they just behaved differently, it wouldn’t be like this."
• If You Don't Want Girls Judged by Their Hemlines, Stop Judging Them by Their Hemlines, by Amanda Marcotte @ Slate XX Factor. "Telling women to cover it up is just as surely a form of sexual objectification as telling women to take it off. Either way, you're reducing a woman to her sexuality instead of considering her as a whole person. Either way, you are, to quote Maya Dusenbery of Feministing, "looking at a woman and instead of seeing a full, complex, and multifaceted human being, all you see is ALL TEH SEXXX.""
• Stop telling girls their hemlines are too short, by S.E. Smith @ XOJane. "The hyperfocus on what girls are wearing with a healthy heaping of judgment sends precisely the opposite message, underscoring that girls should be constantly concerned about what they are wearing and who might be judging them for it."
• A Defense of Skimpy Running Clothes, by Caitlin @ Fit and Feminist. "A few months ago, I bought a couple of pairs of New Balance compression shorts that are only slightly less revealing than bunhuggers....I won’t deny that I felt a little awkward the first few times I wore them out for a run, like I thought maybe I looked like I’d forgotten to put on my pants that day, but once I became acclimated to running in them, I found I preferred them to all of my other running bottoms....I’ve become so attached to my teeny little running shorts that I can’t help but feel a bit miffed whenever well-meaning fellow feminists point at them as evidence of the sexualization and objectification of female athletes."
• Your Body Is Never the Problem, by Hugo Schwyzer @ hugoschwyzer.net. "Have you noticed the way this works yet? If a girl is thin, she’s accused of being “anorexic”; if her weight is higher than the cruelly restrictive ideal, she’s “fat” and “doesn’t take care of herself” or “has no self-control.” If she wears cute, trendy clothes she “only wants attention” and if she wears sweats and jeans, she “doesn’t make an effort.” If she’s perceived as sexually attractive, and—especially—if she shows her own sexual side, she’s likely to be called a “slut.” If her sexuality and her body are concealed, she’s a “prude.” As you’ve probably figured out, the cards are stacked against you. You cannot win, at least not if you define winning as dressing and behaving in a way likely to win approval (or at least decent respect) from everyone."
• For Lolo Jones at the Olympics, Everything Is Image, by Jere Longman @ The NY Times. "Judging from this year’s performances, Lolo Jones seems to have only a slim chance of winning an Olympic medal in the 100-meter hurdles and almost no possibility of winning gold. Still, Jones has received far greater publicity than any other American track and field athlete competing in the London Games. This was based not on achievement but on her exotic beauty and on a sad and cynical marketing campaign."
• Lolo Jones and Her Pretty Girl Problem, by Brande Victorian @ Madame Noire. "The crux of Longman’s article is Lolo had no right to make us interested in her if she wasn’t going to deliver the goods, better yet the gold. I think this backlash is proof of one simple thing: when you’re hot (because of your looks and your skill) everyone loves you, and when you’re not, the praise and the recognition fades as though it was never there."
• Real Women, by Hanne Blank. "There is a phrase I wish I could engrave upon the hearts of every single person, everywhere in the world, and it is this sentence which comes from the genius lips of the grand and eloquent Mr. Glenn Marla: There is no wrong way to have a body. And if your moral compass points in any way, shape, or form to equality, you need to get this through your thick skull and stop with the “real women are like such-and-so” crap."
• The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts, by Hanne Blank.
• Pictures of You, by Michelle Allison @ The Fat Nutritionist. "I’m thinking today about body image. My body image, to be specific, and the way I feel when suddenly confronted with photographs of myself taken by other people, showing my whole body."
• A Love Affair With Gravity, by Michelle Allison @ The Fat Nutritionist. "Since I started doing this crazy accept-my-body thing eleven years ago, there has been a series of ups and downs with my own body image. I go through good times, I go through bad times. Sometimes really, really bad times. Over the years, the good times get longer and the bad times get shorter. What doesn’t change, though, is the amount of pressure on me — on all of us — to look a certain way. To be feminine, to be light-skinned, to have smooth hair, to fit into straight-sized clothes."
• You Are Not Too Ugly or Too Fat to Exercise, by Emily Heist Moss @ Role/Reboot. "Too many people, women especially, get caught up in how they look while they exercise. Instead of focusing on feeling strong and getting stronger, women worry about the jiggle in their upper arms, the pooching belly, the muffin top edging over lycra pants. They worry about their hair, or their makeup, or that other people will think they are too out of shape to exercise."
• Modesty Culture and the Fear of the Confident Woman, by Dianna E. Anderson @ Faith and Feminism. "There’s an expectation in modesty culture that a woman’s body will be attractive, and there’s a sense of betrayal that ripples through men when a woman is immodest but not embodying the “ideal” standards of attractiveness. This is what happens when modesty culture teaches that women’s bodies are dangerous simply because they exist as female shapes...When men fail to experience attraction – particularly when a woman does not fit the culturally created standards of attractiveness, eg, white, thin, cisgender – the reaction becomes one of 'no one wants to see that.'"

