there's a thesis in here somewhere

I swear to god.  I have a shitload of seemingly only tangentially related thoughts and anecdotes which I can just feel could and should come together to make a sweepingly brilliant point if only...  I dunno. It's tantalizingly there in my brain, like a sneeze that just won't happen.***  Nevertheless, since I can't leave the house till my laundry is ready to come out of the dryer due to my extremely rational fear that said dryer might burst into flames at any minute, I will now spew those thoughts and anecdotes in your direction, then tie them up in the sloppiest metaphorical bow you ever saw. You're welcome!

This train of thoughts began as my dear wish that I could write an entire blog post about how much I hate and despise Fitness magazine. I refrained from writing that post because three paragraphs of my ranting and seething, while undoubtedly therapeutic for me, would probably just make you all yell at your computer screens, Well, just don't read it, Andrea, DUH. In my defense, I got a year subscription for my Kindle almost free and one needs something to stare at on the train or bus when one has run out of lives in Candy Crush and one is too brain dead from work to read, like, an actual book. (Particularly since the primacy of text messaging has led to the demise of hilarious overheard cell phone conversations on public transportation, which is what *used* to keep me amused during my commute circa 2008.) Anyway. I have this Kindle subscription to Fitness. It's probably actively bad for my health, considering every article I read therein tends to elevate my blood pressure. The cutsey-poo language is like a million (French-manicured) nails on a million blackboards.  In the eyes of the editors, Fitness readers don't have workouts or gym visits. They have "sweat sessions."  Gag.me.  I'm not sure why this annoys me quite as much as it does, but it ties in somewhat to the idea that sweating more means you've accomplished more and, especially, that the main purpose of exercise is to burn or (in the words of Fitness!) "torch" calories. I know I've probably frothed at the mouth about this before on here, but the media and the fitness industry pushes this idea, especially to women, that we should be exercising to burn calories! So we won't be fatty fat fat! So we'll have "bikini bodies"!

Well. Not only is exercise probably the least efficient way to lose weight (I'd link to the studies for y'all, but I'm a lazy lazy blogger), this ignores all the other wonderful benefits exercise has, benefits far more important than (kill.me.) torching calories.  It's good for your heart. It's good for your bones.  Being fit increases your quality of life, especially as you get to be a sad, decrepit middle aged person like myself.  And maybe better than all that, exercise is fun. Or should be. There is no healthy toddler alive for whom running around in circles, attempting to climb on or jump off shit they shouldn't, dancing around crazily, or dragging things too big for them to pick up isn't The Funnest Day Evah. Exercise, done right, is what allows us all to get in touch with our Inner Toddlers.**** (Naps, too. Exercise and naps. Also, probably, boobs, our own or others'. I'm convinced.)

Even more important than good cardiac health, bones that don't snap like dry twigs, or FUN, there's the fact that exercise makes us feel better mentally. Segue into next anecdote...

I have a close (male) friend who's been overweight the entire 11 years I've known him, while being at varying levels of fitness during that time. There were a couple summers he was biking a lot and got into really good shape, though he only lost maybe ten pounds. (See above!) Then he had a bike accident which, while fairly minor, brought up some latent issues relating to an old friend who had actually died biking in traffic, and he didn't bike for a couple years in a sorta phobic reaction. Because biking was the only exercise he found fun, other than walking which he does partly for transportation (lives in the city and it's actually less of a pain in the ass for him to walk to work than drive) and partly for fun when the weather's nice, he gained the ten pounds back and lost a lot of his cardio fitness. Meanwhile, his on again-off again girlfriend, who knew he was overweight when she started dating him, was bitching at him that he needed to lose weight and get in better shape. He grudgingly went to the gym for awhile, even had a trainer, but because he wasn't doing it for fun or really even willingly, he didn't stay on the wagon. Meanwhile his girlfriend poo-pooed anything he did anyways as not enough, since to her the only thing that really counts as exercise is running. (Wut?)  Cut to this winter when girlfriend broke up with him suddenly (after only weeks before professing her love and how much she wanted to marry him, but that's a whole nother soap opera), partly because he hadn't lost the weight. (Again, wut?)  My friend started going to the gym again and doing indoor biking. Not because anyone was nagging at him, not because of any feeling that it was something he *should* do, but because he wanted honestly to get back into the shape he was in those summers he was biking so much. He was also pretty bereft about the sudden break up, depressed, not sleeping. To his absolute shock, he found himself enjoying going to the gym, because when he did, he felt BETTER. Less anxious, less depressed, just in a better mood. (He's also been going to this nutritionist who's telling him doing intervals are going to burn a shit ton of calories, but maybe she's read too many issues of Fitness. Whatever.)

Now, if you'll excuse me, my laundry is almost done and I need to get ready for my sweat session. See you later.

xoxo

***the first analogy that came to mind was that it's like when you're just on the brink of an orgasm. Be thankful I didn't use it. Also? I know that sneezes don't happen in your brain. Just to be clear.

