After Atalanta

Here's a bold move in this era of big-time sports: Spelman College is eliminating its intercollegiate athletics program at the end of the year. The all-female HBCU, lead by President Beverly Daniel Tatum, will take the $1 million annual budget for athletics and use to establish fitness programs to be available to the entire 2,000-women student body. Spelman will keep its PE requirement but will expand opportunities for activities  like yoga and aerobics. The emphasis, according to Tatum, will be placed on life-long health: “We want them to live long and healthy lives so they can get the return on that investment they’ve made in higher education…. We really see this as a life-saving activity that we are engaging in.” The emphasis on mind and body is refreshing especially in light of the population. Black women are at greater risk for heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, and various cancers than their white peers--even when accounting for economic status and education. ...

Or maybe it's the new red--depends on what the usual color of boxing gloves is. I feel as if I have devoted a lot of blog space to the pinkification of women's sports and so I am not seeking out the pink stories, but when things come my way--in 3s--it's hard to ignore. So the latest is something called Pink Gloves Boxing. And it was featured on NPR's Morning Edition today . NPR! Guess it's time to write a letter. Pink Gloves Boxing is a fitness enterprise started by two former football players who started to train women in boxing. They have developed a whole package that they now sell to gyms. And the package includes not just information on training routines but the gear which includes: dog tags, t-shirts, and pink gloves--of course. The thing is, this program doesn't sound to me like it's any different than programs that already exist in gyms. My gym has a boxing class and many gyms have cardio boxing/kickboxing. After all, as the story states "There...

What had been passive (aggressive) resistance to women in Saudi Arabia working out has become a little more active. A c ampaign , currently in the form of posters, has appeared in the capital of Riyadh that is discouraging of women working out in sports clubs. Since the rash of closing of clubs because of lack of licenses, there has been movement toward women-run clubs and a concerted effort on the part of some Saudi women to retain their opportunities for physical activity. But this campaign seems to be aimed at stopping such activism. A poster with a picture of a soccer ball with an X through it is featured on a large poster found in an area of the city where women and men can be found walking for exercise. The slogan reads: No to women's clubs. The person or persons behind the posters remains anonymous.

It is soooo obvious which women in the gym are brides-to-be. They are the ones logging many miles on the treadmill, counting hundreds of crunches on physio balls, and lifting teeny tiny weights in an effort to tone (but not build--god forbid--bulk) shoulders (for those going strapless), upper back (for those going backless), and pecs (for those going for the plunging necklines). And all the while sporting those very large diamonds that are so popular these days. And while some of these women are doing it on their own many get help in various forms such as trainers, or the many , many websites out there dedicated to getting women to their desired shape for one day. And now, according to today's Boston Globe , gyms are offering special packages for brides-to-be. Total Performance Sports in eastern Massachusetts has a Bridal Survival Fit Camp. The gym may call it "fit camp" but the article (including the photo caption which reads: "future brides and members of wedding...

So that means it's a good time to get some exercise--outside. The NYT ran an article last week about cold weather exercise. It's not bad for you at all--assuming you have the right gear--they don't talk about that as much as they should, I thought. Because, in fact, fewer injuries occur during cold weather exercise than warm weather endeavors. Taking the article to heart I headed out yesterday for some cross-country skiing. Okay, I was going to go before I even came across the article, but I felt a lot more confident knowing I was less likely to get injured. And it actually didn't feel that cold at all. Piece of advice though: if you go out, go back to the lodge to rest and go back out again, change your sports bra and shirt. 'Cause cold sweat makes you brrrr chilly those first 20 minutes or so until you have started re-sweating enough to compensate. I am also going to go beyond the article's recommendations and suggest some winter exercise at night. I went sno...

Guess who was cited at the Ninth Carnival of Radical Feminists hosted at unconventional beauty ? Yep, it's me. Blogger ladoctorita/lily liked my post, Viva Las Vegas!, about gender in the gym and included it in the carnival. I like to think it had something to do with my snarky writing that day which included the line that she pulled as a header "But hell hasn't frozen over yet, so I'll revert to my cynical explanation." Ladoctorita offers some gym anecdotes of her own--well actually those of her friends--and recounts the story of a man who goes to the gym, for hours, just to ogle. He never works out. He has been kicked out of one gym thus far for his staring and hitting on women but persists nonetheless. This situation seems more egregious and potentially dangerous than the one in my gym but since I have been irked by one particular guy twice already this week, I am going to take this opportunity to complain. "The Admiral" (nicknamed by RP) has been the...

Once upon a time I was a journalism major; and during this time I learned about the importance of the follow-up story. The "what ever happened to (pick issue or person or event)?" story that was especially good to trot out in the middle of summer when there was nothing going on, as I learned, once upon a time, when I was a reporter in a small town. Following up, as I hope to demonstrate here, is a transferable skill. So here goes. 1. Following up on my post about holiday gifts in the form of books, is the observation, made by my partner in the throes of last-minute Christmas shopping, that about 99.9% of the eff'in books in the sports section at Barnes and Noble are about men. I was told "that if aliens landed on earth and went to Barnes and Nobles they would have no idea that women played sports." I personally think that if aliens landed, we might have bigger problems, but point taken. Because even if the books seem gender neutral, they are not. Case in point, ...