Ladies & Their Running Clothes: The Scuffle Over Skirts

I'd like to say something to the active ladies out there.

If you need to insult, mock, or make disparaging remarks about how other women dress for their run / exercise, you are doing it wrong.

I'm addressing the ladies specifically because, in my experience, men are usually not the ones engaging in this behavior. Just about everything I can remember ever hearing or reading in that vein came from women, directed at women. (Sure, we've all furtively giggled at Short Shorts Guy at one point or another, but it's the rare lady among us that's actively nasty about it.)

I won't get into the infinitely more complex world of insulting/mocking/etc. lady clothes in general. I've tried writing that post (not on this blog) over and over and over again, and I can never quite get it right. But surely we can leave each other alone when it comes to a shared hobby where we're all just trying to have fun, get strong, & feel good about ourselves?

You don't have to look far to find examples of female runners getting judgey & mean about what other female runners wear, and there is certainly no dearth of this behavior on the internet. But since I'd like to publish this post sometime before the next millennium, I'll start with just one that seems to come up over and over again, and we'll see how efficient I am about follow-up posts about others.

Case Study #1: Running Skirts

In certain circles, the running skirt has become the latest whipping boy/girl in a seemingly endless parade of running blog posts about "Things I Hate." I've lost track of the number of posts I've read complaining about this particular item of clothing and the women who run in them. They've stuck with me not because of the posts themselves (because, hey, your blog; write whatever you want), but because of the way they fit into a larger pattern of complaining about other ladies' running clothes choices in general.

The criticisms I have most often heard about running skirts include:

• They are dumb-looking;
• They are un-tough/wussy looking (and running is about being tough);
• Girls wear them because they want to look cute and/or feminine while running;
• Running is about looking/being tough and and strong, not cute and feminine;
• They only exist in the first place because of the relatively recent influx of slow, non-tough, girly-girl runners to the sport.

I say to you: bullshit.

Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

First, we're all obviously entitled to our own opinions about what is and is not dumb-looking. I think a lot of trends are dumb-looking. I'm sure I wear things all the time that other people think are dumb-looking. Hell, I probably wear things sometimes that my friends think are dumb-looking. But please recognize that a) this is your personal opinion, not objective fact, and b) when you inflict that opinion on others, nothing is accomplished besides making someone feel bad and/or confirming that yes, you are indeed an asshole. That's all. No one is going to be like, "Wow, you are so right! I never realized how dumb I/they look! How observant and wise you are!" No. You get to think running skirts are dumb-looking, but please also try to be a stand-up human and keep it to yourself.

Second, although the opinion that running skirts are un-tough/wussy looking is also one you get to have if you want, it's a much less neutral, more insidious one, because it's rooted in gender stereotypes that have been doing women more harm than good for generations. It is absolutely true that traditionally female attire like skirts have historically been associated with traits like weakness, demureness, kindness, subservience, etc., because those are the traits that have historically been associated with and expected of women.

