Guilt Week! Part 2 - Feminist Guilt

Depending on your definition of feminism, or the version/s you subscribe to, there'll be a bunch of things you'd feel you just don't do. You probably wouldn't tell an anti-woman joke, you might not wear high heeled shoes, and hopefully you wouldn't vote for this guy* (or a lot of the others).

But would you enjoy funny sexist advertising? Would you giggle at the dress sense of women actors? Would you read celebrity or fashion magazines? Pay for so-called beauty products or treatments? Put up with odd gender stereotyping from partners/bosses/colleagues? The answer to some of these, and a lot of other things is probably yes, at least some of the time.

Does it make you feel guilty? Suzanne Riesman at BlogHer wrote about women wanting to "hand in the feminist badges" for enjoying the superbowl ads. Over at Feministing they have a number of unfeminist guilty pleasures, including rap and reggaeton music, blogs, tv shows, control undies and such.

Everyone has something they just can't help but love, regardless of her otherwise intact feminist-cred.

Here's my top 5 health and fitness related unfeminist guilty pleasures:


5. Mid-rift baring workout tops - They're not that practical, they don't stop boob-bounce, and I'm sure they scream "object" rather than "subject". I only wear them under my real workout singlet to the gym, but I totally hang around the house in them checking myself out, sucking in my belly, and thinking that maybe, I'll wear just my bright pink lycra crop top to the gym one day, and stun the world with my amazing abs (see number 1). Yeah.

4. Pussycat dolls/beyonce/shakira-esque dance - Girating, grinding, shimmying, hip-wiggling and the occasional squat with a hair flick. It bugs me when it gets played in gyms on the tvs. You can't change the channel, and it cant be doing anyone any good in a bodylove sense. I hate it there. Sexual public display embodies women's power? Yeah, I don't buy that crap. But get me out of the public eye, and I'm all about it. I love a good boogie, and it can be fun to flip your hair around in shocking man-pleasing fashion from time to time, I'm even considering joining a class called "Diva Moves" eek.

the Pussycat Dolls: embodying women's strength and power? I don't think so.

3. Reggeaton music - this one I share with some of the women at Feministing. Reggaeton music is basically latin rap/r'n'b/hip hop (i'm not exactly down with the lingo). I love the beat, I love the melodies, and i love to get sweaty to them in the gym. With my limited knowledge of spanish, I'll be in the dark unless they start talking about direction to the train station or ordering coffees. But if these music videos are anything to go by, my guess is its just gangster rap in a different language.

2. Fitness magazines (and judging the competitors) - These magazines are like crack to me. I love them. I cherish them. I can't always afford them. The articles are usually at least feminist-neutral. They aren't exactly advocating being yourself, but they do promote strong, capable women role models. But the ads! Blonde, busty, bikini-clad women telling me I'm too fat, page after page. And then there's the competition pages, you know for fitness and figure comps. I know its a sport, i know that its hard, involves training and skill. But i just can't get over the outfits, the nails, the tans and the forced smiles. Chances are, if you are a woman participant in one of these competitions, I have judged you.


yeah, they're buff, but spangles? Really?

1. The continuing quest for a mainstream-attractive body (or parts thereof) - the last and worst of my unfeminist foibles. Most of the time I work out for me. I like the feeling, I like getting stronger and more co-ordinated, I like knowing I can run for the bus if i need to, and carry all my groceries home without the car. But sometimes, everynow and then, I ache for a 'firm butt' or 'tight abs', or less 'jiggle'. It might not hurt anyone else, but this definitley gives me the feminist guilts, and it annoys me that I would spend time, effort and energy on trying to change my physical appearance when I could be changing the world.



* yeah, i know he's a little bit nicer sounding now, claiming he wouldn't force his opinions, but thats only cos he thinks he's in with a chance. Check out this interview for more recent Abbott moralising. Even the title makes me cringe.


Let me know what your unfeminist fitness secrets are...

Guilt week! Part 1 - Food Guilt

Part 1 of a week of posts on Guilt.

