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![PAGE 13
about what this ideal looked like, as well as a consensus that fat was understood as
“not-fit.” Some interview participants were even more specific in their comments
about the ideal, alluding to measurement terms such as weight or clothing size. For
example, one powerlifter defined the social concept of fat as “any woman over a
size five, with hips” (S21) while both a boxer and football player independently
said “Any woman above 20% body fat” (S19, S40). Another powerlifter referred
directly to the BMI, suggesting that fat was 20–30 pounds or more over a BMI of
25 (S2).
Participants agreed that standards of fat and fit differed for men and women,
with men being permitted a much wider range of acceptable body types and the
freedom to self-define as fit or (non)fat regardless of their actual body condition.
Said one powerlifter who also served as a fire fighter,
If [a man] can still play ball or . . . keep up with the yard work, then he is
[viewed as] fit. Women on the other hand, need to be stick thin, big breasted
and generally look like they walked out of a magazine or Victoria’s Secret to
be considered “fit” or in shape. (S1)
A judoka pointed out that even language describing men’s and women’s fat differed,
and suggested that “carrying extra weight does not become a social problem for
men, I think, until they are incapacitated in some way” (S4).
Some participants also noted that standards differed by age, region, and ethnic
group. In general they felt that standards for older people and people with dis-
abilities were quite low, often to the point where no physical ability was expected
of these groups at all. One powerlifter in her forties joked about the low standards
for middle-aged men’s fitness saying that women her age “prefer [a man] who is
stable and doesn’t look like he is about to keel over” (S1). American participants
pointed to what they saw as differences in the preferences of African Americans
and Hispanic Americans compared with Americans of White European descent,
with the latter group said to be more stringent in its standards for fatness, an opinion
that matches research findings on ethnic differences in body image (Rubin, Fitts,
& Becker, 2003).
Thus, fat is typically viewed as the opposite of fit, and for women, fitness is
often imagined very restrictively, in a way that is connected to the presentation
of a thin body and entirely detached from performance and wellness. These twin
messages are communicated in a variety of ways.
Diagnosing and Labeling Fatness
Many of the interview participants shared their initial experiences of being judged
and labeled fat. For some women, the qualitative judgement was explicitly linked
to quantitative measurements within a specific context, such as medical appointments
or weight loss clinics. As a judoka remembers, “The pediatrician took my
height and weight [when I was nine] and told me I was too heavy and needed to
lose a few pounds. Looking back at myself in pictures, there was no fat on me at
all” (S4). A rower shares her experiences with an air of exasperation:
Over a period of about five years, I went to several different doctors. At each
appointment, I was weighed upon arrival. Each time, the nurse made a “tsk tsk”
noise under her breath. Each time, the doctor told me that I was “heavy” and
asked if I worked out. Each time, I assured them all that yes, I do work out, in
fact, multiple times per day. This was generally met with a look of boredom,
disbelief, or disdain. I asked them to take my blood pressure (which is very, very
low). Look, repeated, but softened slightly. I offered to have them check my body
fat—only one took me up on that—and told them that it was between 19 and 22
[percent]. The looks either softened more, or became entirely dismissive. I told
them all that my resting heart rate was 45. I told them that I coach collegiate
rowing. I told them that I was training for a marathon (at one point, a doctor then
asked me if I was trying to become anorexic). Across the board, all of them, in
turn, replied with variations on a theme: “You should lose about 20 pounds to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/critique-171004133356/85/Journal-Article-Critique-14-320.jpg)
![PAGE 14
get to a healthy weight.” Then, after each visit, I found a new doctor. (S50)
Frequently this measurement and evaluation was a public event and spectacle.
One martial artist recalls accompanying her grandmother to a Weight Watchers
weigh-in as a child:
I was encouraged to get on the scale. . . . I was 11 years old, just a few months
from getting my period for the first time, about to undergo all those lovely
physical changes of puberty, and I was told to lose 20 pounds. I started on
a diet that day. I think that was a big turning point for me in thinking I was
fat. I remember asking my father (a doctor) if he thought I was fat, and he
assured me I was perfectly healthy, but for some reason the judgment of that
woman—who I didn’t know and haven’t seen since—meant more to my selfesteem
and self-image than the opinion of my father at that point. The idea
that I was 20 pounds overweight stuck with me for a long time . . . and still
does, despite all the strides I’ve made in understanding my body and weight
and fitness. And, of course, when the BMI scale came out, I was still at the
upper end, edging in on the whole ‘”you may have medical problems due to
your overweight.” Fantastic (S5)
Another woman who now participates in both Olympic weighlifting and triathlons
remembers being literally marked as bigger via color coding of clothing in
a high school swim class. Students were obligated to wear swimsuits color-coded
and styled by size, which served not only as an implicit size judgement but also
as a public announcement of body status. “The tiny girls would wear little yellow
bikinis; the largest of us would wear these huge blue or black one-piece suits. It
probably saved them lots of time, but caused endless humiliation.” (S33) Larger
bodies are thus often on public display via “official” quantitative evaluations of
their size by health care providers and physical education instructors. Research suggests
that many health professionals, such as doctors and nutritionists, demonstrate
significant levels of antifat bias (O’Brien, Hunter, & Banks, 2007). A rugby player
remembers a gym trainer fretting about the size of her legs:
I happen to think my legs (muscularly speaking) are perfectly fine and certainly
do not want to lose strength in them! I told the trainer such and he told
me that even if I did “enough cardio to burn the fat, you won’t lose enough
circumference if you don’t stop lifting heavy.” (S43)
Crucially, such antifat attitudes might be more common in professionals involved
in obesity prevention, treatment, and research, as well as physical educators—the
very people who should be welcoming sedentary people into regular activity and
cheering on the diverse array of bodies participating. Indeed, as a cyclist remarks,
not even her confidence derived from sports performance was enough to combat
the negative messages emerging from commercial fitness facilities:
Having discovered what I love about being fit and about exercise—speed,
the outdoors, being strong, going fast and hard for as long as I can—I thought
I could re-enter a traditional gym and keep my healthy body image intact. I
was wrong. (S7)
Family is a primary source of messages about fatness, fitness, and femininity.
The women interviewed often identified the negative messages their families
provided; messages that they sought to overcome via their fitness practice. Sometimes
the messages were direct and explicit; other times they were nonverbal and
sent by example or implied comparison, often with other female family members.
“My mother has been on a diet her whole life, [and] grandmother as well,” said
a martial artist. “It is considered as important as dressing well” (S17). Another
woman states: “[I’m] built like a tank, [and] growing up with a sister who meets
societal ideals for ‘not fat’ is a great way to realize one is in the ‘fat’ category just
by being big” (S52). For some participants, the relationship between fat/fit and
family was a complicated one. A judoka remembers her mother’s struggle with
ideals of fatness and weight.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/critique-171004133356/85/Journal-Article-Critique-15-320.jpg)
![PAGE 15
When I was growing up, I watched my mother constantly obsess about being
overweight. She wasn’t perfect, but she could also work a 14-hour day and do
extremely taxing physical labor (e.g., working in gardens/fields). I think I’ve
been left with a split in my perceptions—what my body is able to do (many,
many things) and what it looks like (not slender). (S4)
Attitudes communicated by family and friends can also depend on socioeconomic
class and racialized norms. As one rower recalls, she was 12 when she realized
that standards of fatness and fitness differ by community, with income linked
clearly to a preoccupation with weight and athletic achievement:
I went to a summer camp when I was 12 years old that was mainly populated
by wealthy kids from the New York City suburbs. I grew up in a middle- and
lower-middle-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, and I was astounded by how
obsessed these [rich] girls were with being thin. My friends in Brooklyn
didn’t seem to care that much about how much they weighed, as long as
they weren’t really fat. But with these summer camp kids, you couldn’t have
any fat at all. And they were much more serious about being able to do their
sports well—if you weren’t good at sports then you were supposed to sit on
the sidelines and do your nails, so you were either an athlete or not. I always
thought I was sort of athletic, and in pretty good shape, but these girls taught
me to question that. (S27)
Indeed, some participants noted explicitly that judgements of a good and normal
body size and weight were directly linked in their experiences to racialized and
classed models, as well as regional variations. An Olympic weightlifter in the U.S.
noticed more inactivity and higher body weights in rural and exurban areas. In her
experience, she said, people on the West Coast were likely to stay fit doing organized
activities like charity cycles or triathlons, people on the East Coast maintained
their weight by using the features of the urban environment: “being able to walk
everywhere, climb the stairs for the subway, drink lots of coffee, and smoke lots
of cigarettes.” When it came to the South and the heartlands, she proposed, “‘fit’ in
Houston is being able to do a mall walk or walk up a flight of stairs without huffing
and puffing. The middle of the country is the worst for fitness” (S33).
Finally, as many feminists have pointed out, the commercial media provide
a rich trove of negative messages, both through the provision of highly restricted
and generally unrealistic ideals, as well as the absence of alternative ideals. As one
martial artist remembers:
I think my first idea of social standards of fitness probably came from the Sears
catalogue—you know, those ladies dressed in crisp exercise gear or swimsuits.
Not having a snowball’s chance in hell of looking like these particular models,
I was discouraged from an early age. (S5)
Another martial artist concurs:
I certainly don’t see my body represented. I’m wider, heavier, a lot stronger.
You certainly don’t see women doing judo in popular culture, either. All I ever
really see are tiny, skinny things. If your body is normally like that, fine, but
it’s not the only way to be. (S4)
Antifat attitudes that are informed by quantitative evaluations of appropriate
body size and weight, along with the belief that fatness is oppositional to fitness,
might result in bigger people receiving less positive reinforcement and more negative
messages. These experiences could in turn inhibit or constrain people’s participation
in physical activity and wellness initiatives; precisely the outcome that presumably
well-meaning family and friends, healthcare professionals, and physical educators
seek to avoid. An Olympic weightlifter points out that, rather than being inspiring,
being self-conscious about not being fit made it harder to get fit. “I remember trying
to jog around the neighborhood when I was a lot heavier,” she recalls, “and having
a neighbor call out, looking at my unwieldy bulk, ‘Is it helping?’ That made me feel
awful about trying to exercise . . . as if I were trespassing in an area where I really](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/critique-171004133356/85/Journal-Article-Critique-16-320.jpg)
![PAGE 16
didn’t belong” (S33). This experience of public judgement by a relative stranger is
shared by a recreational weight trainer. One day, riding her bike up a hill, she was
heckled by someone in a car for having “heavy legs [and a] big butt.” Not only was
she angry about being hollered at, but “geez, I was riding a bike up a steep hill;
my heckler was in a freaking car!” (S18).Thus, the fixation on the production of
the individual and the reiteration of negative messages, in fact, results in the risk
of reproduction of social norms and negative physical consequences.
When asked how they personally defined fatness for themselves, the interview
participants were typically careful to distinguish their own definitions from the
social ideal. They generally endorsed a much wider range of bodies as fit and rarely
linked fat explicitly to weight alone. Instead, they tended to focus on fat’s role in
inhibiting both exercise and daily life activities as a criteria for judgement. A few
women also identified the experiential and relational dimension of fat, explaining
that although they might not self-define as fat, they sometimes felt fat in comparison
with arbitrary standards, which were often experienced through activities such as
trying on clothing. “I looove my legs but skirts don’t,” said a football player (S40).
They pointed out the distinction between being large and strong/muscular/active
(defining this as fit regardless of adiposity); and being out of shape (defining this as
fat often regardless of actual weight or size, sometimes using the term “skinny-fat”
to refer to thin, unfit women). Occasionally they linked fatness to other physical
attributes besides weight or size, such as the feeling or movement of the body tissues
itself: “Abdomen and hips too thick and soft. Legs jiggling and chafing together
when I walk or jog. Flabby” [S35].