Fortunately, many people--men and women--have worked extraordinarily hard to begin undoing these associations. Many of us are gradually learning to uncouple a) a person's gender from her character traits, and b) certain character traits from traditionally gendered clothing. Women now give us ALL *KINDS* of opportunities for judging how tough they are if we insist on doing so, without resorting to their wardrobe. Ladies change tires, wrangle children, broker multi-million dollar deals, and win at boxing, sometimes in skirts, sometimes not. When you make a statement like "Running skirts are/make you look wussy/un-tough," you're aligning yourselves with a brand of sexism that says it's okay to judge a person's character based on YOUR interpretation of THEIR clothes, and also that things associated with girls/women do and should continue to symbolize weakness. If you really do insist on judging the character of someone you don't know at an endurance event, *at least* have the decency to do it based on her performance, not her clothes.

These skirt sportin' ladies all placed in their age groups.
(From tootallfritz.com)

Nicole Deboom won Ironman Wisconsin in 2004 in a hand-sewn
running skirt, then went on to found the wildly successful Skirt Sports.

Elite ultramarathoner Lisa Smith-Batchen ran 50 miles in each
of the 50 states in 62 days, rotating through 4 Nuu Muu running dresses.

Are you really saying that the fact that your garment of choice has a visible crotch
makes you tougher than these ladies? Because I kind of dare you to throw down that gauntlet...

That said, the very idea that a girl who is running should look tough (or bad ass, or hardcore, or whatever word you want to use), is somehow obligated to look tough simply because she is running, is also pretty exclusionary. Like most other hobbies, there is no one thing which running is "about" for all people or all women. Running is about all kinds of things. For some people, it's about being tough/bad ass/hardcore. Other runners really couldn't care less about being tough/bad ass/hardcore or about whether others perceive them that way. No one gets to be the judge of what running is or should be "about" for all people, any subset of people, or any one person, other than yourself.

Which segues nicely into the idea that women who wear running skirts do so because they want to look cute and feminine while running. There are two issues with this argument:

Issue 1: You don't know that. Like most other things, it's true for some women and not for others. To my knowledge no one has conducted a rigorous, peer-reviewed study on the topic, so until that happens it's impossible for us to say with any certainty whether or not this is true for many or most or all women who wear running skirts. That means that when you make this argument, you're making an assumption--even if you happened to know one or two or ten or two hundred girls who have straight up told you that this is why they wear running skirts, it's still bad logic to assume that that's the case in general.

Based just on conversations I've had with lots of different women over the years, I can give you a whole list of reasons why some women wear running skirts:

• They don't like how they look in shorts.
• They like the fit of compression shorts but want some extra coverage.
• They want to look cute and/or feminine when they run.
• They feel they perform better when more people are watching them, and skirts attract more attention.
• They never thought of wearing a running skirt before, but then found one in a pattern they LOVED.
• They feel self-conscious about crotch-sweat & the skirt layer makes them feel more comfortable.
• They are very very UN-girly/feminine & enjoy subverting that stereotype by wearing a skirt.
• They get a kick out of pissing off people who get bent out of shape about running skirts.

Issue 2: So what? Is some runner girl's desire to look a certain way while she's running personally harming you in some way? How does that work exactly? At what point did this somehow become your business? Is it because you think that running should be about toughness and bad ass-ness and somehow looking cute and feminine conflicts with that? Because that's another opinion rooted in some pretty sketchy assumptions about gender signaling and character. You might decide that you can't feel cute/feminine and tough at the same time, but there are plenty of women out there who can and do. Don't project your stuff on to them.

Finally, this idea that running skirts only exist in the first place because of the relatively recent influx of slow, non-tough, girly-girl runners to the sport.

This. This is my hands-down favorite argument against the running skirt, because it does such a nice job of wrapping all of the others up into a nice, neat little package. Implicit in this argument are the ideas that running is about toughness and performance only, that toughness and performance are in conflict with femininity, that running skirts are un-tough and wussy and purely about looking feminine.

Let me try to explain some things, as gently as I know how.

For a primer in fake nostalgia, I recommend this book. Totally explains why I'm always nostalgic for four years ago.

1) The culture of any group or affiliation, including sports and other hobbies, is constantly in flux. As much as it might feel to you that it's "always" been a certain way, that's a narrative based on personal experience, not objective reality. I dealt with this a LOT when I taught high school. Older students would complain about the new ones & talk about how "it's not like it used to be" and "those new kids just don't get it," and they'd inevitably find some trend among the younger ones to latch that complaint onto--some new band they all listened to, how they wore their pants, some pop culture reference they'd become obsessed with. What it was didn't really matter; if it hadn't been one thing, it would've been something else. I had to remind them that the kids who'd graduated a few years before had said the same thing about them, as had the ones before them.

