- Rating
- Category
- non-fiction
- Read
- 2023-03-06
- Pages
- 352
The perfect bio.
- Doesn’t start with boring family tree.
- Exists for a reason (addressing issues facing women in sport).
- Doesn’t present as perfect, but doesn’t seek sympathy just says it plainly.
- Uses the story to illustrate data and research.
- Is about running.
It hadn’t occured to me previously that there are well documented development timeline differences between men and women. College athletics happen to be when men are in their prime … but not women. That’s actively harmful for women, who are sacrificing their bodies to try and perform when developmentally it just doesn’t make sense.
Young women athletes:
experience stress fractures at three times the rate of their male peers […] 65 percent develop disordered eating habits that compromise their ease around food.
On stagnation at the professional level:
Today women make up 40 percent of the athletes in the United States but receive only 4 percent of the sports coverage, about the same as it was thirty years ago. […] Less than 1 percent of endorsement investment in professional sports goes to women.
Talking about her own issues and background:
But I came from the kind of broader community that says “all lives matter.” The kind of working-class white people who get the short end of the stick enough times to not want to hear about the long ones they have, viewing what feels like a rare advantage as fair game. Sports teach you to exploit any advantage you have and silence your protests of injustice with reminders of your disposability.
I ignored my loneliness and called it independence.
In reference to women running in underwear:
They have been internalized as symbols of professionalism by the women themselves—the high heels of the running world—but instead of back pain, you get body dysmorphia.