Many participants connected the definition of fat directly to the ability to
perform. A powerlifter whose BMI was in the obese category nevertheless did not
define herself as fat, noting: “Someone is fat when their size has a negative effect on
their everyday activities. I may be a little overweight, or have a slightly high BMI,
but it in no way affects what I am able to do,” which in her case included winning
provincial powerlifting championships and running three marathons and 26 half
marathons. As she noted, “If I was unable to do what I do because I had gained too
much weight, [then] I’d be fat” (S41). Only a handful of athletes defined themselves
as fat. One, a 395 lb powerlifter, explained that her body weight meant that although
she could “do pretty good lifts” in an absolute sense, being heavier “drops my
coefficient terribly,” meaning that her lifts were not as impressive relative to other
lifters who could move the same amount of barbell weight at a lighter bodyweight
(S31). Another powerlifter who reported her weight as 300 pounds said,
If I had a choice my body would be 100 pounds lighter, no wrinkles, etc. But
at the same time I enjoy being a role model to other women who think they are
out of shape and it is to late for them. I enjoy most when older women stop to
talk with me after I compete. . . . My gut gets in my way of getting down low
[in the squat]. But I think I get more out of my gear and I use my big gut to
push out on my [lifting] belt when lifting max numbers. [S21]
And they are maximum numbers indeed: at 58, this particular woman holds all the
records in her state plus a national bench press record in her weight class; she is a
two-time world bench press champion. Many other women in the interview group
were similarly successful in competition, and several held regional, national, and
even international records.
Measuring Fit
As a child, I dreaded the annual Canada Fitness Test, a multievent ordeal that
usually left me with a sense of shame and the humiliating lowest-level ranking
“participant” ribbon (one year, I stole another child’s gold medal badge, just to have
the experience of owning such a thing). And yet, I was an active child, spending
hours riding my bike, climbing trees, and walking to school. I just wasn’t athletic.
This was my first encounter with the disjuncture between measurement standards](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/critique-171004133356/85/Journal-Article-Critique-17-320.jpg)
![PAGE 19
and have fun. (S7)
This woman also identifies two frequent absences from feminist accounts of exercise:
functionality for real-life challenges and having fun.
Other women pointed out the importance of “mental fitness,” defined variously
as the ability to meet and push through challenges, feel confident, and try new
activities. “I think if you’re pushing yourself hard then you’re fit,” said a kickboxer.
“If you just want to go to the gym and put on some headphones and potter along
on the ‘Sculpto-matic’ then you’re not pushing hard enough. You’re not head-fit”
(S15). Added a rower:
A fit person can ask anything of his or her body and can expect a reasonable
rate of compliance. A fit person is not intimidated by physical challenge
because he or she has the confidence that the body will do what the mind
requests. (S50)
A martial artist concluded that “fitness is ability—what your body can do, what
you can accomplish, what physical challenges you can meet” (S5).
Participating in strength–power sports provided the women with the opportunity
to rethink their earlier, often negative, relationships with their bodies and their
size. For most of them, the experience of pursuing and achieving strength-based
fitness was extremely positive. They began to view their bodies as productive
rather than decorative. They also began to develop a concept of fitness that was
concrete, based on performing specific tasks or overcoming certain challenges,
rather than abstract and based on circulating images. Some women even eagerly
embraced their size, linking it to strength and power. “I’ve always been big and
. . . I decided that if I was going to be big, I was going to be strong too. . . . The
look I really fear is ‘frail’” (S5). This woman was effusive in her enjoyment of her
physique and chosen activities: “I am very strong and I have great muscles (she
says proudly!). I can ride with my bike club for hours on end. We work up to 160
km [100 mile] rides mid-summer, and I keep up with people much younger and
much smaller than me.”
The more they did, the more the women wanted to do. Some interview participants
identified themselves as “provisionally fit”: they were pleased with what
they’d accomplished thus far, but were now inspired to push themselves further
and take on new physical challenges. “It’s an ongoing process, and the goals move
as I get closer to the last one,” says a recreational weight trainer.
I can complete and recover from the exercise I do and still push myself to lift
more, work at higher intensities/longer periods of time and make progress. .
. . [I can also] deal with being pushed with something unusual—a few day’s
hiking, for example, or trying a new sport confidently, knowing it is within
my capabilities. (S52)
Responses to Discouragement
While citing the potential of exercise and fitness for women’s empowerment, Brabazon
(2006) also identifies the problems of linking it specifically to thin appearance
and weight loss, noting that along with her own shameful and awkward experience
of a public weigh-in in gym class, “the consequence of this connection has left a
scar on countless women.” (Brabazon, p. 72) This presumed opposition between
size/fatness and fitness, and the communication of this opposition via family,
peers, school, fitness facilities, and commercial media, is an experience shared by
most of the women interviewed. Indeed, the assumed fatness-fitness binary is so
profound that it was often physical educators and health promoters who were the
least inclusive. As such, many of the women received negative messages about
their abilities and fitness levels.
However, while traumatized at least to some degree by these messages, the
women did not all respond in a similar fashion. Some were deeply affected and
are still recovering. “All my life I have been called fat by my peers—mostly by
males,” said one woman, a BJJ practitioner.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/critique-171004133356/85/Journal-Article-Critique-20-320.jpg)
![PAGE 20
Boys would use the “f” word to put me in my place because they knew it
was the one thing they could say to me that I had no defense for. I looked at
pictures of myself when I was young, and I did not look fat, but you could not
describe me as a skinny girl either. I did not fight their assessment of me—I
pretty much believed it and to this day I honestly believe that I will always
think of myself as fat no matter how fit I am. (S49)
In a few cases, women terminated their involvement in sports altogether. A
male powerlifter shared his recollection of a talented female colleague’s discouragement:
[She] could squat 315 pounds for reps after a few months of training. She happened
to be a national level hammer thrower to boot but quit cold turkey after
a man called her a “big girl.”. . . She quit lifting and throwing and reduced to
a sickly 140 pounds. It was very sad. . . . For me this was a major event and
probably the beginning of my sympathy for larger athletes, because she was
a true talent and could have been an Olympic level athlete.3
Most athletes, however, were defiant in the face of discouragement. They
rejected negative messages outright or sought out other arenas for which their
bodies were well suited. One martial artist recalls that, although she was naturally
athletic and performed well, she was nevertheless larger than average and once had
a basketball coach suggest that “the reason I couldn’t do a drill involving passing
the ball around my midsection very well was that there was too much of me to go
around.” The effect of these messages was
disordered eating and crash diets from as young as the age of 12, but also a
focus on some more nontraditional sports that people around me didn’t do (and
hence didn’t have an image of what my body should look like to compare it
with), such as horseback riding, weight lifting, and yoga (at the time it was
pretty out there, especially for a rural area). (S5)
Another martial artist was even more rebellious and remembers, “Even when I
was a small fat child coming last in cross country, my thoughts were, ‘I’ll show
them, one day I’ll run the marathon’” (S15). A particularly pleasurable experience
for many female strength and power athletes was being able to lift more weight
than the men who discouraged them. With refreshing bluntness, a football player
remarked, “Lifting [weights] reinforces that it is more than okay that I do not look
like the average woman, and furthermore, if anyone wants to give me any lip about
it, I could probably kick their ass” (S40).
Size advantages
Despite receiving a variety of negative messages about their size, height, and/or
fatness, the female strength–power athletes in the sample group were generally
positive about their bodies. In many cases they felt their body shape and size to be
an advantage in their sport, or at least less relevant a factor than other elements such
as skill, ability, and the willingness to work hard. A six-foot rower explains:
Tall rowers always have the advantage, because their stroke is longer. And
heavier rowers tend to be stronger and better able to pull hard on the oar. So
tall, big rowers are good! Of course, thin rowers are also good because they
don’t weigh down the boat as much. But in a good 8, you’ll have the heavier
rowers in the middle as the “engine room.” The skinny girls can sit in the bow.
The thing is, if you’re tall and heavy but out of shape or have bad technique,
you’re not that useful to a crew. So it’s good to be tall and heavy, but technique
and fitness are actually more important overall. (S27)
Another rower concurs that “Being strong is helpful in rowing, especially if you
have a lot of leg strength. Not only are the big muscles in the legs naturally, that’s
really where my strength is so [rowing is] a good sport for me” (S47).
For strength athletes such as powerlifters and Olympic weightlifters, being
bigger and heavier is often a plus because it typically means having more muscle,
but being tall is a disadvantage because the lifter then has to move the weight a
longer distance. One powerlifter remembers her strategy when she competed several](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/critique-171004133356/85/Journal-Article-Critique-21-320.jpg)
![PAGE 21
years ago as part of military competitions:
My leverage as a tall person creates a big disadvantage no matter what my
weight class . . . [but] I kept myself in the 181-lb weight class because I reasoned
that any Air Force woman who could weigh that much without adverse
personnel consequences would also have to be as tall as I was.” (S35)
Shorter, heavier women, on the other hand, found their body configuration to be
an ideal balance of muscularity and biomechanical advantage.
Martial artists often find that being bigger enhances their power and they frequently
enjoy throwing their weight around. “I hit a lot harder,” says one martial
artist proudly. “I spar men regularly when they are available—and I can take a lot
harder punch as well” (S17). Another martial artist sounds downright intimidating,
describing her abilities as “world class,” and adding, “I’m naturally stronger and
exceedingly competitive, so I’ve trained very hard to be better. I’m bigger (even if
I’m shorter), more imposing, and quite a scary movie as an opponent” (S8).
Other types of athletes such as rugby players also enjoyed the momentum and
force they could generate with their size. Thus, in general, bigger women who felt
their size was a good match to the demands of the sport experienced their bodies
as athletic allies rather than shameful constraints.
Inspiration via Sport
The profound message from female strength–power athletes is threefold: first,
that fitness and fatness are neither incompatible nor oppositional; second, that
particular sports embrace and reward bigger, taller, and/or heavier bodies; and
third, that women derive immense personal, physical, and political benefits from
participation in these activities. They are “doing strong” rather than “being thin.”
“I like my body”, says a young Olympic weightlifter proudly. “It helps me lift big
weights, and it is muscular” (S42). This type of account stands in stark contrast
to many other feminist narratives of women’s relationships to exercise (compare,
for instance, this cheerful confidence with Brabazon’s, 2006, distressing account
of observing a woman getting off of the Stairmaster at her gym, throw up, then
return to the machine).■
Many women interviewed began their athletic careers as nonathletes, discouraged
by messages about their bodies, size, abilities, and membership in the world
of fitness. Some began at a personal nadir: after a relationship trauma, in the midst
of overwhelming work and/or family demands, or at the bottom of a booze bottle
or ashtray full of cigarette butts. Says one recreational weight trainer, “I had a very
bad relationship breakup and with a considerable history of depression wanted to
ensure I did not head into a downwards spiral and end of paralysed by depression
and/or on antidepressants” (S52). Like other women interviewed, as she progressed
in the gym, her emotions and mind also healed.
Women often described their pursuit of fitness as a never-ending quest. Yet
what defines the horizon is not a nebulous, emaciated “perfection” but rather selfdetermination,
confidence, and overcoming increasingly difficult challenges both
in competition and in life. Physical self-esteem emerges not from vague affirmations
of acceptance but through skill development and mastery, expressing the
body’s “power to do.” This quest takes women’s lives and bodies on a different
and better course.
My journey into a more physical self through rowing,” says one athlete, “has
been both long (it continues) and profoundly life-changing. It’s pretty simple; I am
a different person than I was in high school, and I like this person infinitely better”
(S50). Women no longer feel the urge to chase youth, because, as one martial artist
in her forties says, “I am more athletic than I was at 20 years old and I can take on
new challenges and improve my health as I go” (S17).
Now many of the women are not afraid of their bodies standing out or of being
visible. They move proudly in gyms and enjoy the attention that their accomplishments](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/critique-171004133356/85/Journal-Article-Critique-22-320.jpg)
![PAGE 22
bring. An Olympic weightlifter who, as a “pudgy” child, never managed to
hang more than a few seconds from a pullup bar and felt “as if all the other kids
were watching with malice, just waiting for me to drop” (S33) now likes to do
pullups on streetcars or street signs. A powerlifter adds,
Powerlifting and weight training in general allow me to stand out in such a
manner [as] to encourage women (and even men) of all ages to use weight
training to change their bodies toward their own ideals and to get strong and
confident in the process. (S35)
They have transformed their experience of public spectacle from a display of
deficiency into a testament of ability and pride.