Part of the change is just perception, but part of it (not to get too zen on you) is just the reality that everything is always changing. Before it was "those girly girls in their girly skirts," it was "those girls wearing girly colors," and before that, "those girls," period. All of us tend latch onto the things that disrupt the nice, comfortable narrative we've created for ourselves about our sport. Adults have to learn to recognize when we're doing this and not act like children about it.

2) Disparaging people who are getting involved in your thing because they don't look like you or dress like you or do it for the "right" (read: your) reasons or get the "right" (read: same as you) thing out of it is called xenophobia, and it's just plain petty. Particularly when your thing is a social sport that has such a myriad of benefits to offer just about anyone. No one is hurting you. No one is "ruining your experience." (And if they are you are letting them....Well, if you're out of your teens and still letting other people have that level of power over your experience, I just don't know what to tell you.)

We need to be careful about the assumptions we make about people based on things as superficial as clothes. Just as with a woman in shorts or tights, a woman in a running skirt may be a new runner training to finish her first 5K, or she may be a seasoned veteran gunning for a three hour marathon. She may be just learning to deal with the physical discomfort of physically challenging her body, or she may be tough as nails. Maybe she's a new runner but climbed K12 last year. You don't know, and it's not fair to make assumptions because of a piece of clothing. We also need to think hard about the reasons behind those assumptions. Sometimes if you really unpack them, they come from some pretty insidious places.

And for the love of Yasso, stop acting like you own the sport of running because you wear shorts. Geez.

Tune in next week (or next month, or next year, or whenever I finally get it together) for Part 2, where I take on stupid comments about booty shorts. (You know you can't wait!)

**Post-script:** This is still only my second time writing about something pseudo-controversial on the internet. As a refresher, the ground rules in general are 1) feel free to respectfully & thoughtfully express disagreement, and 2) don't be a dick. I won't delete a comment just because someone has a different point of view, but I will not abide ranters and pool-poopers that insist on making things tiresome for everyone. Of course you guys are the coolest, and I've never yet had to resort to that. :)

Read Part 2: The Brouhaha Over Booty Shorts.

Read Part 3: The Tizzy Over Toplessness.

The Tricky, Troubling, Anxiety-Fraught Relationship Between Food, Exercise, & Body Image

I've noticed a trend lately. Actually, it's probably not really a new trend so much as one that's become so ubiquitous as to be unavoidable (because ask my boyfriend; that's the only way I really ever notice anything). As I go about my running / internetting life, I can't help stumbling across gems like these:

And let's not forget the wonderful world of social media:

Stuff like this really bothers me, and it took a long time to suss out exactly why.

I mean...isn't it good that people are motivated to do healthy things for themselves? Isn't it great that people exercise to stay in shape, rather than eating unhealthy foods and not exercising? Is it just because it's all pink? What is your problem, Ang, like seriously???

And I'd be like...yeah...exercising is good...and wanting to stay in shape & be fit is good...and balancing tasty treats with activity is good...

...So why does this bother me so effing much?

Seriously. I've started & abandoned this post about six times because I felt like there was something crucial here that needed to be addressed, but just couldn't figure out what it was or how to explain it.

Recently I've been reading a blog called The Fat Nutritionist, which I've really enjoyed & find just brilliant. I can't personally go to bat for everything she's ever written, mostly because I haven't read everything she's ever written. But as someone who has dealt with food issues I just think she writes a lot of things that make a lot of sense & that I wish someone had told me when I was a teenager. One of the first posts I came across was one called "Food and Exercise Are Not Matter & Anti-Matter."

"YES!!!!!" I may have shouted (in my head). "YES! That is exactly what I have been trying to put my finger on."

I'll leave it to you to read the full post, but here's the first few paragraphs:

"How often do you hear someone say they need to “work off breakfast,” or that they spoiled their workout by eating some calorific food afterward? I hear it quite a bit, and it always bothers me. Let me count the ways.