I just ate a very large piece of chocolate orange cake. For breakfast. I regularly eat chocolately things (though not usually for breakfast- we're out of soy milk for cereal), because I like to, and because I'm in the middle of writing a chocolate-themed cook book, and have to test a lot of recipes. But also because I like to.

I don't feel guilty, not even a jot. Somehow, I managed not to end up with much food guilt. This is probably because I can't remember even once seeing my mother forgo dessert, or talk about "making up for it" with exercise later. It was called 'naughty' or treated as an indulgence, but a fun thing, that we might collude in with each other and my sister, as a family, or with a friend.

Don't get me wrong, this has lead to some other negative behaviours for myself and my siblings - a lack of accountability for adult food choices, ignoring health aspects, a serious sugar addiction, and expensive dentist visits - but it has also saved me from what seems to be a very widespread phenomena among other women: Food Guilt.

I recall one day when a very good friend said to me that she was hungry most of them time, and that white bread made her feel guilty. Now I'm all for whole grains and other fibrous alternatives to the white stuff, but in a world of glazed donuts, bacon, hot chips with gravy, and vegan chocolate mousse cake (pictured below, thank you brown eyed baker), if we must categorize our food, surely white bread is a minor sin?

Categories aside though, my friend was serious. She felt guilty and weak if she made a poor food choice. And she isn't alone.

A quick browse of the internets sees a lot of discussions and admissions on this topic. PaulF at Chowhound tries to work out some confusing feelings, Debra Mazer shares her story, the Diet Doc at Health24 wants to help, and of course many evil marketeers are willing to help you eschew food guilt by selling you something silly like special juice, magic berries, super tea, amazing pills, or the-most-supreme-fat-melting-carb-burning-workout-of-all-time(!).

While its true that healthy eating is good for you, and will lead to body that works a bit better, guilt, if serious and recurring, isn't great for your health either. It is stress, and stress can lead to all manner of physical and emotional yuckiness that can make the piece of cake seem like, well a piece of cake in comparison.

Excepting the few instances in which guilt can be good (a subject for a later guilt week post) guilt is bad because it makes you feel bad. And, other than hanging knee raises, which make my abs feel bad, I don't like things that make me feel bad. And I certainly don't like things that make my friends feel bad. And I especially don't like things that make women feel bad enough that they spend time and energy thinking about them, that they could be spending on becoming stronger and happier and furthering feminist agendas!

So what do we do?

Our feelings about the food we eat are very complex, and based on our experience of food and our bodies as children, media and public perception of food and weight, ideas about health and beauty, and of course, our general feelings of self-worth and not-good-enoughness.

The cycle most often goes: Create a list of bad.naughty/forbidden foods - manage for a while, and then give in - feel bad about your body/weight/self-discipline/all of these - promise not to eat crap - go back to stage 1.

Unfortunately I don't have a solid answer on this.

Suggestions I've read include planning for your favourite foods so you don't go overboard, filling up on some 'healthy' foods (lots of veg, fruit, grains) so when you do want the sweet stuff you'll only have a little, using affirmations and positive thinking to get back into a body-loving state of mind, and getting involved (alone or with a group or counselor) in dealing with the basis of your guilt.

When the guilts do strike me, my way of dealing is to try to focus on the truth: That no matter what my last choice was, I have plenty of others to make, that I can deal with the reality of my health situation (whatever it is at the time) and work on making changes if i need to, and that ultimately, I'm human, and I will enjoy a piece of cake when I want, damnit.




Vegan Chocolate Mousse cake - I refuse to be ashamed of our love.

What about you? Do you experience food guilt? How do you toe the line between healthful, self-nourishing choices, and your favourite inner-child-noursihing foods?

Goal setting for functional (feminist) fitness

In a random search of the interwebs today, I came across this post.

I agree with the Attrice's premise that many fitness activities designed for women focus too much more on the way they look than on their health outcomes. Lots of cardio, weights so light they're almost not worth the gym membership, and lots of focus on so-called "problem" areas (Hate. That. Term.)