Women recognized as well that strength–power sports could be democratic
and egalitarian, rewarding qualities such as effort, tenacity, self-care, and courage
rather than a specific body type. Says one martial artist,
One of the most senior belts in my [taekwondo] class is a man with cerebral
palsy, who is overweight and obviously limited in how he can perform the
patterns and so forth. He certainly cannot fight. But the sport recognizes his
ability to perform within his own limitation, and has rewarded him for perseverance,
practice, and the ability to do all the required skills in his own manner. I
think that’s a great example of how sport should be run, and it has helped me
appreciate my own body that much more. (S5)
Conclusion
What is special about body size that requires such silencing of the personal? . . .
[T]he thought of talking from experience about one’s weight seems fantastically
personal, overly intimate, and emotionally sensitive. (Tirosh, 270-271)■
A powerlifting world champion who was teased as a child and teenager for
being fat now says that she knows her life would have been different if she had
started a strength sport when young to combat the negative messages she received
and to generate a feeling of body pride. She attributes this enjoyment, in part, to her
coach, who treated her as an athlete and not “a fat person who started lifting weights
to lose weight.” Although she doesn’t yet feel she is as fit as she’d like to be, she
loves “building muscle and feeling good from both the physical rush of working
out, as well as from the accomplishment of lifting more than before and knowing
that I am a little bit better today than I was yesterday.” Powerlifting provides her
with precisely the right forum to express her physical gifts:
I am good at powerlifting—it suits my body type (large/strong frame), and
it requires no agility or speed. I can not only participate in this sport, I can
excel. I enjoy being “special”—standing out as someone who is smart, who
is a leader, who has talent. Powerlifting provides another arena for me to be
in the spotlight, even if it is only to stand on the platform in front of a crowd
for nine lifts every couple of months.
Despite her incredible series of international-level accomplishments, she says:
It took me a while to understand that I not only could be an athlete—I am an
athlete, no question. I do not have to see myself as an extension of my family,
destined to have the same body size and type as my female relatives, and
destined to have all of the health problems that stem from being fat, inactive,
and weak.
This account neatly encapsulates the intersecting issues of fitness and fatness
in the experiences of larger female strength–power athletes. Refocusing the lens
through which we view fatness and fitness, and attempting to understand the multiple
bases on which knowledge claims about fatness and fitness are made, provides
feminists a basis for action. Knowledge of the biological foundation of fatness
and fitness, and a call to use a variety of appropriate evidence to undergird one’s
case, does not undermine feminist critiques; it merely reframes the discussion. A
physiological understanding of disability does not undermine legitimate claims for](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/critique-171004133356/85/Journal-Article-Critique-23-320.jpg)
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obesity. History of Psychiatry, 17(1), 55–56.■
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Endocrinology and Metabolism, 89(6), 2548–2556.■
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women write about body image and identity (pp. 78-87). Berkley: Seal Press.
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future prospects. In L. Ferrera (Ed.), Body Mass Index: New Research (pp. 141–161).
New York: Nova Biomedical.
Lowe, M. (1998). Women of steel: Female bodybuilders and the struggle for self-definition.
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Fitness, Fatness, and Feminist Knowledge 47
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Roth, A., & Basow, S.A. (2004). Femininity, sports, and feminism: Developing a theory of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/critique-171004133356/85/Journal-Article-Critique-25-320.jpg)
Journal Article Critique
- 1. Amy Mayers |Research Methods | January 2, 2016 Journal Article Critique BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY: FITNESS, FATNESS, AND THE PRODUCTION OF FEMINIST KNOWLEDGE. AUTHOR: KRISTA SCOTT-DIXON
- 2. PAGE 1 Summary This journalarticle explores the crossroads in which many female athletes exist—fitness and fatness. Through a compilation of open-ended interviews which detail the experiences of larger female athletes in strength and power-based sports, the author was able to examine how they negotiate their identities as athletes and women, and how they navigate “fitness” and “fatness.” These interviews highlight not only the opportunities for women’s personal and political empowerment, in practice because fitness is so frequently viewed as a cosmetic project and connected to achieving thinness, such opportunities have generally failed to materialize despite rapid increases in women’s sports and exercise participation. Feminist literature has produced a number of important critiques of the way in which fat and fit are understood, the author explores through several different definitions what should feminist fitness and fatness look like? Findings and Critique Desktop research on the definition of fitness and fatness is quite detailed with a focus on both the feminist definition of these terms and also a more neutral/unbiased definition. Through this research the author finds that even feminist knowledge of physiology comes from secondary sources such as womens magazines, which make are known to make inaccurate claims, or commercially marketed scientific studies that support the claims of drug or dietary supplement manufacturers. (Scott-Dixon) Because of this, according to the author, it’s difficult to be objective with this definition—even using the medical term BMI but even that has been somewhat influenced by the pharmaceutical and medical research companies. The study design began with the definition of the athletes that exist where fit and fat meet. She recruited interview participants through public calls on email and power sports associate discussion boards. She also reached out through her local sports clubs. She asked only for people who self-identified as “heavier” but who enjoyed regular exercise of a varying type and would consider themselves generally fit which resulted in a wide range of height and weight combinations. In the end 52 participants provided the necessary information to carry out her study. This seems to be a neutral method of
- 3. PAGE 2 participant selection,however as the author later discovered women who were heavier than average tend to self-identify smaller than what they actually weigh. (Brown, Marquet, & Taper, 1993) The ambiguous self-identification process does not allow for a consistent reference point across all 52 participants. Within Qualitative Measures, the author highlights how her study participants agreed that the standards of fat and fit differed for men and women with men being permitted a much wider range of acceptable body types and the freedom to self-define as fit or(non) fat regardless of their actual body condition. Some participants also noted the standards differed by other factors such as age, region, and ethnicity.(Scott-Dixon) At the heart of the study, Scott-Dixon diagnoses and labels fatness. For some women, the qualitative judgement was directly linked to quantitative measurements within a specific context such as medical appointments or weight loss clinics. Frequent this measurement and evaluation was a public even and spectacle and had a profound impact. The author does well to use emotion in an unbiased manner to show the results of the study. Since the author is also at this crossroads of fit and fat, she could easily have sympathised with the interview subjects and become biased as a result. I feel the end results fairly anticlimactic and common sense. You are how you define yourself regardless of the literature, medical studies and feminist manifestos. Perhaps a little bit of bias might have provided with a different tangent to her research and action plan for modification of the existing definitions of fit and fat.
- 4. PAGE 3 Bibliography Brown, H.J., Marquet, P. A., & Taper, M. L. (1993). Evolution of Body Size: Consequences of an Energetic Defnition of Fitness. The American Naturalist, pp. 573-584. Brownbridge, K.M., Sanderson, R. and Gill, S., 2016. Aspirational bodies: fashioning new beauty ideals. Holmgren, A. “Cardiorespiratory Determinants of Cardiovascular Fitness.”Canadian Medical Association Journal 96.12 (1967): 697–705. Print. Manthey, K., McMichael, Lonie. Acceptable Prejudice? Fat, Rhetoric and Social Justice. Pearlsong Press, Nashville TN. 2013. Marcus Reker, K.B., 2016. “Why Can’t Run ‘Like a Girl’Also Mean Win The Race?”: Commodity Feminism and Participatory Branding as Forms of Self-Therapy in the Neoliberal Advertising Space. Reddy, M. and Sriram, D., 2015. Women Empowerment and Public Policy.Public Affairs And Governance, 3(1), pp.27-40. Rice, C., 2015. Rethinking Fat From Bio-to Body-Becoming Pedagogies.Cultural Studies↔ Critical Methodologies, p.1532708615611720. Scott-Dixon, K. (2007). Big Girls Don’t Cry: Fitness, Fatness, and the Production of Feminist Knowledge. Sociology of Sport Journal, 22-47. Sober, E., 2001. The two faces of fitness. Thinking about evolution: Historical, philosophical, and political perspectives, 2, pp.309-321.
- 5. PAGE 4 Original article: Sociologyof Sport Journal, 2007, 25, 22-47 © 2008 Human Kinetics, Inc. Big Girls Don’t Cry: Fitness, Fatness, and the Production of Feminist Knowledge York University Feminists have produced a number of important critiques of the way in which fat and fit are understood. While fitness provides opportunities for women’s personal and political empowerment, in practice, because fitness is so frequently viewed as a cosmetic project and connected to achieving thinness, such opportunities have generally failed to materialize despite rapid increases in women’s sports and exercise participation. I examine the experiences of larger female athletes in strength and power-based sports to examine how they negotiate their identities as athletes and women, and how they navigate “fitness” and “fatness”. Les féministes ont offert un nombre important de critiques des façons dont le gras corporel et la forme physique sont compris. Si le conditionnement physique apporte des occasions d’habilitation personnelle et politique pour les femmes, en pratique, parce que le conditionnement physique est fréquemment considéré comme projet cosmétique lié à la minceur, ces occasions ne se sont généralement pas matérialisées en dépit d’une augmentation rapide de la participation des femmes à l’activité physique. Dans cet article, j’examine les expériences d’athlètes féminines corpulentes au sein de sports où dominent la force et la puissance afin de voir comment elles négocient leur identité en tant qu’athlètes et femmes ainsi que la façon dont elles construisent et vivent la « corpulence » et la « forme physique ». I have, at various times in my life, been fat and unfit, fat and fit, lean and fit, and thin and unfit/unhealthy. Like Susan Bordo (1993), who struggled to articulate a feminist politics of fatness after losing weight, I have grappled for over a decade with how to understand my own bodily experiences in conjunction with my feminist politics and academic training in gender theory. Fifteen years ago, I was immersed in feminist discourses of “natural sizes” and “don’t diet”. I ate when I was hungry and stopped when I was full. I ate well (so I thought). I didn’t worry too much about my size or shape beyond the ritualized due diligence expected of most women and the occasional teary moment of frustration when trying to find jeans that fit. Nor did I consume much commercial media. I was lucky, however, to spend most of my time in spaces where the social value of thinness was not overly emphasized—indeed, it was usually actively critiqued by my feminist peers. It was an intimate confrontation with physical pain that changed my mind about the naturalness of fat and fit bodies. Fed up with my accumulating mass and the hormonal changes wrought by my adiposity, my joints and endocrine system read me the riot act, and I knew that I needed to rethink my stance. I took up strength training, and my world and body changed. This conjunction of my own experience and engagement with feminist theory has led me to pose the question: What does, and should, feminist fatness and fitness look like? Since Susie Orbach’s germinal works Fat is a Feminist Issue I and II (1978; 1987), feminists have produced a number of important critiques of the way in which fat and fit are understood. Feminist scholars have critically scrutinized the messages about fat and fit in mass media and other circulating discourses. They have explored the ways in which the spectre and symbol of fatness has constrained women’s behavior, either to conform to normative ideals of thinness, or to be a “good feminist” by attempting to reject such ideals (Bordo, 1993; Wolf, 1991), and the ways in which fatness is presented and experienced as evidence of physical or personal dysfunction in bodies also marked by gender, race–ethnicity, age, sexuality, and ability. Feminist philosophers and social scientists have interrogated