First of all, reducing food to “calorie intake” and movement to “calorie expenditure” – setting them up as opposites, one cancelling the other out – disregards the real, complex, essentially human experiences of eating and moving. It sets food and movement up to be rivals, competing for control over your weight. In doing so, it centers weight as The Priority. It assumes one should always be in a state of calorie deficit, pursuing weight loss to the exclusion of enjoying your food, or moving for the fun of it. It also implies that the only reason a person would exercise is for the purpose of off-setting what they eat – that food is matter, and exercise anti-matter."

You can substitute "hotness"/"physical attractiveness" for weight and I think everything still holds. (I mean, let's be real. The obsession that many women have about the number of pounds they weigh is a proxy for physical attractiveness in a world where fat-shaming--and sometimes not-rail-thin-shaming--is the norm, and weight is in some ways the last widely socially acceptable prejudice.)

Mainly, it's this bit:

"It also implies that the only reason a person would exercise is for the purpose of off-setting what they eat."

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with wanting to stay fit and healthy, with feeling good about the way you look because you are active, with wanting to enjoy delicious high-calorie food without regretting what you ate, or even with exercising to lose weight or maintain a weight you're happy with. I'm really not.

But the messages on the shirts & water bottles are a lot more complex than that.

I have written before about the PURE JOY that is running around the super-socially progressive city of San Francisco as a woman on a hot day wearing hot-day appropriate running clothes. (Hint: That post is not actually about joy.) One of the less offensive things that has been shouted at me from street corners is something along the lines of, "HEY WHY'RE YOU RUNNING, BABY????? YOU'RE LOOKIN' HELLA FINE ALREADY!!!!"

Believe it or not, I've actually gotten more sophisticated versions of the same thing from well-meaning friends. "Psshh. It's not like you need to go to the gym." "Hey, it's not like you're going to get fat from missing one run."

Remarks like these betray a hidden assumption that many people have about exercise (particularly women and exercise) in our culture: People (especially women) exercise in order to be skinny / attractive / not get fat / lose weight / etc. Exercise is so unpleasant and horrible that that is the only believable reason why anyone would ever do it. Oh, sure, you may couch it in terms of "keeping fit" or "staying healthy," but *obviously* those are just code words for tip-toeing around icky things like fatness and the deathly serious business of avoiding it.

When we plaster phrases like these all over our T-shirts and water bottles to the exclusion of other reasons for running, it feels a bit apologetic, as if we are tacitly agreeing with this assumption and acknowledging that yes, exercise is indeed horrible, and naturally everyone who sees you is surely mystified as to why on earth you'd put yourself through it. So naturally, we give them our excuse. Dessert. Cupcakes. Nice butt. Whatever. "Oh, nononono!! I don't actually like this! I'm not a weirdo or anything! I just want to eat whatever I want & be hot & skinny, like a normal person!"

(Also, let's be real. No one should EVER run a marathon for any other reason than because they want to run a marathon. There are much, MUCH easier ways to go about achieving just about any ulterior motive you could possibly have, including getting a nice butt. We should also all know by now that training for a marathon is a TERRRRIBLE weight loss plan.)

The ones about eating, particularly eating certain foods like cupcakes & dessert, also express the flip side of that assumption: that those foods are ones that you can't or shouldn't eat just because you want to, because you like them and they make you happy. That they need to be earned, bought & paid for with pain and sacrifice and general unpleasantness. "I run so I can eat cupcakes" pretty clearly implies that if you don't, you can't eat the cupcakes. (Or, at best, that if you don't run and eat them anyway, you are BADBADBAD and deserve whatever happens to you as a result.)

Say it with me now:

• I do not need an excuse to run, exercise, work out, or otherwise move and be active in the world.
• It is okay to enjoy exercise for its own sake.
• Exercise is necessary, normal, and healthy when done in a balanced way.
• I don't have to justify my running / exercising / working out / moving / being active in the world to ANYONE.

If you go run for two hours and someone is like, "Ugh, why would you ever do that?!?," you are not obligated to give them a reason that they'll understand, that they find believable and "normal." You're not obligated to give them any answer at all, if you don't feel like it.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Are you ready for the next part? I think this might be harder for some people, but give it a try.