It all forms a part of the great societal conspiracy: keep 'em focused on their looks, self-conscious, and lacking confidence, and they won't have time, energy or mental space to take on the world.

But how do we change it? Is it as easy as changing our workouts? Well, yes and no.

Its tempting to suggest that we women start working out "like men" - getting sweaty, liftin heavy, etc. But in reality, that won't solve the problem.

The two biggest problems as I see it are that fitness activities are marketed to women all wrong (problem areas, tight tummies, fat blasting etc), and second, that we women are a bit unimaginative with our goal setting.

The first problem is going to take a lot more work than just one post, so I'll leave off (for now... you're on notice, evil marketeers).

The second problem, however, we can fix, through more appropriate goal setting.

When I help women design their fitness programs, I ask them their goals. What I usually hear is some version of the "lose 5 kilos", "get a flat tummy", "change my bum" or "get less flabby" aim.

These goals are near impossible to meet for many reasons. They aren't generally specific enough, measurable, time limited etc and are likely to take so long to reach (if you do!) that progress will be hard to see, and many of us just don't have the patience and forbearance to keep gong without seeing some result.

Worse than this though, is they all represent a narrow view of fitness and health, and a reveal a woman who is looking at herself as an object, from an other's point of view, rather than from her own, as the inhabitant of that body, one with a lived experience of it.

While it makes sense that many people have a vague reason for being at the gym, or engaged in some other fitness activity, in the first place (lose weight, stay fit etc), we need small, acheivable goals to keep us motivated, help us see progress, and keep us interested.

To keep fitness about function, and begin to change the way women see their bodies through fitness, I encourage women to set goals that are about their physical achievements, not their appearance.

Such goals could include increasing the weight you lift, decreasing your time to run a set distance, working your way up to doing 20 push ups, learning a new physical skill (dance, martial arts, rock climbing), or mastering a tough yoga move.

If you want to feel better about your body, and yourself, and get out from the grasp of those pesky evil marketeers, I challenge you to give up the measuring, and set yourself a physical challenge.


Well.. get to it! And let me know, what are your physical goals?

Next week's goal: remember pants.

P.S. a quick reminder on goal setting. All goals should be SMART. You know, Specific, Measurable, Ambitious (yeah, i changed it), Realistic, and Time bound.

So, for example, if you can't currently run for 3 minutes without getting completely winded, a marathon in a month is not exactly a realistic goal.

Better examples would be "Do 15 real push ups in 8 weeks time", or "Run 1 km in under 7 minutes in 6 weeks" etc, and then train consistently to meet it.

Decoration

If you've been living under the proverbial rock and didn't already know that the world is set up for heterosexual men, all you would need to do is run a Google image search for the words "Women, Sport".

The first two hits are of women's rear ends (engaged in playing beach volleyball - a demanding sport, I know, but still the costume? ).

These are followed by a few pics of women participating in sports that don't involve a bikini, an image of another woman in a bikini, but attached to an article about the misrepresentation of women in sports*, and of course then a few more bikini pics, one of these leading to an article that spells out exactly why the most 'hit' images using these search terms involve t&a: women's sport is only "right" when the women involved are pretty and wearing as little as possible

Reminds of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, complimenting the captain of the Australian Netball team, by calling her an "ornament" to the game.

Argh.

I know, I know, not exactly news. It just gets me so mad. Especially since I came across such results while trying to find woman-positive images to decorate this place with.

I found very few, because apparently the women who populate the internet are all white, enjoy baring their tummies to an audience, and wear lippie to the gym. I probably wouldn't be given a visa to internetland- I sweat at the gym, get red faced, and don't usually wear spangled bikinis to go running.

So, now I have changed tack, and will be leaving the background as is for now.

If you have have a woman positive sports pic you want to share, send it in!