- 6. PAGE 5 the notionsof individual responsibility that are often linked to fatness, both for self and others (as in, for example, the “mother-blaming” that is implicated in discussions of childhood obesity; Jackson et al., 2005). They have proposed that not only is the liberal concept of the autonomous individual itself, divorced from context and interdependence, a problematic model (Code, 1991), but that to reduce a complex phenomenon to a perceived failure of personal will is deeply reductionist, as well as punitive (Murray, 2005). Outside the academy, feminist “fat activism” has proliferated, often intersecting with disability, antiracist, and queer politics to critique the multiple forms of marginalization experienced by abjected bodies, and to provide positive, alternative representations through methods such as street theater, burlesque, zinemaking, and direct political actions (Fireweed Collective, 1999; Lamm, 2000). Likewise, feminist scrutiny of fitness has focused on the ways in which fitness discourses, spaces, and practices are means of “disciplining” bodies seen as unruly, of “making self,” and of (re)producing hegemonic and heteronormative regimes (Bordo, 1993; Connolly, 1994). Feminists have recognized that though women’s fitness projects provide opportunities for women’s personal and political empowerment and productive relationships with their bodies, such opportunities have generally failed to materialize despite rapid increases in women’s sports and exercise participation (Dworkin & Wachs, 1994■; Eskes, Duncan, & Miller, 1998). In practice, fitness is frequently viewed as a cosmetic project—namely a means to purge fat, pursue a generally unattainable thin and youthful aesthetic, and erase or “overcome” any markers of physical debility or difference (including age, ethnically distinct body features, and disabilities), as well as evidence of life experiences such as pregnancy and menopause. Women’s “empowerment” through fitness is thus largely imagined in a very limited, individualistic, apolitical sense that does not disrupt dominant ideologies or structures. Investigating the knowledge claims of mass media and public discourse is a valid project. Women are avid consumers of health- and body-related information both in print and electronic form (Stevenson, 2002). A critical feminist framework for interpreting this information is essential. Yet despite ongoing calls for a “materiality of the body,” much of the feminist literature on fat implies a distrust of direct 24 Scott-Dixon engagement with the body’s material. Although feminist scholars have (rightly) questioned the epistemic bases for publicly disseminated scientific knowledge claims in general, and about fatness and obesity in particular, they have not often done so via analyzing primary literature in the field of physiology or sports science. Indeed, with a few exceptions (see, for instance, Fausto-Sterling, 2005, and Wilson, 1998■) feminist knowledge of physiology and the project of science in general appears to be derived entirely from secondary sources, such as women’s magazines, which make inaccurate claims, or commercially marketed scientific studies that support the claims of drug or dietary supplement manufacturers. Allusions to the material structures of physiology might even be deemed evidence of biological essentialism. Society and culture are viewed as complex, whereas physiology is viewed as simplistic and mechanistic (Gingras, 2005). Science, medicine, and health care are treated as homogeneous, hegemonic, vaguely conspiratorial entities whose sole purposes are to medicalize fatness and enact some type of disciplining practice upon it, such as pharmaceutical treament or surgery (Wilson, 2005). This is not to imply that social science researchers must also be physiology researchers. Texts such as fitness magazines and practices such as aerobics classes are rich sources of interpretive and ethnographic data. Critiques of the presumed truth of publicly available scientific findings are fundamental in an informationand image-saturated world in which bodies are commodified and consumed. Yet without an awareness of and dialog with the biological literature, social science researchers risk understanding all claims about physiology as equivalent and making
- 7. PAGE 6 truth claimsabout physiology (and its associated institutional practices) that are oversimplified and reductionist, that disavow any role for biology altogether, and/ or that can be refuted or confirmed by the available physiological evidence. Such claims, if they are made, must be evaluated in light of the relevant research as much as the research must be critiqued. Inter- and multidisciplinary collaboration is thus essential to reduce inevitable blind spots. If feminists wish to provide women with the substantive means to make choices and resist oppression, they must move beyond critique alone toward providing alternatives, strategies, and tools that are not only grounded in a feminist consciousness but also based on informed judgements of the (admittedly imperfect) physiological data. Another key absence in feminist literature is a nuanced definition of what, exactly, constitutes fatness and fitness. Fat is many things, including a tissue; a signifier and symbol; a self concept; a set of experiences; and an identity that is constituted in relation to others, (sub)cultural norms, and systems of power and privilege. Fat is a curious and contradictory thing, both hypervisible and invisible; both associated with femininity and desexualized. It simultaneously signifies both poverty and abundance; public concern and private wellbeing; inadequacy and excess (or what Bordo, 1993, calls “too-muchness”). It is rarely represented in commercial media (except as an occasional subject for mockery), yet its presence is ubiquitously implied through its conspicuous absence. Its meanings and experiences shift with gender, race–ethnicity, class, ability, age, geography, sexuality, and other intersecting, interdependent physiological configurations, social locations, and contexts. Fat is often used in the same way as obscenity: nobody can quite agree on a definition, but we feel we know them when we see them (Gewirtz, 1996). Fitness is rarely well defined in feminist social science, and it is often used synonymously with thinness or disciplined adherence to a particular, typically restrictive, exercise regimen (Brabazon, 2006). Yet in the field of physiology and sports science, fitness is defined as a capacity or preparedness for a specific set of tasks—in essence, the “power to do” (Siff and Verkhoshansky, 1999, p. 31). This definition is much more congruent with feminist aims and provides a productive point of entry for theorizing the possibilities of fitness for women. The vague or slippery definitions of fatness and fitness typically used in social science literature remain oblivious to the ongoing debates taking place in sports sciences. Without direct examination of such discussions, feminist scholars might assume that methodological constructs (such as the Body Mass Index, which I discuss further below) emerging from biological research are widely and uncritically taken for granted even by the clinicians that produce them. They might also be unaware of how life sciences could contain liberatory or useful concepts and practices for feminism rather than merely a set of negative, pathologizing discourses. Measures of fatness and fitness are almost always political and social pronouncements based on evaluating presumed physiological characteristics; thus, feminist scholars cannot afford to be unaware of the epistemic bases for such claims nor their contested nature as adequate diagnostic tools. Although rarely engaging directly with current physiological literature, feminists nevertheless draw on biological concepts selectively. For example, feminists have sometimes attempted to retheorize fatness and combat disordered eating in women through notions of “celebrating natural sizes” (NEDIC, 1992). This model suggests that there is a “natural” and ideal biological body that is unmediated or unresponsive to culture. But not only is physiology in constant dialog with the lived environment, its own internal systems and substances chatter constantly among themselves. In the 21st century, in the Western world, most of us live in an increasingly urban, chemically saturated, abundantly nourished, overstimulated, sedentary, “unnatural” environment to which our twenty-thousand-year-old hunter-gatherer physiology is entirely maladapted. Over 56% of Canadian women reported eating fewer than five servings of fruits or vegetables daily (Statistics Canada, 2000). Less
- 8. PAGE 7 than onequarter of Canadian women reported being physically active on a regular basis. This number drops significantly with age, and over half of women over 35 report that they are entirely physically inactive (Statistics Canada, 2007)—surely not a “natural” state of affairs for our foraging and farming ancestors. Along with rates of physical activity, which have drastically declined in recent decades, the “natural” system of signaling hormones that control appetite, hunger, satiety, and fat tissue distribution is regulated by as many as 90 known genes (Liu, Recker, & Deng, 2005) along with factors such as age, ethnicity, sex, and nutritional intake. When all factors are taken into account, it should be obvious that there is no such thing as a natural body. Rather, bodies are a collection of innumerable intersecting processes, and divisions between biological and social systems—and divisions within biological systems—are like permeable cell membranes that demarcate general boundaries but are constantly in a state of busy exchange. Alluding to a “natural size” is a well-meaning but conceptually unfounded project. Despite the low rates of physical activity among women, which surely should be cause for concern among scholars invested in women’s health issues, with a few exceptions (see, for example, Heywood, 1998) feminist scholars outside disciplines directly related to sport have demonstrated a profound unease about fitness projects (Bordo, 1993). While pledging a vague allegiance to “health at any size,” feminist scholars have frequently failed to provide any model for what, exactly, this might look like or how women are to evaluate the often-confusing knowledge claims made about health, activity, and nutrition. It is difficult to see how poor quality diets and lack of regular activity, which are characteristic features of North American women’s lives today, represent a viable alternative to “excessive exercise” (which is generally ill-defined) and preoccupation with dieting or, more significantly, a means to resist oppression and expand women’s opportunities and choices. Indeed, emerging evidence from physiology suggests that activity and nutritional quality are much more significant factors than bodyweight alone in determining overall wellness, quality of life, and longevity; and unlike body weight, such things are often easily changed or improved. The social determinants of health approach (Raphael, 2004) identifies ways in which health, activity, and nutritional disparities depend intersectionally on systemic factors such as geography, the organization of public space, the social welfare system, immigrant status, income/employment, access to resources and services such as adequate health care, and so forth. CDC (■) data, for example, identify some general relationships between measurements of fatness, ethnicity, and poverty status in the United States. Among adult American women, the group least likely to be judged overweight or obese is nonpoor White women; conversely, the groups most likely to be judged obese or severely obese are poor and near-poor Black women; indeed, nearly 100% of poor and near-poor Black women are considered at least overweight (CDC 2005■). Although these connections bear further scrutiny (not least for the way in which overweight is measured, as I discuss later), they nevertheless suggest that larger body sizes intersect with social and economic inequality. It is puzzling, then, that although feminists have reclaimed and revalued fatness and other bodily experiences such as menstruation, sexuality, and pregnancy, so few scholars have envisioned fitness as a feminist public health project (for exceptions see Roth & Basow, 2004; Yancey, Leslie, & Abel, 2006); and conversely, that so many have persisted in identifying fitness as a generally repressive set of practices. Feminist scholars have examined both activities that are implicated in productions of femininity and the pursuit of slenderness, such as aerobics (Brabazon, 2006; Greenleaf, McGreer, & Parham, 2006), ands traditionally masculine strength and power sports, such as boxing (Hargreaves, 1997; Mennesson, 2000), weight lifting (Brace-Govan, 2004), and soccer (Cox & Thompson, 2000), in which size
- 9. PAGE 8 and strengthare often advantages (see also Roth & Basow, 2004). Yet with a few exceptions (see, for example, Heywood, 1998), scholars have focused on critiques of both types of activities and the ways in which they function as “disciplining” or “repressive” body discourses and practices, particularly for larger women. But all fatness is not created equal—nor is all fitness. Exploring women’s experiences with strength and power sports, as this article will do, reveals that such activities provide productive refocusing of concerns with size and fatness, emphasize women’s capacities and abilities, and shift women’s understanding of their bodies from being to doing. Toward a Phenomenology of Fat and Fit A decade ago, Marshall (1996) argued for an “empirical phenomenology” of the day-to-day materiality of the body, a call that has seldom been taken up despite useful starting points from earlier feminist research that sought to give voice to women’s experiences. She argued that exploring women’s account of their bodies and physical processes could contribute explicitly to an antioppression project. As a recreational strength athlete who has experienced strength and power-based training as a deeply physically gratifying and politically empowering body project, I have found the oft-voiced feminist hesitation about fitness and the theoretical focus on thinness pursuits to the myopic exclusion of other fitness subcultures vexing. It did not explain my own experiences nor those of the other female strength and power athletes I knew. The women whom I encountered in the gyms I frequented over the years were unapologetically solid and cultivated their size. They were fit. They were powerful. They were versatile in their athleticism and confident in their movements. They could move hundreds of pounds or subdue an opponent in seconds. They felt glee or derision when men found them intimidating. And they found a welcoming home for their bodies in the sports they chose, sports that depended on the assertion of physical and mental strength and power. Yet by most standard measures, such as the Body Mass Index (BMI), many were fat, occasionally even obese. Despite their obvious potential to disrupt commonly held notions of fatness and fitness, to suggest new types of political relationships with the physical self, and to provide more appropriate role models for bodies that should never be starved into a size 0 bikini, these women remained generally invisible to mainstream fitness media, physiological research, and feminist discourse. Although there are a number of salient feminist critiques of sporting practices and body discipline, I am, like Brabazon (2006), “still not prepared to leave women’s sporting bodies pathologised in the discourse of eating disorders,” because if all women’s athletic experiences are positioned against this backround, “then it becomes lost in an agenda of blaming and shaming for women, including narcissism, obsessions with nutrition, fitness, hygiene, calorie counting, fat grams, or body shaping.” (68) This paradigm does not and cannot adequately account for my own experiences and those of female strength-power athletes. Thus, I situate theoretical material in a qualitative exploration of the experiences of larger female athletes in strength and power-based sports to examine how they negotiate their identities as athletes and women in a culture that is simultaneously fatphobic and obesegenic,1 and contradictorily advocates activity for women as a means of losing fat or becoming thin but discourages women from getting too big, muscular, or powerful and from participating in unfeminine sports such as boxing, football, and weight lifting. I conclude by arguing that strength and power-based sports provide a possible model for articulating a feminist politics of empowerment through activity that is not dependent on negatively disciplining the body nor achieving thinness/leanness. Study Design I began by defining strength and power-based sports broadly, using the sports science definition of strength as the ability to generate force, and power as the ability