****My powerlifting friend Auntie Hammie once told this story about how when she was a little kid her dad would take her for walks in the woods by their house and she'd do the usual little-kids-in-the-woods things like find frogs and dig in the mud with sticks, but she'd also usually find the biggest rock that she could lift overhead and bet her dad she could carry it all the way home like that. And usually she could.  Not only was this sweet and amusing in how it foreshadowed her adult interests, it also made me heart her dad, whom I've never met. That's good parenting right there.

books i hate, part II

The Scarlet Letter! Only "classic" of "world literature" that I had to read both in high school and in college. It wasn't any better the second time around. Nathaniel Hawthorne, you got a lot to answer for. Oh, wait, it's supposed to be books I hate that have to do with fitness. Never mind then.

But before we get to our real next book review, lemme tell you a little story. Two summers I ago I was a combatant in what I fondly (ahem) called The War Against My Uterus. Hey, when you bleed from your vag for ten weeks in an eleven week period and then the hormones they put you on to stop the bleeding while they try to figure out what's wrong with you and schedule surgery make you way crazier than you were to begin with, you gotta laugh or you'll cry, y'know? In my attempt to find out more about my uterine uprising than what webMD was telling me, I went on amazon.com to see if there were a womb book equivalent to the famous Dr Susan Love's Breast Book.

Well. I looked in "Women's Health", which is where I would think a reasonably intelligent person would seek literature about female reproductive organs, no? Well, amazon.com thinks women's health is comprised of two areas and two areas (mostly) alone: pregnancy/fertility (reasonable) and weight loss (WTF?). Yes, a vast number of the books they classify as "women's health" are diet books. This made me rage. [Believe me, when you have a period that lasts two and a half months, you are even crankier than usual.] Furthermore, almost all the diet and fitness books aimed at women promised one thing: that you'll be sexier. Oh, that made me rage more. Yes, I suppose that is an enormous health problem, what with expiring of non-sexiness being the number one killer of women in America and, indeed, probably most of the developed world. Once malaria and bubonic plague are taken care of, our undesirability or lack of conventional good looks is what knocks us off like flies, doncha know.

So, yeah, even when I am not anemic, spending a fortune on tampons, and/or hormonally deranged, I am not a big fan of nutritional and exercise advise being peddled to women as being first and foremost about making them sexah. First of all, there are way more important reasons to be fit and at a healthy weight. Secondly, the whole idea that having a certain body type and shape as the only factor in sexiness is so far from true--no matter what the media would have us believe--it's ridiculous. Being thin does not equal being sexy. Being muscular doesn't equal being sexy. Being sexy is all about a certain je ne sais quoi that you either have or don't and which no diet book can give you. [Ed. note: I have it; that's why I am chronically single. Oh, I crack myself up. Carry on. There really is a book review coming in here somewhere. Seriously.]

This all brings us to another classic of world literature, The Female Body Breakthrough by Rachel Cosgrove. The only reason I bought this book was that Charlotte Hilton Andersen of The Great Fitness Experiment (whose book I did NOT hate, incidentally; in fact, I liked it very much and you should probably buy and read it yourself!) said that the workout in it gave her the most results of anything she had ever tried. I wouldn't myself be able to tell you if Ms Cosgrove's weightlifting program is indeed stellar and does indeed build your muscle and cut your fat like all get out because reading her book for approximately five minutes filled me with such loathing that I will never ever try it. Yes, this is a book all about lifting weights for women whose selling point is mainly ooo, lifting weights will make you hawt! and you will get teh menz you want and all the other bitchez be jellus of you! Rage.

Now it is entirely possible that Ms Cosgrove is not entirely, or even mostly, to blame for this. It is entirely possible that this is what her editors wanted and demanded and the only way she could get this shiz published is to write and sell it that way. Too bad. She is complicit. When she starts talking in the freaking introduction about wanting to turn me into a "fit and fabulous female", I want to fly to California, go to her gym, and punch her in the head. Repeatedly. (That, I'm sure, is a good workout, but it might not make me sexy.) So, what is a "fit female"? Let's let Ms Cosgrove answer that in her own words, shall we?

You know the girl...the one at the last party you went to who walked in the room feeling sexy and confident in her flirty black dress without a roll or a bulge in sight and worked the room with her confidence, looking fabulous! At the time, you may have referred to her as "that bitch who walked in the room thinking she is somebody," and you might have wondered who she thought she was. But deep down we all know she has what all of us want

Um, yeah. That's us chicks, always jealous and competitive with other chicks and hating all the ones we think are better looking than us. Have we time travelled back to 1952 or something? Except, yeah, wasn't true then either. Maybe we've time travelled back to middle school! Sigh. Yes, Ms Cosgrove wants us to be a BITCH, except "from now on, BITCH stands for Be Inspiring, Totally Confident, and Hot!" Tell the truth. Don't you want to fly to California and punch her, too? Do I need to quote more examples, or do we have the flavor here? This is a weightlifting book for women who a.) read Cosmo and b.) take it seriously. I wasn't sure there was anyone over the age of 17 who does that, but whatever. I'm sure Ms Cosgrove and her editors scoped out their target market.