Made by Women - feminist values and clothing manufacture

Working in the fitness industry, I wear 'work out' clothes most of the time. And I must say, its pretty awesome to be able to spend your working day in comfy fabrics like polar fleece and cotton lycra blend, and go to work in your trackies. I never got to do that when I worked in an office!

However I have found a challenge for my feminist values, when it comes to purchasing my work gear. Turn over the collar of any given synthetic, wicking fabriced, stretchy, built in bra shelf, workout top, and you'll find three familiar words, "Made In China".

As global corporatisation increases, manufacturing of clothing and other items is increasingly moved away from rich countries, such as my home Australia, but also America, the UK and the richer parts of Europe. Where does this manufacturing go? Factories find themselves in Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam, Korea, and of course that manufacturing monolith, China.

So why is this a problem? And why does it pose a problem for me as a feminist? Well, lets face it, it isn't like global megacompanies like Nike and Addidas move there factories into South East Asia because they prefer the weather. They move their manufacturing to places like China and other parts of Asia and Europe because of the cheap labour, employer friendly industrial relation laws, and lack of restriction is regards to occupational health and safety, minimum wages, and in some cases child labour.

In my former life I was a trade union official. I understand first hand how important strong industrial relations laws can be for the protection of working people, and how easily employers (even nice ones) can slip into ill treatment of their workers, where profits could be maximised.

It isn't just an issue of paying people small wages in places that, as many travellers know, dinner is cheap. Its also about safety, dignity, a living wage, access to family and other support networks, employee empowerment, and other human rights.

It is well documented that conditions in some overseas factories can include the use of children as labour, very long hours of work, working in cramped, hot and unsanitary conditions, women being dissallowed to go the toilet when they need to, very low wages, and appalling safety procedures.

APHEDA, a charity in Australia which works on development and industrial issues overseas, tells horrendous stories of the terrible circumstances many such garment workers find themselves in. One such real life story was that of a fire in a garment factory. Workers from the factory tell how they struggled o get to the insufficient number of doors, only to find them locked, by an employer who feared they would steal his sewing machines. One staff member goes on to tell how she went to the second story window with others, and jumped out in order to save her life. She was spared because her fall was broken by the bodies of her workmates, many of whom died.

Clearly this is one extreme example, however generally poor and unsafe conditions, lack of industrial rights, and poor wages are all too common.

As a feminist I can't wear the fact that my choices could mean that another woman on the other side of world has to work 18 hours for little pay, to support the children she rarely sees, and faces the daily possibility of injury for which she will never be compensated. I simply can't let my working gear be subsidised with another woman's life.

Most compainies will tell you that they have moved their product manufacturing to China (or wherever else) because it is either too expensive to make cloths near where you live, or because there isn't the infrastructure (read, its too expensive to make them here). They claim they need to utilise cheap labour in order to offer you, the consumer, a cheaper product.

Now I don't know about you, but I struggle to afford the prices of many clothing companies, and certainly don't think that a 'cheap' product is worth the social price.

So that's all well and good, but what do we do? And here is where my former life comes in handy.... every union activist has a list of "What can we do?"!

• Educate yourself - check out an of the links at the end of this post for more information about what's going on in manufacturing around the world.

• Ask manufacturer's about their workers' conditions. I have also done this and will post some replies... feel free to post any replies you get in the comments section, or send them to me, and I will post them on your behalf. Most brands have a customer service phone number or email address, found either on the product, in store, or online.
  

• Buy second hand - its cheaper anyway

• Buy fair wear clothing - clothing that is accredited fairwear, nosweat, or union made

• Join, donate too, or volunteer with an organisation involved in trying to fix this problem. APHEDA is a good choice in Australia, and there are many others around the world.

• Talk to your friends about the issues
  

Links
http://www.apheda.org.au/
http://www.laborstart.org/
http://www.itglwf.org/
http://www.itglwf.org/Focuspage.aspx?issue=4&langue=2
http://www.nosweatstuff.com.au/

www.fta.org.au

www.fairtrade.net

www.fairtrade.asn.au

www.sweatshopwatch.org
http://www.awatw.org.au/