- 10. PAGE 9 to incorporatemaximal velocity into that force generation (Siff and Verkhoshansky 1999; Zatsiorsky, 1995). I recruited interview participants via public calls on e-mail lists and Internet discussion boards such as the United States Powerlifting Association (USAPL), the Canadian Powerlifting Forum, and my own website devoted to women’s weight training, as well as through local sports clubs such as the Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club. Sports emphasized were primarily speed–strength and power-based sports such as Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, Girevoy/kettlebell sport,2 throwing (e.g., hammer throwing), heavy events (e.g., Highland Games and strongwomen competition), and various forms of martial arts including Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), boxing, taekwondo, judo, and mixed martial arts (MMA). In addition, many crossover (i.e., strength–endurance) athletes such as rowers, sprinters, triathletes, climbers, rugby players, short-track cyclists, and even roller derby competitors, circus trainers, medieval swordfighters, and professional women’s football players also responded to the call. Competition in sports such as weightlifting is based on weight classes; in other sports, throwing for example, a larger body is advantageous. As an aside, I deliberately did not target competitive bodybuilders. Although the similarities between weightlifting and bodybuilding might appear self-evident to someone not familiar with the practices, they are, in fact, significantly different in their mindset and methods. Although bodybuilding training does emphasize the development of muscularity, which would seem to be empowering for women, competition focuses solely on physique presentation rather than performing any actual tasks. This does include developing bodies that are larger and more muscular than the norm, but it also requires extreme leanness. Bodybuilding continues to focus on the sexual attractiveness of its competitors and is largely organized by the male-dominated commercial business associated with the sport (Grogan, 2004■; Lowe, 1998). In comparison, training and competition in sports such as Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting are entirely dependent on skilled execution of strength- and power-based movements and carry no aesthetic judgements beyond evaluation of proper technique. Thus, to reiterate the point above, for my interview sample, I selected activities that emphasized doing rather than being. This is a crucial distinction. Because of the relational nature of size and fatness, the call for participants was deliberately vague. I asked only for people who self-identified as “heavier” or “bigger” lifters; responses indicated that a variety of women felt they fit this description. For instance, body sizes ranged from a 4’11”, 160 pound powerlifter, to a 6-foot, 260-pound professional football player, to a 6’1, 175-pound rower, to a 5’2”, 398-pound powerlifter. The primary conditions for inclusion in the study were that the subjects must self-identify as bigger, heavier, and/or larger in some way, that the participants must participate regularly in physical activity, and would be considered fit in general terms. The 52 participants, mostly American but with a handful of Canadians and Europeans, ranged greatly in self-reported ability and achievement. The majority, about two-thirds, were competitors. Fourteen of them were competitive at the national or international levels; many had set national or world records in their sport. Others were noncompetitive or amateur “weekend warriors” who simply enjoyed regularly performing a range of activities in addition to the strength-based sports mentioned above, such as yoga, scuba diving, African dance, horseback riding, Nordic pole walking, and skiing. All participants trained on a regular basis (at least three to four times weekly). Some were in occupations requiring high levels of physical fitness, such as fire fighting or paramedic work, whereas others were in sedentary jobs like IT management or policy analysis. Two reported their occupation as “homemaker.” Participants ranged in age from 19 to 58, and rather surprisingly, the median
- 11. PAGE 10 age was40. Many had come to fitness pursuits later in life; they were often delayed by early discouragement over self-perceived “nonathletic” qualities and body size. I take this up in greater detail below. Participants were asked to describe their own experiences as larger athletes and to share their perceptions of fitness and fatness. General themes in the semistructured interview questionnaire also included differentiating between broadly based social perceptions and their own personal definitions of fit and fat; whether being bigger and/or heavier was an advantage in their sport(s); whether they perceived congruence and/or disjunctures between socially acceptable ideals and their own experiences; and how they felt about their bodies in relation to other “average” women, as well as other female athletes in their chosen activities. Besides describing their experiences and identifying a variety of social and cultural norms pertaining to fatness and fitness, respondents were also asked questions that required them to speculate, such as: “If you would not describe yourself as fit, what things would need to change in order for you to define yourself as fit?” Responses were hand coded by the researcher. After initial data collection and analysis, a preliminary draft of the article was sent to respondents for additional commentary and to ensure accurate representation of participants’ statements. Fat as Thing; Fat as Idea Obesity is conventionally defined in clinical literature as an excess of adipose tissue, although defining excess requires the construction of normative categories, such as BMI, or epidemiologic links between excess and other risk factors. Thus, despite the taken-for-grantedness of measurement criteria, excess is, to some degree, a provisional and prescriptive judgement. Fatness, like other complex biological– social phenomena such as pain or malnutrition, is often hard to measure precisely (see, for example, Seal & Kerac, 2007). Also like pain or malnutrition, fatness is a symptom of other things such as energy balance, hormonal environments, polygenetic propensities, and so forth. The problem is in focusing on the symptom as the primary issue rather than examining the underlying public health factors that produce and enable outcomes such as morbidity, poor quality of life, and chronic disease, and inhibit outcomes such as wellness and health promotion (Oliver, 2006). In industrialized affluent regions, eating patterns are characterized by overnutrition and consumption of highly processed foods, as well as emergent forms of orthorexia, and lifestyles are increasingly sedentary. In poorer regions of the globe, and in lower income households in industrialized countries, food scarcity and insecurity might, in fact, be a more pressing problem (FAO, 2006). In both cases, food intake, energy expenditure, and neuroendocrine systems are biological processes that operate in social and economic contexts to produce particular effects (Zigman & Elmquist, 2003). Over- and under-fatness are in fact opposite sides of the same coin, signifying that poor nutrition and inactivity are relational practices spawning linked public health problems. Obesity, then, stands at the intersection of the biological and the social. Fat as thing and idea radiates outwards from the tiny point of the adipocyte through individual body processes and experiences, through local communities and public structures, diffusing itself finally into global interconnected practices and systems of power. Measuring Fat What is fat? Is it a substance? A state of being? A concept designating a relational status with no intrinsic material basis? As with other theoretically objective but practically subjective concepts such as poverty or skill, the epistemic and methodological challenges of producing a commonly accepted definition and means of measuring fatness are often obscured by the apparent neutrality of the project. For quantitative researchers attempting to define fat by evaluating the relative quantity of a specific body tissue, this is complicated by a few elements: the social construction of categories of fatness; the variation in human bodyfat distribution patterns; the inherent
- 12. PAGE 11 inaccuracy ofhuman perception in judging fatness (thus making self-reporting a method that is interesting for exploring human cognition and relational subjectivity but less useful for generating data that correspond to measurable material realities); and the desire to produce easily understandable diagnostic tools that are nevertheless precise. Physiological measurement is usually trickier than it appears. This doesn’t make such projects futile. Rather, acknowledging the instability of categories and the subjective quality of diagnoses, as well as the ways in which data collection can be affected by conceptualization, enhances research practice through self-reflexive critique and careful evaluation of methodological processes and epistemic premises (Harding■). Measurement tools are also political tools, and the particular tools used can represent social values as much as diagnostic utility. Quantitative Measures Even when definitions of fatness are agreed upon, methods of data collection can affect outcomes. For instance, when Statistics Canada changed its methods of data collection from self-reporting to directly measured data in 2004, measured obesity rates shot up (Tjepkema, 2004■). StatCan notes that women are prone to underestimate their weight whereas men are prone to overestimate their height and that, overall, underestimation of weight is more likely to occur when weight is higher. Self-reported data from face-to-face interviews also result in higher reported obesity rates than data collected from telephone interviews. Since the 1980s in Canada, researchers have increasingly used in-person collection methods along with direct measurements; thus, the data themselves have been affected by the mode of information gathering. In part, then, measurement and understanding of fatness reflects epistemic and methodological choices and outcomes (Oliver, 2006). The BMI, originally developed by the Belgian statistician and anthropologist Adolphe Quételet in the 19th century, is an equation based on the relationship between height and weight (Bedogni, Tiribelli, & Belletani, 2005; Oliver 2006). Like other scientific projects of its day that attempted to develop normative models of human physiology (typically with classed and racialized intent), the Quételet equation was one of many attempts to measure relationships among body shapes. Since its rediscovery in the late 20th century, the BMI has been widely used in recent years as a comprehensible indicator of fatness. According to current Canadian guidelines, which are congruent with those of the World Health Organization, BMI is classified into six categories that are correlated with the purported risk of developing particular health problems related to body fatness (Tjepkema, 2004■). An interesting and less noted feature of this typology is that it also identifies elevated health risks associated with being underweight. The ranking of BMI in this fashion permits some awareness of variation in obesity. Obesity is divided into three classes, with increasing values purported to correspond to increasing health risks. In 2004, 15.2% of Canadian adults had a BMI in Class I; 5.1% were in Class II, and 2.7%, in Class III; another 36.1% were classified as overweight (Tjepkema, 2004■). In total, 65% of men and 53.4% of Canadian women were classified as “overweight” or more, having a BMI higher than 25. Similarly, the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey suggests that in 2004, 66.3% of Americans had a BMI higher than 25, while 32.2% had a BMI higher than 30 (CDC, 2005■). Although BMI correlates fairly closely to bodyfat percentage (particularly the amount of visceral fat), it is a blunt instrument that doesn’t always say much about individual people (Bedogni et al., 2005). BMI is linked to risks for particular diseases such as Type II diabetes and its precursor, insulin resistance, as wellas certain forms of cancer (such as breast and ovarian cancer) and cardiovascular disease. The basis for these risk claims, however, has come under heavy critique, not least of which is the pointed observation that, at least in the United States, pharmaceutical and insurance companies are heavily implicated in producing public
- 13. PAGE 12 health policy(Oliver, 2006). Among clinical researchers, it is widely acknowledged that not only is the BMI a poor tool for judging variations in adiposity by age and ethnicity, it is at best a rough proxy for other health indicators such as food intake, energy expenditure through activity, and the distribution of bodyfat (Prentice, 2001■; Sampei & Sigulem, 2005). Thus, in many respects, the BMI’s power as an explanatory methodological construct has less to do with its utility and more to do with its ability to define what is normal and desirable within a particular historical and social context. However, understanding what BMI can show as a provisional working model, as well as the biological basis for its development and use, can assist feminist scholars to critique inappropriate application while simultaneously addressing its possible role in shaping women’s health. Most significantly for this article, the BMI does not capture the (admittedly much smaller) population for whom a heavier weight actually represents higherthan- average levels of lean body mass, such as muscular athletes whose bodyfat percentages might be considered normal or even lower than average (Bedogni et al., 2005). The women interviewed for this article were generally clustered at the high end of the BMI scale, with almost all of them ranked as overweight or obese by BMI standards. The median BMI was 28.7, with a handful of athletes having BMIs in the 40s, and the highest BMI reading 79.5. Yet few of these athletes defined themselves as fat. As a rower explains, other factors should be taken into consideration: Fat is being disproportionately heavy for one’s height, frame, and muscle mass. Someone with a lot of muscle (in my view) can get away with more fat, just as someone with a bigger frame can. It’s all about proportions. It’s hard to define the cutoff, because I think it’s so individual. You can’t say that a certain weight or BMI or body fat percentage is too fat. At the same time, you cannot say that all bodies are wonderful no matter how much fat—there is a certain point where it gets in the way of health and everyday activities. (S27)■ Other means of measuring bodyfat levels carry similar margins of error: skinfold calipers are only as good as the person who wields them (and they do not account directly for visceral fat), bioelectrical impedance devices can be affected by hydration levels, and so forth. In all cases, even if the measurement process itself is perfectly conducted, equations undergirding the calculation are often based on “average” bodies of White European descent and rarely permit variation beyond possibly sex and age (autopsy is the most accurate method of establishing relative quantities of bodyfat, but for obvious reasons experimental subjects tend not to prefer it). Debates about measurement tools are laden with disciplinary or statistical baggage and often inaccessible to the average layperson; thus, feminist critiques of such tools based on secondary (or even tertiary) sources rarely represent the nuanced discussions taking place within diagnostic communities (Ferrera, 2005). This is not to argue that striving for better or more objective measurement tools would enable us to more correctly understand fatness; but rather that the socially constructed nature of data collection and interpretation, its application to various populations, and the methodological value of particular tools should all be of interest to feminist scholars. Qualitative Measures Quantitative tools for defining and understanding fatness are social constructions with inherent assumptions about the relationship between body size and health. Qualitatively, the terrain of defining fatness is arguably even less solid and highly dependent on understanding fatness relative to other identities within particular contexts such as family or peer groups. For women, there is immense social pressure to conform to a highly restrictive, underweight ideal (leading some fashion shows recently to ban models with a BMI below 18.5; Bender, 2007). Most interview participants identified the nonfat ideal in general terms, with close agreement