I myself am waiting for the weightlifting book for us wimmenz that approaches it as "throwing some iron around is gonna make you feel all RAWR!" Can't we sell fitness to women as something that's going to make them feel, and be, strong and badass? I myself am more empowered when I look over and notice that I am rowing more than the guy on the bench next to me than I am by having someone check out my ass. Don't get me wrong, being checked out is always (ok, sometimes) nice and feeling attractive is empowering in its own way. It just is not the only freaking thing in life. Rawr!

And now, to reward you for reading my anger-filled screed, here's an example where "sexy" did NOT piss me off. I kinda love this to pieces.



xoxo

books i hate, part I

The other night I finished the last unread book on my kindle. (Um, other than a travel guide to somewhere I may never go and a history of mental illness that, despite my interest in the subject matter and despite my having read one of the author's other books over and over about twenty times, is so dry and academic I just cannot read it however much I try.) This meant that, naturally, I had to go on amazon and buy myself a few new ones. I need both reading material and a choice of reading material, you know.

Let's talk about one of them, shall we? Those of you who are really sharp and quick on the uptake and who actually read blog titles have an inkling what kind of review is coming up, I bet. Here's the literary masterpiece in question:



But before I start excoriating this stupid book, lemme give you some background info. First, for those of you who don't know, I do some yoga. Not as much as I should, and I'm certainly not advanced, but I do it, I like it, I am in full support of it. Secondly, I am kind of an ersatz Buddhist. [Me to ex-boyfriend, about a sandwich shop in his neighborhood that had a Buddhist pun in its name: Are those guys actually Buddhist? Him: No, they're Buddhist like you are. They just think it's cool. The gentleman later claimed he never said that, but he did and it was quite alright. It was both hilarious and, y'know, TRUE.] I've read a bunch of Buddhist books and, on and off, I do the metta meditation, though, like the yoga, not as often as I should. Finally, I have been to massage school, which...Oh, hell, if you haven't been to massage school, it would probably take me five paragraphs to explain why that's relevant, so just trust. It is. My point being, I'm probably just the kind of person this book is aimed at. Amazon certainly thought so when they recommended it!

Well, then, Andrea, what is your problem with this book? Can you not just be a good little consumer and fit into the niche you are boxed into? Sigh. No, I cannot. I am always an effin' problem.

Here's the thing: a chatty sort of book based on the author's life experiences is much like a blog. In order to connect with it, you've got to like the authorial voice. I mean, anyone who's reading this (hello...hellllooooooo? anyone out there?) and who's visited this blog more than once can just be assumed to like a certain potty-mouthed, sarcastic world view, amirite? You might not agree with everything you read here and you might not like me enough to want to, say, invite me to dinner, but you are engaged enough by the authorial voice to keep reading. We are, (mythical) you and me, simpatico.

Well, me n' Ms Berger Gross, we are not simpatico. I found her, almost from the beginning insufferable. For someone who is claiming a certain level of spiritual enlightenment, she is remarkably lacking in self-awareness and stunningly blind to her own privilege. I almost felt like I was reading GOOP.

Gwyneth Paltrow Makes Chicken Goop.com with Abby Elliott from Abby Elliott

Okay, Ms Berger Gross is not quite as insufferable as Gwyneth, but she does say things like "Now, eating half a pineapple a day can get pricey. But it's worth it to me to feel energetic and ready to go every morning..." and gives us smoothie recipes in which the ingredients are, no lie, organic yogurt, organic strawberries, organic orange juice, and honey. I was reading that at the beach yesterday and felt compelled to yell to my friend, "What??!!?!!?? The honey doesn't have to be organic??!!???"

Perhaps the most galling (and totally un-health-related, so, yeah, off-topic!) part of the book to me is that Ms Berger Gross has disowned her parents, just because she felt her relationship with them is dysfunctional and she is still sulking over the wrongs they did her when she was six. Let me be clear, their crimes were not that of horrific abuse. Your parents rape you or sell you for drug money, etc, I certainly support your decision to leave home as soon as you are able and never look back. On the other hand, you let them put you through Vassar, including funding a trip to Nepal where your journey of enlightenment begins, first and then decide to completely cut them off in their elderly years and not allow them to meet their grandchild, simply because you think daddy has anger issues and mommy shouldn't have stayed with him, you are a selfish douchebag. And when you justify that with an interpretation of the yoga sutras that weasels about how forgiving people doesn't actually mean forgiving them, you are a double douchebag. When you don't eat meat because it's unkind, but you cannot be kind and forgiving to the old people who raised you and whom you admit did their best, you are a triple douchebag. I may be only an ersatz Buddhist, but I know the karma involved in that is not good.

But back to the health and fitness related nonsense! There's a lot of mumbo jumbo about clean eating, juice fasts, never eating to the point of actually being full, and my personal favorite, detox enemas. And splurging once in awhile on whole grain organic (no, really) pizza made with hormone-free cheese.

Dude. I would rather be 40 pounds overweight, thanks.

In summary, don't buy this book. Instead, look forward to the second part of our series wherein I count how many times the word "sexy" is used in the first chapter of a weightlifting book for women!

xoxo