• I do not need an excuse to eat--anything, or in any amount.
• It is okay to enjoy eating for its own sake (even--GASP!--dessert).
• Eating is necessary, normal, and healthy when done in a balanced way.
• I don't have to justify my eating--anything or in any amount--to ANYONE.

I think one of the things I love about The Fat Nutritionist is that Michelle, the proprietess, totally gets behind these very ideas (and goes into much, MUCH more detail in many, many posts than I ever could on this blog). So if you find yourself reading some of those statements and going butbutbutbutbut then I really recommend perusing her site. There's great stuff there, particularly for folks who have or have had food / body image issues. (She is a proponent of the Health At Every Size movement and also has a number of posts exploring the many wrong assumptions people have about the connections between overall health and weight.)

I wondered at first whether I was just picking up on the types of messages above because I dislike them. So to be fair, I tried googling various combinations of a few different phrases based on other reasons I can think of for running (I run to be strong, I run for fun, I run to stay healthy, etc.). There really wasn't much, and I had to dig pretty far into the search results to find the few things I did come across. There were these from the Nike Women's races, first of all:

I personally find the "I run to be fearless" one a little weird, because I can't say I've ever heard of anyone who said they started running because they were afraid (unless they were being chased by something), and I've never thought of running as likely to make you particularly braver. But still. I can give them points for trying.

And there was this:

I also ran across these cute key chains:

Then again, the same company was also selling this one:

So that was kind of disappointing.

I want to wrap it up with a little Q & A, because it seems only fair to address some questions that I feel will inevitably come up.

Question: "What if I do run because I want to eat high-calorie food? Are you saying that's not okay?"

Answer: Any particular person's individual reason for running (or doing any type of activity) is not mine (or anyone else's, for that matter) to judge. I personally think it is completely possible to really enjoy delicious, rich food and also prefer your body stay the same shape & size that it is. In that situation, you either have to cut back on the rich food, or expend more calories. Them's just physics. That choice in & of itself is a completely neutral one--it's how you feel and respond to that choice that makes a difference.

If you find yourself becoming totally depressed because you feel deprived of foods you love, or completely miserable because you're forcing yourself through an activity (or amount of an activity) that sucks, that is what is not okay. If you feel disgusted with yourself every time you eat dessert and have to go run 10 miles to "work it off," that is not okay. If you make the choice to eat the foods you love & exercise more out of abject terror of gaining weight or negative attitudes / beliefs about certain weights or body types, that is not okay. I can't tell you what your feelings are about the decision to run so you can eat x thing or y amount. You are the one who has to check in with yourself about why you run for cupcakes, whether you run only for cupcakes, what your relationship with the cupcakes is to begin with, etc.

Question: "What if I do run (or do x type of exercise) because I want to lose/maintain my weigh? Is there something wrong with that?"

Answer: Again, in & of itself, this is a neutral decision. You're the one that has to think about what is motivating you to lose or stay at a certain weight. As part of a larger lifestyle shift towards habits you feel good about? Probably okay. Because you're disgusted with or terrified by a certain body shape or type & are exercising compulsively in order to change or avoid it? Probably not okay. To lose 5 vanity pounds so your favorite pants won't pinch so much? Probably okay. To get approval, acceptance, or attention from friends/family/a significant other/boys/girls? Probably not so great. (Personally, I feel like negative emotions--fear, panic, disgust, depression, anxiety, etc.--around food & exercise are often red flags that bigger issues may be in play somewhere & bear closer examination. But that is just my opinion.)

I think you also have to think about how you feel about the running (or whatever type of exercise you do). If you hate it and think of it as a chore you have to do in order to lose / maintain weight, odds are good that plan is not going to last very long anyway. For all that I can rarely get through an Active.com article without at least one eye roll, it's worth considering a couple of paragraphs from one I read recently:

If you are running to lose weight, I encourage you to separate exercise and weight. Yes, you should run for health, fitness, stress relief and most importantly, for enjoyment. (After all, the E in exercise stands for enjoyment!) [Okay, that last part made me barf a little.]

If you run primarily to burn off calories, exercise will become punishment for having excess body fat. You'll eventually quit running—and that’s a bad idea. (A better idea is to seek personalized help by meeting with a local sports dietitian.)