- 14. PAGE 13 about whatthis ideal looked like, as well as a consensus that fat was understood as “not-fit.” Some interview participants were even more specific in their comments about the ideal, alluding to measurement terms such as weight or clothing size. For example, one powerlifter defined the social concept of fat as “any woman over a size five, with hips” (S21) while both a boxer and football player independently said “Any woman above 20% body fat” (S19, S40). Another powerlifter referred directly to the BMI, suggesting that fat was 20–30 pounds or more over a BMI of 25 (S2). Participants agreed that standards of fat and fit differed for men and women, with men being permitted a much wider range of acceptable body types and the freedom to self-define as fit or (non)fat regardless of their actual body condition. Said one powerlifter who also served as a fire fighter, If [a man] can still play ball or . . . keep up with the yard work, then he is [viewed as] fit. Women on the other hand, need to be stick thin, big breasted and generally look like they walked out of a magazine or Victoria’s Secret to be considered “fit” or in shape. (S1) A judoka pointed out that even language describing men’s and women’s fat differed, and suggested that “carrying extra weight does not become a social problem for men, I think, until they are incapacitated in some way” (S4). Some participants also noted that standards differed by age, region, and ethnic group. In general they felt that standards for older people and people with dis- abilities were quite low, often to the point where no physical ability was expected of these groups at all. One powerlifter in her forties joked about the low standards for middle-aged men’s fitness saying that women her age “prefer [a man] who is stable and doesn’t look like he is about to keel over” (S1). American participants pointed to what they saw as differences in the preferences of African Americans and Hispanic Americans compared with Americans of White European descent, with the latter group said to be more stringent in its standards for fatness, an opinion that matches research findings on ethnic differences in body image (Rubin, Fitts, & Becker, 2003). Thus, fat is typically viewed as the opposite of fit, and for women, fitness is often imagined very restrictively, in a way that is connected to the presentation of a thin body and entirely detached from performance and wellness. These twin messages are communicated in a variety of ways. Diagnosing and Labeling Fatness Many of the interview participants shared their initial experiences of being judged and labeled fat. For some women, the qualitative judgement was explicitly linked to quantitative measurements within a specific context, such as medical appointments or weight loss clinics. As a judoka remembers, “The pediatrician took my height and weight [when I was nine] and told me I was too heavy and needed to lose a few pounds. Looking back at myself in pictures, there was no fat on me at all” (S4). A rower shares her experiences with an air of exasperation: Over a period of about five years, I went to several different doctors. At each appointment, I was weighed upon arrival. Each time, the nurse made a “tsk tsk” noise under her breath. Each time, the doctor told me that I was “heavy” and asked if I worked out. Each time, I assured them all that yes, I do work out, in fact, multiple times per day. This was generally met with a look of boredom, disbelief, or disdain. I asked them to take my blood pressure (which is very, very low). Look, repeated, but softened slightly. I offered to have them check my body fat—only one took me up on that—and told them that it was between 19 and 22 [percent]. The looks either softened more, or became entirely dismissive. I told them all that my resting heart rate was 45. I told them that I coach collegiate rowing. I told them that I was training for a marathon (at one point, a doctor then asked me if I was trying to become anorexic). Across the board, all of them, in turn, replied with variations on a theme: “You should lose about 20 pounds to
- 15. PAGE 14 get toa healthy weight.” Then, after each visit, I found a new doctor. (S50) Frequently this measurement and evaluation was a public event and spectacle. One martial artist recalls accompanying her grandmother to a Weight Watchers weigh-in as a child: I was encouraged to get on the scale. . . . I was 11 years old, just a few months from getting my period for the first time, about to undergo all those lovely physical changes of puberty, and I was told to lose 20 pounds. I started on a diet that day. I think that was a big turning point for me in thinking I was fat. I remember asking my father (a doctor) if he thought I was fat, and he assured me I was perfectly healthy, but for some reason the judgment of that woman—who I didn’t know and haven’t seen since—meant more to my selfesteem and self-image than the opinion of my father at that point. The idea that I was 20 pounds overweight stuck with me for a long time . . . and still does, despite all the strides I’ve made in understanding my body and weight and fitness. And, of course, when the BMI scale came out, I was still at the upper end, edging in on the whole ‘”you may have medical problems due to your overweight.” Fantastic (S5) Another woman who now participates in both Olympic weighlifting and triathlons remembers being literally marked as bigger via color coding of clothing in a high school swim class. Students were obligated to wear swimsuits color-coded and styled by size, which served not only as an implicit size judgement but also as a public announcement of body status. “The tiny girls would wear little yellow bikinis; the largest of us would wear these huge blue or black one-piece suits. It probably saved them lots of time, but caused endless humiliation.” (S33) Larger bodies are thus often on public display via “official” quantitative evaluations of their size by health care providers and physical education instructors. Research suggests that many health professionals, such as doctors and nutritionists, demonstrate significant levels of antifat bias (O’Brien, Hunter, & Banks, 2007). A rugby player remembers a gym trainer fretting about the size of her legs: I happen to think my legs (muscularly speaking) are perfectly fine and certainly do not want to lose strength in them! I told the trainer such and he told me that even if I did “enough cardio to burn the fat, you won’t lose enough circumference if you don’t stop lifting heavy.” (S43) Crucially, such antifat attitudes might be more common in professionals involved in obesity prevention, treatment, and research, as well as physical educators—the very people who should be welcoming sedentary people into regular activity and cheering on the diverse array of bodies participating. Indeed, as a cyclist remarks, not even her confidence derived from sports performance was enough to combat the negative messages emerging from commercial fitness facilities: Having discovered what I love about being fit and about exercise—speed, the outdoors, being strong, going fast and hard for as long as I can—I thought I could re-enter a traditional gym and keep my healthy body image intact. I was wrong. (S7) Family is a primary source of messages about fatness, fitness, and femininity. The women interviewed often identified the negative messages their families provided; messages that they sought to overcome via their fitness practice. Sometimes the messages were direct and explicit; other times they were nonverbal and sent by example or implied comparison, often with other female family members. “My mother has been on a diet her whole life, [and] grandmother as well,” said a martial artist. “It is considered as important as dressing well” (S17). Another woman states: “[I’m] built like a tank, [and] growing up with a sister who meets societal ideals for ‘not fat’ is a great way to realize one is in the ‘fat’ category just by being big” (S52). For some participants, the relationship between fat/fit and family was a complicated one. A judoka remembers her mother’s struggle with ideals of fatness and weight.
- 16. PAGE 15 When Iwas growing up, I watched my mother constantly obsess about being overweight. She wasn’t perfect, but she could also work a 14-hour day and do extremely taxing physical labor (e.g., working in gardens/fields). I think I’ve been left with a split in my perceptions—what my body is able to do (many, many things) and what it looks like (not slender). (S4) Attitudes communicated by family and friends can also depend on socioeconomic class and racialized norms. As one rower recalls, she was 12 when she realized that standards of fatness and fitness differ by community, with income linked clearly to a preoccupation with weight and athletic achievement: I went to a summer camp when I was 12 years old that was mainly populated by wealthy kids from the New York City suburbs. I grew up in a middle- and lower-middle-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, and I was astounded by how obsessed these [rich] girls were with being thin. My friends in Brooklyn didn’t seem to care that much about how much they weighed, as long as they weren’t really fat. But with these summer camp kids, you couldn’t have any fat at all. And they were much more serious about being able to do their sports well—if you weren’t good at sports then you were supposed to sit on the sidelines and do your nails, so you were either an athlete or not. I always thought I was sort of athletic, and in pretty good shape, but these girls taught me to question that. (S27) Indeed, some participants noted explicitly that judgements of a good and normal body size and weight were directly linked in their experiences to racialized and classed models, as well as regional variations. An Olympic weightlifter in the U.S. noticed more inactivity and higher body weights in rural and exurban areas. In her experience, she said, people on the West Coast were likely to stay fit doing organized activities like charity cycles or triathlons, people on the East Coast maintained their weight by using the features of the urban environment: “being able to walk everywhere, climb the stairs for the subway, drink lots of coffee, and smoke lots of cigarettes.” When it came to the South and the heartlands, she proposed, “‘fit’ in Houston is being able to do a mall walk or walk up a flight of stairs without huffing and puffing. The middle of the country is the worst for fitness” (S33). Finally, as many feminists have pointed out, the commercial media provide a rich trove of negative messages, both through the provision of highly restricted and generally unrealistic ideals, as well as the absence of alternative ideals. As one martial artist remembers: I think my first idea of social standards of fitness probably came from the Sears catalogue—you know, those ladies dressed in crisp exercise gear or swimsuits. Not having a snowball’s chance in hell of looking like these particular models, I was discouraged from an early age. (S5) Another martial artist concurs: I certainly don’t see my body represented. I’m wider, heavier, a lot stronger. You certainly don’t see women doing judo in popular culture, either. All I ever really see are tiny, skinny things. If your body is normally like that, fine, but it’s not the only way to be. (S4) Antifat attitudes that are informed by quantitative evaluations of appropriate body size and weight, along with the belief that fatness is oppositional to fitness, might result in bigger people receiving less positive reinforcement and more negative messages. These experiences could in turn inhibit or constrain people’s participation in physical activity and wellness initiatives; precisely the outcome that presumably well-meaning family and friends, healthcare professionals, and physical educators seek to avoid. An Olympic weightlifter points out that, rather than being inspiring, being self-conscious about not being fit made it harder to get fit. “I remember trying to jog around the neighborhood when I was a lot heavier,” she recalls, “and having a neighbor call out, looking at my unwieldy bulk, ‘Is it helping?’ That made me feel awful about trying to exercise . . . as if I were trespassing in an area where I really
