Olympic athletes fit, not so trim: Score one for changing beauty standards
By MEGHAN DAUM
Los Angeles Times
Gee, someone deserves a medal! Women of a certain heft are suddenly everywhere.
Mad Men's Christina Hendricks, the Jessica Rabbit-proportioned redhead who also happens to be a good actress, is on the cover of New York Magazine.
Michelle Obama, who a recent Los Angeles Times editorial described as an athletic, real-woman-with-curves, launched her initiative to fight childhood obesity. Meanwhile, the 2010 Winter Olympics is the source of some interesting insights into what athletes-especially female athletes -actually weigh.
Sure, the figure skaters are mostly sparrow-like. But a lot of ladies in other sports are, well, substantial.
Elana Meyers of the U.S. women's bobsledding team is, according to the Team USA Web site, 5 foot 8 and 180 pounds (stats that are pretty much in line with those of her teammates). The U.S. women's hockey team captain, Natalie Darwitz, is 5 foot 2 and 143 pounds. Alpine skier Lindsey Vonn, who appears in a bikini in this month's Sports Illustrated, is 5 foot 10 and, rumor has it, weighs in at around 160 pounds.
Of course, there's nothing surprising about a muscular athlete weighing more than a bony fashion model or even a flabby-if-thin regular person. But unlike in real life (thank goodness), we are watching Olympic athletes heights and weights in sports like luge or bobsled, where such stats are relevant flashed across the screen for the entire world to see.
Unlike movies or television shows, the Winter Olympics have added a novel dimension to the nation's ceaseless obsession with female body weight-actual numbers.
Moreover, they're putting not only a human face on those numbers but some glamorous faces.
It's one thing to see perfunctory footage of protruding bellies during television news reports about the obesity epidemic, or to hear the latest stats from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the average American woman, who stands 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighs just over 164 pounds. Or to see images of our national look: overstuffed jeans and double chins.
It's quite another thing to see a woman in that approximate height-and-weight range competing in the Olympics. The Vancouver Games are providing something those height-and-weight charts cannot: evidence that when it comes to fitness, and looks, the numbers are only part of the equation.
Still, I know what you're thinking. For most of us, 164 pounds on a 5-foot-4 frame is, with rare exception, probably too much. Besides, some of these ladies competing in Vancouver are, you know & big. Not fat, of course, but let's put it this way: I don't think I was the only one who, when looking at the Sports Illustrated photos of Vonn, wondered how much Photoshopping took place.
Not because she isn't a beautiful woman, but because a photo of anyone who weighs 40 to 50 pounds more than the average fashion model of the same height is likely to get some technological assistance, especially when the woman depicted is wearing a fringe bikini and thigh-high furry boots (and especially when not even professional models are immune to nips and tucks from art directors).
That's why, for all the lip service paid to the culture's growing acceptance of normal-sized women, we're still a long way from bestowing words like attractive or even fit on anyone who's less than discernibly thin. We put Christina Hendricks on a magazine cover, but then we congratulate ourselves for accepting her.
But every time the weight of another female athlete makes it into our brains, we move ever so slightly away from lip service and toward another kind of service, the kind that slowly chips away at the idea that the only women who deserve to be proud of their bodies are the ones who are thin.
Instead of congratulating ourselves for accepting these athletes, we're congratulating them. Instead of marveling at their ability to excel despite what they weigh, we're forced to concede that going down a mountain at breakneck speed, and who knows what else, is not for the faint of heart--or the size 0.
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/02/22/1766380/the-olympic-athletes-are-fit-and.html
I agree with this article, and with the journalist who wrote it, that we are a long way from accepting women of size as they are, and not beating up on them repeatedly in public. At my thinnest, I weighed 157 pounds, and I looked fabulous...I looked the perfect weight for my height (5 foot 6) and I still had some curves...I was 36, 25, 36, with toned muscles,flat abs and 20 percent body fat, which is healthy when you have 129 pounds of lean muscle, bone and water.
I doubt that I will ever reach those numbers again, 20 years later, now that I am, gulp, almost 50 and heading into the death valley of menopause, with its slug-like metabolism. But I do consistently work out 8-9 hours a week, doing a variety of classes that stretch and build muscles in my body. Granted, the gals that are doing Janice's fitness training for bodybuilding competitions have to work out 15 hours a week, which is really hard core, but I don't try to keep up with them, especially with the 60-75 pounds I need to lose.
This week, Brandy, one of the great women I work out with at WIO, said she is going on a sugar fast for Lent and for her health. She plans on staying away from as much refined sugar as possible, which she challenged me to try as well. I honestly do not know if I could do that, as sugar is one of the few things I can still eat and enjoy, since dairy, eggs, nuts, onions, strawberries, raspberries, green beans and mushrooms are all foods that I am allergic to or make me ill. Broccoli makes my Crohns go crazy, though I love it so much that I often cook up a batch and eat it anyway, knowing that twelve hours later I will be miserable.
I just met a gastroenterologist who told me that if I wasn't symptom-free, I needed to either change gastro docs or tell my current doc to get on the ball and put me on some of the new medications that will keep me from symptoms and from having another stricture operation. So I am waiting to hear from my doc today, hoping that he will have some answers for me.