Like I said, it's not any one of these products or posts that is the problem. It is not the idea that someone might run to lose or maintain weight. It's the ubiquity of this particular message in the absence of others, the fact that these slogans are plastered everywhere while many, many, MANY other great and wonderful reasons for running & exercising are not, the message that sends, and what it says about people's beliefs & attitudes about exercise, food, & body image.

Question: "What if I do run (or do x type of exercise) in order to stay/become physically attractive? Is there something wrong with that?"

Answer: The short answer is, I'm not sure about this because it's HELLA complicated. Mainly because the idea of "physically attractive" is complicated and we have some pretty messed up ideas about what it means in our culture. So while I don't have a nice, simplistic answer for you around this, I have nailed down a few thoughts. First & foremost, I'd say that wanting to look attractive & taking steps to accomplish whatever that means to you is reasonable & normal & healthy, as long as...

• You're not putting yourself or others at risk, physically, mentally, or emotionally, in order to do it. (Obviously what constitutes 'at risk' in this department is a HUGE can of worms that I am just not going to open here.)
• You've dealt with any issues you have around having confidence in your physical appearance & feeling good about it. Otherwise, no amount of weight loss / body changing is going to make you feel good. You have to fix the insides first on this one.
• Your happiness, self-esteem, etc. isn't tied up with what other people think about your body. If you run a million miles a week because everyone just HAS to think you're the hottest chick or dude in the room, that's a non-starter and you need to deal with that first.
• You are under no illusions that attractiveness is an objective, one-dimensional scale on which we are all striving for some ideal at one end of the spectrum and desperately avoiding the other (ie, looking better/more attractive/hotter means looking more like x celebrity/athlete/model/etc. and less like y). Really. Physical attractiveness can look like a billion different things. Don't let the barrage of media you're constantly inundated with with convince you otherwise. (Yes...This can be really hard. They've been at us our whole lives.)
• You're not having any other of those bad feelings I mentioned before about it. ("Hottie Mystique," anyone?) Because again, that's a red flag that your choice to run/exercise in order to become/stay physically attractive may be indicative of deeper issues that need addressing.

Inevitably, there will be people who are like, "Geez, Ang, calm down. It's not that big a deal. You're taking this WAAAAAY too seriously. Don't be so sensitive." And they get to have that opinion. But I'd also point out that not too terribly long ago that's the same response people got, to the letter, when they argued that black face & other racial stereotypes in entertainment were offensive, or that women getting smacked in the ass by their boss was a problem.

So if that's your initial reaction, I'd invite you to consider that just because something doesn't come across as harmful to you, or you don't understand why something is potentially harmful to others, doesn't mean it isn't or can't be. I would invite you to think about how the stakes around these issues can be higher for some people than for others, about your underlying assumptions about food and exercise, and how perpetuating those assumptions, even in a cute, jokey way--especially when that's almost all we get--can potentially do real long-term damage. (All the food / exercise / body image angst & obsession we've got going on in this country didn't come from nowhere, you know.)

I would encourage companies that make T-shirts and water bottles and key chains and races / organizations with a social media presence consider making products / posts that promote a wider variety of the reasons and motivations that people run and exercise. While it's important for people to feel good about their appearance and there's nothing wrong with touting the benefits of running in that regard, I would encourage them to recognize that our society is already obsessed with appearance & attractiveness, and to consider using messages that focus less on what running can do your for your appearance and more on what it can do for your mental and emotional health & well-being, your self-concept, your sense of achievement & accomplishment, etc. I'm not asking anyone to burn the "I run for cupcakes" T-shirt. I'm just asking for a balance in terms of the messages we send about the sport we love.

Bottom line? I wish we could all just enjoy the different part of our lives more, for their own sake. Eat delicious food that we love because it is a great pleasure to do so. Move our bodies and be active in the world because it makes us feel good and we enjoy it. Obsess less (online and off) about how "fit" we are or are not. Worry less about what other people think about what our bodies are like and what we do with them. It's a tall order, but I think tossing out the idea of food & exercise as opposite forces might not be the worst place we could possibly start.