- 17. PAGE 16 didn’t belong”(S33). This experience of public judgement by a relative stranger is shared by a recreational weight trainer. One day, riding her bike up a hill, she was heckled by someone in a car for having “heavy legs [and a] big butt.” Not only was she angry about being hollered at, but “geez, I was riding a bike up a steep hill; my heckler was in a freaking car!” (S18).Thus, the fixation on the production of the individual and the reiteration of negative messages, in fact, results in the risk of reproduction of social norms and negative physical consequences. When asked how they personally defined fatness for themselves, the interview participants were typically careful to distinguish their own definitions from the social ideal. They generally endorsed a much wider range of bodies as fit and rarely linked fat explicitly to weight alone. Instead, they tended to focus on fat’s role in inhibiting both exercise and daily life activities as a criteria for judgement. A few women also identified the experiential and relational dimension of fat, explaining that although they might not self-define as fat, they sometimes felt fat in comparison with arbitrary standards, which were often experienced through activities such as trying on clothing. “I looove my legs but skirts don’t,” said a football player (S40). They pointed out the distinction between being large and strong/muscular/active (defining this as fit regardless of adiposity); and being out of shape (defining this as fat often regardless of actual weight or size, sometimes using the term “skinny-fat” to refer to thin, unfit women). Occasionally they linked fatness to other physical attributes besides weight or size, such as the feeling or movement of the body tissues itself: “Abdomen and hips too thick and soft. Legs jiggling and chafing together when I walk or jog. Flabby” [S35]. Many participants connected the definition of fat directly to the ability to perform. A powerlifter whose BMI was in the obese category nevertheless did not define herself as fat, noting: “Someone is fat when their size has a negative effect on their everyday activities. I may be a little overweight, or have a slightly high BMI, but it in no way affects what I am able to do,” which in her case included winning provincial powerlifting championships and running three marathons and 26 half marathons. As she noted, “If I was unable to do what I do because I had gained too much weight, [then] I’d be fat” (S41). Only a handful of athletes defined themselves as fat. One, a 395 lb powerlifter, explained that her body weight meant that although she could “do pretty good lifts” in an absolute sense, being heavier “drops my coefficient terribly,” meaning that her lifts were not as impressive relative to other lifters who could move the same amount of barbell weight at a lighter bodyweight (S31). Another powerlifter who reported her weight as 300 pounds said, If I had a choice my body would be 100 pounds lighter, no wrinkles, etc. But at the same time I enjoy being a role model to other women who think they are out of shape and it is to late for them. I enjoy most when older women stop to talk with me after I compete. . . . My gut gets in my way of getting down low [in the squat]. But I think I get more out of my gear and I use my big gut to push out on my [lifting] belt when lifting max numbers. [S21] And they are maximum numbers indeed: at 58, this particular woman holds all the records in her state plus a national bench press record in her weight class; she is a two-time world bench press champion. Many other women in the interview group were similarly successful in competition, and several held regional, national, and even international records. Measuring Fit As a child, I dreaded the annual Canada Fitness Test, a multievent ordeal that usually left me with a sense of shame and the humiliating lowest-level ranking “participant” ribbon (one year, I stole another child’s gold medal badge, just to have the experience of owning such a thing). And yet, I was an active child, spending hours riding my bike, climbing trees, and walking to school. I just wasn’t athletic. This was my first encounter with the disjuncture between measurement standards
- 18. PAGE 17 and livedreality. As North American society becomes increasingly sedentary, and occupations in postindustrial economies prefer mental to manual labor, public conceptions of fitness have become increasingly detached from the physical demands of daily life that previous generations would have taken for granted, such as shoveling, chopping, walking, and pushing, pulling, carrying, throwing, and dragging heavy loads. Just as “Too fat for what?” is rarely asked or answered, the question, “Fit for what?” is rarely encountered. As I have noted, fitness is understood in sports science as the “power to do,” and the ability to meet the requirements of particular activities. Although an endurance runner and a sprinter could both be called fit in a general sense of having a high level of physical conditioning, they are not fit for each other’s sports. With the success of endurance-based aerobic exercise supported by a burgeoning commercial fitness industry over the last few decades, the thick, powerful bodies of strongmen and women who entertained crowds in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the acrobatic strength feats of mid-20th century Muscle Beach “physical culturists” have given way to the whippetlike, determined bodies of marathoners and people who go to gyms to work on “body parts.” Outside of sports science circles, mainstream criteria for measuring fitness now tend to focus on a specific measure of cardiovascular ability, such as VO2max, resting heart rate, or the ability to perform aerobic exercise for a given period of time. As one interview participant who specialized in BJJ noted, “Fitness always seems to be equated with running and how much you can run—aerobic excercises. Strength building (anaerobic) sports/athletes seem to be missing in this general ‘fitness consiousness’” (S49). Another martial artist concurred: “The fit image in society is in the extreme—either you’re an elite endurance athlete (i.e., marathon runner with super low body fat and long stringy muscles!)/yoga instructor, or you’re a fitness model. . . . Fitness is almost exclusively (for women anyway) discussed as a synonym for looking good” (S5). As the latter woman points out, assessments of fitness are linked to aesthetic judgements. “Fitness testing” also typically involves body composition or BMI testing (Brown, Miller, & Eason, 2006), even though body composition (i.e., relative levels of lean body mass or fat) may have little relationship to one’s ability to perform tasks. The BJJ athlete added a recollection of competing with a friend, and the moment she realized that fatness and fitness are not oppositional: One day we had a little contest to see who could do the most sit ups. I thought I would win no problem because she was so overweight. She blew me away— that’s when I realized that I had no idea what fitness really was. (S49) More holistic measures of strength/power or integrated body function are rarely applied or expected in standard fitness tests, even those that are evaluations of fitness in the sense of “power to do.” Interview participants often expressed annoyance about not seeing their sports, abilities, and bodies represented in mainstream media as examples of fitness. They were also often dismayed by the way that an aesthetic of thinness and weakness was presented as equivalent to fitness for women, which they found discouraging and dismissive of their experiences and abilities. A few women connected this explicitly to heteronormative gender regimes, as one recreational weight trainer pointed out: a restrictive ideal of femininity means that even while engaging in exercise, “one must above all remain feminine,” which excludes building muscle and obviously exerting power (not to mention breaking a sweat, breaking wind under a heavy squat, or breaking bones). On the one hand, she didn’t want to conform to conventional ideals—on the other hand, she worried about being perceived as “too masculine” for lifting weights. Because of her size, her access to ideals of femininity was already limited. But, she said, she had to get over her worries “before I could decouple the inverse fatness-fitness relationship and realize that being thin would not make me fit (nor, probably, perceived as more feminine)” (S52). Along
- 19. PAGE 18 with exhortationsnot to get too big or muscular, and not to hurt themselves, bigger women engaged in strength-power sports can experience homophobia because of the implied association between body presentation, activities, and gender/sexuality (Lenskyj, 2003). One Olympic weightlifter notes, People make assumptions about women who look butch, and sometimes those assumptions are right! The only thing worse than being called “fat” in high school is being called “dyke.” Being called both (or being both) is a nightmare when you’re an insecure adolescent. (S33) Activities that cater to larger women’s bodies aren’t really seen as feminine pursuits, and because of that, says a boxer, “the bodies that do well in those sports are sometimes seen as less valuable” (S19). Participants were frequently resentful that, despite their high level of fitness, other people perceived them as unfit. They pointed out that thin bodies were seen as fit bodies, regardless of whether the thin bodies were in fact active or healthy. As such, they were often encouraged to become thin rather than prasied for being fit or well. One powerlifter noted, My sister is skinny and tall compared to me. When we were growing up, I was always berated to be more like her and lose some weight. Her figure was maintained by a poor, low food value diet, smoking, and binge drinking. (S41) This athlete had the last laugh, however: “Now we’re in our mid-40s, it appears she’s being berated to be more like me and take better care of herself.” A track cyclist recalls maintaining a slim figure in high school “through evil awful means: smoking and starving mostly. I think I actually survived on coffee, french fries, and bran muffins. (This was in the 80s when we thought bran muffins were health food.)” During her thin adolescence, people thought I was in ‘good shape’ and commented on my figure. Everyone I assumed I was fit, but that was very weird because I was never in worse shape. I couldn’t walk upstairs without getting winded. But there is no stigma attached to being thin and out of shape. (S7) As with their understanding of fatness, the women interviewed typically distinguished between their own understanding of fitness and the mainstream commercial ideal. They never connected fitness to aesthetics besides “looking healthy,” and only rarely linked fitness to weight/size or body composition. They emphasized fitness as health and wellness (signified by things like good blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar levels). They included criteria such as being able to complete chosen daily life activities, being able to participate in strenuous activities (such as a two-hour martial arts practice or a long cycling trip), and generally “being able to engage in sustained physical effort consistently” (S47). Perhaps most notable, given the near-complete absence of this criteria in most standard definitions of fitness, was that many participants agreed that “feeling good” should be a central component. “Being fit includes feeling good about yourself and your appearance and feeling good in general when you wake up in the morning” (S43). Most participants endorsed a broad, multifaceted definition of fitness, encompassing a range of features such as strength, power, endurance, flexibility, coordination, and balance. As one powerlifter noted, “having the strength and endurance to perform whatever activities—within reason—I need or want to: occupational, recreational, or household” (S35). A martial artist connected fitness to her work on a farm: “I like to be able to unload my own feed bags off of the truck. That’s living well” (S17). A track cyclist compared her all-round fitness from various activities to peers who focused only on a single element: I have friends who do lots of yoga but who can’t run one kilometre. I can’t see them as fit. I know others who can run but who have very few muscles and I have a hard time thinking of them as fit. Finally, I know people who are strong and cardio fit but are uncoordinated, and they seem to be missing something to me. . . . It’s really functional fitness, being able to get around in the world,
- 20. PAGE 19 and havefun. (S7) This woman also identifies two frequent absences from feminist accounts of exercise: functionality for real-life challenges and having fun. Other women pointed out the importance of “mental fitness,” defined variously as the ability to meet and push through challenges, feel confident, and try new activities. “I think if you’re pushing yourself hard then you’re fit,” said a kickboxer. “If you just want to go to the gym and put on some headphones and potter along on the ‘Sculpto-matic’ then you’re not pushing hard enough. You’re not head-fit” (S15). Added a rower: A fit person can ask anything of his or her body and can expect a reasonable rate of compliance. A fit person is not intimidated by physical challenge because he or she has the confidence that the body will do what the mind requests. (S50) A martial artist concluded that “fitness is ability—what your body can do, what you can accomplish, what physical challenges you can meet” (S5). Participating in strength–power sports provided the women with the opportunity to rethink their earlier, often negative, relationships with their bodies and their size. For most of them, the experience of pursuing and achieving strength-based fitness was extremely positive. They began to view their bodies as productive rather than decorative. They also began to develop a concept of fitness that was concrete, based on performing specific tasks or overcoming certain challenges, rather than abstract and based on circulating images. Some women even eagerly embraced their size, linking it to strength and power. “I’ve always been big and . . . I decided that if I was going to be big, I was going to be strong too. . . . The look I really fear is ‘frail’” (S5). This woman was effusive in her enjoyment of her physique and chosen activities: “I am very strong and I have great muscles (she says proudly!). I can ride with my bike club for hours on end. We work up to 160 km [100 mile] rides mid-summer, and I keep up with people much younger and much smaller than me.” The more they did, the more the women wanted to do. Some interview participants identified themselves as “provisionally fit”: they were pleased with what they’d accomplished thus far, but were now inspired to push themselves further and take on new physical challenges. “It’s an ongoing process, and the goals move as I get closer to the last one,” says a recreational weight trainer. I can complete and recover from the exercise I do and still push myself to lift more, work at higher intensities/longer periods of time and make progress. . . . [I can also] deal with being pushed with something unusual—a few day’s hiking, for example, or trying a new sport confidently, knowing it is within my capabilities. (S52) Responses to Discouragement While citing the potential of exercise and fitness for women’s empowerment, Brabazon (2006) also identifies the problems of linking it specifically to thin appearance and weight loss, noting that along with her own shameful and awkward experience of a public weigh-in in gym class, “the consequence of this connection has left a scar on countless women.” (Brabazon, p. 72) This presumed opposition between size/fatness and fitness, and the communication of this opposition via family, peers, school, fitness facilities, and commercial media, is an experience shared by most of the women interviewed. Indeed, the assumed fatness-fitness binary is so profound that it was often physical educators and health promoters who were the least inclusive. As such, many of the women received negative messages about their abilities and fitness levels. However, while traumatized at least to some degree by these messages, the women did not all respond in a similar fashion. Some were deeply affected and are still recovering. “All my life I have been called fat by my peers—mostly by males,” said one woman, a BJJ practitioner.