'Tis the season for unabashed (well there is some bashedness--at least on my part) consumerism. Anyway, I thought it would be as good a time as any--if not better--to address some articles I have come across in the last few months about women's fitness fashion. This one [oops--I lost the link--sorry; this whole holiday thing has me a little discombobulated] out of Colorado has a "see how far we've come" theme that includes a timeline detailing what female athletes wore over a century ago to do things such as swim and play tennis. The author credits the passage of Title IX with the changes in women's fitness clothes though it should be noted that the jogging craze of the 70s had little to do with Title IX but apparently everything to do with the creation of the sports bra in 1977 when two women sewed together two jock straps for support during their runs. [A little bit it blows my mind that there was no such thing as a sports bra when I was born given that over...

1. Last time I wrote about international events, I mentioned the report out of the UK about the decrease in the activity level of women that is causing some concern among health experts and proponents of women's sports and physical activity. This story offers a different angle on the report that other news outlets do not seem to be addressing: the physical activity level of Muslim women. Some of the reason for the disproportionate level of activity is attributed to the different constraints on some Muslim women. Those who wear the hijab and/or adhere to the rules of sex segregation have an especially difficult time engaging in sport and other physical activities once they leave school. But the issues are being addressed--including in Great Britain where more and more opportunities are being especially created for Muslim women as well as opportunities that would not preclude Muslim women's participation. These involve sex-segregated spaces in locations with Muslim large populati...

Earlier in the week The Boston Globe had a feature on a local boxer , Wendy Sprowl, who was the first woman from Massachusetts to win an international boxing title. [The feature was in the Living Arts section which made me ask the somewhat rhetorical question: if Sprowl was a man would this story be on the Sports page?] Sprowl is not fighting professionally anymore though she did indicate that she would return to the ring if the price was right. This speaks to an interesting aspect of her story. She started boxing after she got hurt on the job working construction and had near instant success from the moment of her first fight. She turned professional and one year later won a championship belt to much fanfare--but no money. So now she does odds jobs, landscaping, trains others, and has a DVD out called "Sweatin Bullets" which is also a class she runs out of a Cohasset gym. The "Sweatin' Bullets" program seems to be pretty successful and I was quite impressed th...

The need for a fitter population is a concern frequently covered by the media. Yesterday I mentioned the WSFF report on the state of women's fitness in Great Britain. There was no mention, though, in the coverage I saw of the report, about disparities in fitness levels across racial and class lines. In the United States that concern is very real and many are trying to address it. When I was in graduate school in Boston I worked on a project funded, in part, through the Women's Sports Foundation where organizations that offered programs aimed at increasing the participation of girls in sports and physical activity--especially girls of color and those from working and lower class backgrounds--received grants to continue (or begin in some cases) their work. In return, some eager researchers came in and observed the process and collected data. Boston was a target city because statistics at the time showed boys in the city had twice as many participation opportunities as girls. Yest...

1. A new study in Britain by the Women's Sports and Fitness Foundation has found that more women need to get active--now! In the US we like to talk about "progress" and the numbers of women participating in sports and other physical activities; especially using 1972 (the passage of Title IX) as a reference point (even though women did engage in sport before then--sometimes we forget that). But there is no Title IX in Britain and now it seems that more and more women are not engaged in any physical activity. The study estimates that if the current trend on non-activity continues, there will be 1.25 million fewer women engaging in the recommended amount of exercise just one decade from now. One of the obstacles: image. Apparently being sporty is not sexy and though women want to be thin, they do not want to be athletic-looking. Having an athletic body (well a cetain type of athletic body) is not as much a problem in the US and certainly athletic is not equivalent to un-sexi...

This is a very interesting and well-done article about the difficulties women in Israel face trying to find time and space to work out in a culture which does not support women's physical development--especially when it gets in the way of their duties to family and community. We can see some similarities in the obstacles American women face when they want to be active: carving out time during the day between household, community, and occupational duties. But there are sooe obvious differences as well: many American gyms have daycare; a fit female body is a status symbol in our culture and thus encouraged for certain women; and we often don't have the same community obligations--to entertain when a neighbor pops in, for example. [So few neighbors are popping in on one another these days.] An additional problem with the concept of Israeli women working out is the need to do so in sex segregated facilities. The article actually focuses on the one facility, The Eden Club, in a ...

I have been very American-centric lately so I thought I would round up some news from across the globe Check out Women Who Serve for coverage of the Pan-American Games where Milagros Sequera from Venezuela and ranked 50 on the WTA tour won the gold. Also regarding the Pan-American Games, I was watching ESPN2 on Sunday waiting for some tennis when I caught a bit of the women's beach volleyball final between Cuba and Brazil. And it was in Spanish. I know ESPN has a Spanish-language channel but I was surprised to see them import that coverage to ESPN2. I don't speak Spanish but it was pretty easy to get the gist of what they were saying; "Fantastico!!" is not that hard to translate. So kudos to ESPN for doing a Spanish-language broadcast on a "regular" (the apostrophes are there to indicate the problematics with associating regular and normal with English-speaking) channel. In Dubai, the Al Ahli sports club that sponsors football (aka soccer) has formed a commi...