**Post-script:** I am totally not used to writing about serious stuff on the internet. While I don't expect everyone who reads this to understand & agree 100% and I am absolutely open to discussion around it, I DO know that the people who read my blog are the awesome-est, and are utterly cool with civil, respectful discourse. I will not delete your comment just because you disagree with something I've said here--in fact, I would love to hear your opinion!--but I will ABSOLUTELY delete it if you're just going to poop in the pool & make the conversation miserable for everyone. I do not expect to have to resort to deleting, because my readers are not pool-poopers.

Right?

Right.

Further Reading...

• A Primer on Privilege: What It Is and What It Isn't. This one, I really think everyone should read, because we all have some form of privilege or another and should be aware of it when we interact with other people. But every time I see / hear / read about "fit" people concern-trolling "unfit" people, I REALLY want to make them read it. I think it's a bit more accessible for some people than the traditional "Unpacking The Invisible Knapsack."

• Stigma Against Fat People the Last Acceptable Prejudice, Studies Find. "At a time when obesity is seen as a serious public health threat, research has found a growing prejudice against fat people. "Thinness has come to symbolize important values in our society, values such as discipline, hard work, ambition and willpower. If you're not thin, then you don't have them," she said."

• Eat Food. Stuff You Like. As Much As You Want. "Going through the motions in order to reach the carrot or escape the stick actually takes something away from the benefit of those motions. Exercising to lose weight makes fitness not as fun or useful. Eating to lose weight makes nutrition not as fun or useful. And, when things are not fun (meaning, intrinsically rewarding), it’s pretty much guaranteed that you will stop doing them."

• Gym Class. "I had a pretty happily active childhood, despite being the unathletic and slightly fat child of two decidedly unathletic and slightly fat parents. Until gym class became a “thing,” that is. A graded, micromanaged academic requirement, starting in junior high — unhappily coinciding with the absolute social, emotional, and physical nadir of human existence. Or at least of mine. If you want to destroy all the inherent joy in something, slap a grade on it."

• The Denial of Life. "If you genuinely enjoy marathons, run them. If that would be torture to you, don’t. Find something else to enjoy. If you love salad, eat it. If salad is punishment, for God’s sake, there are a million other foods to take its place. Food that isn’t enjoyed isn’t worth a damn. Find something better. You deserve it."

• The Great Divorce of Body & Mind. "I look back on the time I was dieting as a period of falling-out with my body. We fell out of synchronicity, and out of favour, with one another. We were no longer on speaking terms. And though the diet was a dramatic physical manifestation of the rift that had formed between my mind and my body, I believe the fault that led to the rift started much earlier."

• Your Body Is Your Home. "Why does it matter how we think of our bodies? Well, in my experience, treating my body like a machine has not ended well. Treating it like an expensive outfit designed to impress other people has not ended well. Treating it like an unruly child or pet who needs to be reckoned with and brought under submission has not ended well. And I’ve lived for long periods of time where it was as if my body and myself were no longer on speaking terms."

• About That Video. "Yesterday, the video of Jennifer Livingston, a fat news anchor responding to an email about how fat and unhealthy she was, went viral...A lot of people have tried to make the argument that the email was not bullying, since it referenced concern for her health. Health is always and forever the argument weight bigots lean on to give a socially acceptable veneer to their harassment"

• Pictures of You. "I’m thinking today about body image. My body image, to be specific, and the way I feel when suddenly confronted with photographs of myself taken by other people, showing my whole body."

• The Third Option. "There is a third option that has been conveniently left out of the discussion, though a vocal minority of fat people have been arguing for it since the late 1960s: what if fatness is neither a disease nor a cause for blame and stigma? What if there are so many different reasons people are fat that it’s impossible to boil it down to “personal responsibility” and moral failure?"

• How To Eat In A Nutshell. Lesson One: Permission. "There is one golden rule to normal eating, and it is this: no one decides what or how much goes in your mouth but you...You do not have to eat anything you don’t like, don’t want, or aren’t in the mood for. No matter who is pushing it, who thinks it’s for your own good, or what magazine says it’s the new superfood. You don’t have to count calories, or Points, or measure portions out and leave the table feeling hungry. You do not have to."