- 21. PAGE 20 Boys woulduse the “f” word to put me in my place because they knew it was the one thing they could say to me that I had no defense for. I looked at pictures of myself when I was young, and I did not look fat, but you could not describe me as a skinny girl either. I did not fight their assessment of me—I pretty much believed it and to this day I honestly believe that I will always think of myself as fat no matter how fit I am. (S49) In a few cases, women terminated their involvement in sports altogether. A male powerlifter shared his recollection of a talented female colleague’s discouragement: [She] could squat 315 pounds for reps after a few months of training. She happened to be a national level hammer thrower to boot but quit cold turkey after a man called her a “big girl.”. . . She quit lifting and throwing and reduced to a sickly 140 pounds. It was very sad. . . . For me this was a major event and probably the beginning of my sympathy for larger athletes, because she was a true talent and could have been an Olympic level athlete.3 Most athletes, however, were defiant in the face of discouragement. They rejected negative messages outright or sought out other arenas for which their bodies were well suited. One martial artist recalls that, although she was naturally athletic and performed well, she was nevertheless larger than average and once had a basketball coach suggest that “the reason I couldn’t do a drill involving passing the ball around my midsection very well was that there was too much of me to go around.” The effect of these messages was disordered eating and crash diets from as young as the age of 12, but also a focus on some more nontraditional sports that people around me didn’t do (and hence didn’t have an image of what my body should look like to compare it with), such as horseback riding, weight lifting, and yoga (at the time it was pretty out there, especially for a rural area). (S5) Another martial artist was even more rebellious and remembers, “Even when I was a small fat child coming last in cross country, my thoughts were, ‘I’ll show them, one day I’ll run the marathon’” (S15). A particularly pleasurable experience for many female strength and power athletes was being able to lift more weight than the men who discouraged them. With refreshing bluntness, a football player remarked, “Lifting [weights] reinforces that it is more than okay that I do not look like the average woman, and furthermore, if anyone wants to give me any lip about it, I could probably kick their ass” (S40). Size advantages Despite receiving a variety of negative messages about their size, height, and/or fatness, the female strength–power athletes in the sample group were generally positive about their bodies. In many cases they felt their body shape and size to be an advantage in their sport, or at least less relevant a factor than other elements such as skill, ability, and the willingness to work hard. A six-foot rower explains: Tall rowers always have the advantage, because their stroke is longer. And heavier rowers tend to be stronger and better able to pull hard on the oar. So tall, big rowers are good! Of course, thin rowers are also good because they don’t weigh down the boat as much. But in a good 8, you’ll have the heavier rowers in the middle as the “engine room.” The skinny girls can sit in the bow. The thing is, if you’re tall and heavy but out of shape or have bad technique, you’re not that useful to a crew. So it’s good to be tall and heavy, but technique and fitness are actually more important overall. (S27) Another rower concurs that “Being strong is helpful in rowing, especially if you have a lot of leg strength. Not only are the big muscles in the legs naturally, that’s really where my strength is so [rowing is] a good sport for me” (S47). For strength athletes such as powerlifters and Olympic weightlifters, being bigger and heavier is often a plus because it typically means having more muscle, but being tall is a disadvantage because the lifter then has to move the weight a longer distance. One powerlifter remembers her strategy when she competed several
- 22. PAGE 21 years agoas part of military competitions: My leverage as a tall person creates a big disadvantage no matter what my weight class . . . [but] I kept myself in the 181-lb weight class because I reasoned that any Air Force woman who could weigh that much without adverse personnel consequences would also have to be as tall as I was.” (S35) Shorter, heavier women, on the other hand, found their body configuration to be an ideal balance of muscularity and biomechanical advantage. Martial artists often find that being bigger enhances their power and they frequently enjoy throwing their weight around. “I hit a lot harder,” says one martial artist proudly. “I spar men regularly when they are available—and I can take a lot harder punch as well” (S17). Another martial artist sounds downright intimidating, describing her abilities as “world class,” and adding, “I’m naturally stronger and exceedingly competitive, so I’ve trained very hard to be better. I’m bigger (even if I’m shorter), more imposing, and quite a scary movie as an opponent” (S8). Other types of athletes such as rugby players also enjoyed the momentum and force they could generate with their size. Thus, in general, bigger women who felt their size was a good match to the demands of the sport experienced their bodies as athletic allies rather than shameful constraints. Inspiration via Sport The profound message from female strength–power athletes is threefold: first, that fitness and fatness are neither incompatible nor oppositional; second, that particular sports embrace and reward bigger, taller, and/or heavier bodies; and third, that women derive immense personal, physical, and political benefits from participation in these activities. They are “doing strong” rather than “being thin.” “I like my body”, says a young Olympic weightlifter proudly. “It helps me lift big weights, and it is muscular” (S42). This type of account stands in stark contrast to many other feminist narratives of women’s relationships to exercise (compare, for instance, this cheerful confidence with Brabazon’s, 2006, distressing account of observing a woman getting off of the Stairmaster at her gym, throw up, then return to the machine).■ Many women interviewed began their athletic careers as nonathletes, discouraged by messages about their bodies, size, abilities, and membership in the world of fitness. Some began at a personal nadir: after a relationship trauma, in the midst of overwhelming work and/or family demands, or at the bottom of a booze bottle or ashtray full of cigarette butts. Says one recreational weight trainer, “I had a very bad relationship breakup and with a considerable history of depression wanted to ensure I did not head into a downwards spiral and end of paralysed by depression and/or on antidepressants” (S52). Like other women interviewed, as she progressed in the gym, her emotions and mind also healed. Women often described their pursuit of fitness as a never-ending quest. Yet what defines the horizon is not a nebulous, emaciated “perfection” but rather selfdetermination, confidence, and overcoming increasingly difficult challenges both in competition and in life. Physical self-esteem emerges not from vague affirmations of acceptance but through skill development and mastery, expressing the body’s “power to do.” This quest takes women’s lives and bodies on a different and better course. My journey into a more physical self through rowing,” says one athlete, “has been both long (it continues) and profoundly life-changing. It’s pretty simple; I am a different person than I was in high school, and I like this person infinitely better” (S50). Women no longer feel the urge to chase youth, because, as one martial artist in her forties says, “I am more athletic than I was at 20 years old and I can take on new challenges and improve my health as I go” (S17). Now many of the women are not afraid of their bodies standing out or of being visible. They move proudly in gyms and enjoy the attention that their accomplishments
- 23. PAGE 22 bring. AnOlympic weightlifter who, as a “pudgy” child, never managed to hang more than a few seconds from a pullup bar and felt “as if all the other kids were watching with malice, just waiting for me to drop” (S33) now likes to do pullups on streetcars or street signs. A powerlifter adds, Powerlifting and weight training in general allow me to stand out in such a manner [as] to encourage women (and even men) of all ages to use weight training to change their bodies toward their own ideals and to get strong and confident in the process. (S35) They have transformed their experience of public spectacle from a display of deficiency into a testament of ability and pride. Women recognized as well that strength–power sports could be democratic and egalitarian, rewarding qualities such as effort, tenacity, self-care, and courage rather than a specific body type. Says one martial artist, One of the most senior belts in my [taekwondo] class is a man with cerebral palsy, who is overweight and obviously limited in how he can perform the patterns and so forth. He certainly cannot fight. But the sport recognizes his ability to perform within his own limitation, and has rewarded him for perseverance, practice, and the ability to do all the required skills in his own manner. I think that’s a great example of how sport should be run, and it has helped me appreciate my own body that much more. (S5) Conclusion What is special about body size that requires such silencing of the personal? . . . [T]he thought of talking from experience about one’s weight seems fantastically personal, overly intimate, and emotionally sensitive. (Tirosh, 270-271)■ A powerlifting world champion who was teased as a child and teenager for being fat now says that she knows her life would have been different if she had started a strength sport when young to combat the negative messages she received and to generate a feeling of body pride. She attributes this enjoyment, in part, to her coach, who treated her as an athlete and not “a fat person who started lifting weights to lose weight.” Although she doesn’t yet feel she is as fit as she’d like to be, she loves “building muscle and feeling good from both the physical rush of working out, as well as from the accomplishment of lifting more than before and knowing that I am a little bit better today than I was yesterday.” Powerlifting provides her with precisely the right forum to express her physical gifts: I am good at powerlifting—it suits my body type (large/strong frame), and it requires no agility or speed. I can not only participate in this sport, I can excel. I enjoy being “special”—standing out as someone who is smart, who is a leader, who has talent. Powerlifting provides another arena for me to be in the spotlight, even if it is only to stand on the platform in front of a crowd for nine lifts every couple of months. Despite her incredible series of international-level accomplishments, she says: It took me a while to understand that I not only could be an athlete—I am an athlete, no question. I do not have to see myself as an extension of my family, destined to have the same body size and type as my female relatives, and destined to have all of the health problems that stem from being fat, inactive, and weak. This account neatly encapsulates the intersecting issues of fitness and fatness in the experiences of larger female strength–power athletes. Refocusing the lens through which we view fatness and fitness, and attempting to understand the multiple bases on which knowledge claims about fatness and fitness are made, provides feminists a basis for action. Knowledge of the biological foundation of fatness and fitness, and a call to use a variety of appropriate evidence to undergird one’s case, does not undermine feminist critiques; it merely reframes the discussion. A physiological understanding of disability does not undermine legitimate claims for
- 24. PAGE 23 accommodation; aphysiological understanding of how skin color or facial features are produced does not undermine legitimate claims for antiracist measures. Likewise, a physiological understanding of fatness and fitness along with the experiential evidence provided by larger female athletes can help feminist scholars and activists work toward enhancing the wellness and fitness of every body. Notes 1. “Obesegenic” refers to the likelihood of a stimulus or environment (for example, high availability of sugary foods or a car-based urban layout) contributing to the development of obesity. 2. Kettlebells, as their name implies, are round weights with handles. Girevoy sport is a traditional Russian sport of lifting or swinging these types of weights that is now gaining adherents in North America. Kettlebells are weighted in “poods”; the “1 pood” that women often use in competition is about 36 pounds, but occasionally 1.5 or 2-pood bells are used. 3. John Nickless, personal communication, February 13, 2007. Acknowledgments I am most grateful to my interview subjects for generously sharing their experiences and insights, to Dr. Mike Connor, Kinesiology and Health Science, York University, for his guidance and specialized knowledge in the physiology of obesity, and to boxer Alaina “Machine” Hardie for her thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this piece. References Armstrong, P., Amaratunga, C., Bernier, J., Grant, K., Pederson, A., & Willson, K. (2002). Exposing privatization: Women and health care reform. Aurora, ON: Garamond.■ Bedogni, G.; Tiribelli, C., & Bellentani, S. (2005). Body mass index: From Quételet to evidence-based medicine. In L, Ferrera (Ed.), Body Mass Index: New Research (pp. 1–12). New York: Nova Biomedical. Bender, E. (2007). For some fashion models, thin is definitely not in. Psychiatric News, 42(3), 10. Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the body. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brabazon, T. (2006). Fitness is a feminist issue. Australian Feminist Studies, 21(49), 65–83. Brace-Govan, J. (2004). Weighty matters. Control of women’s access to physical strength. The Sociological Review, 52(4), 503–531. Brown, S.P., Miller, W.C., & Eason, J.M. (2006). Exercise physiology: Basis of human movement in health and disease. New York: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins. Campos, P., Saguy, A., Ernsberger, P., Oliver, E., & Gaesser, G. (2006). The Epidemiology of Overweight and Obesity: Public Health Crisis or Moral Panic? International Journal of Epidemiology, 35, 55–60.■ Centres for Disease Control and National Center for Health Statistics, Office of Analysis and Epidemiology. (2004). Overweight/obesity among adults: US, 1988–2004. Aggregate data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).■ Code, L. (1991). What can she know? Feminist theory and the construction of knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Connolly, M. (1994). Iris Young. Throwing like a girl and other essays in feminist philosophy and social theory: Response and commentary. Human Studies, 17(4), 463–469. 46 Scott-Dixon Cox, B., & Thompson, S. (2000). Facing the bogey: Women, football and sexuality. Football Studies, 4(2), 7–24. Dworkin, S.L., & Wachs, F.L. (2004). “Getting your body back”: Postindustrial fit motherhood in shape fit pregnancy magazine. Gender & Society, 18(5), 610–624. Eskes, T.B., Duncan, M.C., & Miller, E.M. (1998). The discourse of empowerment: Foucault, Marcuse, and women’s fitness texts. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 22(3), 317–344. Evans, B. (2006). “Gluttony or sloth”: Critical Geographies of Bodies and Morality in (Anti)Obesity Policy. Area, 38(3), 259–267.■
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