As was pointed out to me by a helpful volunteer at a previous race, I can still get a race shirt, I just need to get a men's one. In fact, I don't even have to get the largest men's size. Not only are men's shirts cut larger than women's in the same sizes (including in the chest, even though most dudes don't have boobs) every race I've run goes up into larger labeled sizes for men's shirts than for women.
This isn't a huge deal in and of itself, especially since most race shirts aren't that great anyway, but I do think it subtly illustrates a weird idea our culture has about bodies. Not only do we think that "athletic" and "fit" are ways to describe a body purely on the basis of appearance, we accept that those adjectives can apply to large male bodies but really struggle to acknowledge that they can likewise apply to large women.
Who needs your race shirt, I have one with fucking OUTER SPACE on it. No idea why that Santa has all those rubber chickens, though.
When I ran my last race, I passed a lot of slender people who had to stop and walk. I was also passed by a few women larger and faster than I was (many more were in faster pace groups to begin with, or running longer races). I didn't notice for competitive reasons. You play some dominoes or Tetris or something with me, and I will throw the fuck down (trust). I will literally, LITERALLY go to the ground with someone over the last spoon in a game of Spoons. But when it comes to most physical pursuits, I fall more into the "Let's all just do our best and have fun" school of thought. Running is also a very specific athletic endeavor, and maybe many of the people I passed are super rad at swimming or yoga or weightlifting or something and just aren't really runners. Or maybe they had injuries. Who knows, I'm just glad they were there and doing the race, it was a cool day.
No, the reason I took any notice is that I was too big for the race to even accommodate someone of my size and gender with gear, but it was not me but rather the many people I passed who would be described as having a "fit" or "athletic" body. I can be "curvy" or "voluptuous," both of which are true and awesome, but popular belief is that "fit" and "athletic" are about a certain appearance and most especially a certain size, especially for women. Despite the very meaning of the words, most of us think of them as being about how a body looks, not what it can do or how it is cared for. And we have some very interesting ideas about what bodies that look a certain way can or cannot do.
When I was out one night running with a friend in my neighborhood, a student who rents a room in a house on the corner was standing outside and asked what I was doing. I told her we were training for a race and she replied, "Oh, really?!? Wow, well...good for you!" in the most condescending tone possible. And then took another drag on her cigarette. I think of that moment now when I see someone concern trolling a larger person about their health or life expectancy (of course, overweight and mildly obese people don't have lower life expectancies, and the underweight are actually in more fatal danger than the almost equally rare extremely obese, but why split hairs about, like, facts and stuff?). I learned that this incident doesn't even begin to measure up to what many women deal with when I perused a running thread in a community for plus size women and read story after story about women who had actually had verbal abuse hurled at them in their communities for the crime of publicly exercising while fat.
No, the reason I took any notice is that I was too big for the race to even accommodate someone of my size and gender with gear, but it was not me but rather the many people I passed who would be described as having a "fit" or "athletic" body. I can be "curvy" or "voluptuous," both of which are true and awesome, but popular belief is that "fit" and "athletic" are about a certain appearance and most especially a certain size, especially for women. Despite the very meaning of the words, most of us think of them as being about how a body looks, not what it can do or how it is cared for. And we have some very interesting ideas about what bodies that look a certain way can or cannot do.
When I was out one night running with a friend in my neighborhood, a student who rents a room in a house on the corner was standing outside and asked what I was doing. I told her we were training for a race and she replied, "Oh, really?!? Wow, well...good for you!" in the most condescending tone possible. And then took another drag on her cigarette. I think of that moment now when I see someone concern trolling a larger person about their health or life expectancy (of course, overweight and mildly obese people don't have lower life expectancies, and the underweight are actually in more fatal danger than the almost equally rare extremely obese, but why split hairs about, like, facts and stuff?). I learned that this incident doesn't even begin to measure up to what many women deal with when I perused a running thread in a community for plus size women and read story after story about women who had actually had verbal abuse hurled at them in their communities for the crime of publicly exercising while fat.
Every time someone claims women can't be in combat because they'd have to haul heavy backpacks long distances, I'm like, yeah, cool story, bro.
Yesterday, I hiked for two-and-a-half hours, up and down sand dunes, with a 20 pound baby strapped to my front and a 28 pound toddler strapped to my back. I nursed the infant during about half of the hike. Then I came home, had dinner, put the kids down for the night, watered my heirloom kale seedlings, and sat down to order an amazing new pair of running pants from a favorite brand...only to see that, unlike their yoga pants, they don't carry running pants in my size. Of course. So instead I got caught up the latest Downton Abbey (it's gotten horrifically soapy, but I still love it, Team Edith 4 life).
Then I went to bed. Tonight, I run.
I am not fast, and I will probably never do a marathon (ladies, if you ever need free birth control, ask me about what the chemical changes of pregnancy do to your feet). But I run. I run, and I hike, and I love vegetables and camping and yoga and dancing my figurative ass off. I am a fat, healthy, athletic woman, and despite what race organizers and purveyors of ladies' activewear seem to think, I am really not a goddamn unicorn.
I am not fast, and I will probably never do a marathon (ladies, if you ever need free birth control, ask me about what the chemical changes of pregnancy do to your feet). But I run. I run, and I hike, and I love vegetables and camping and yoga and dancing my figurative ass off. I am a fat, healthy, athletic woman, and despite what race organizers and purveyors of ladies' activewear seem to think, I am really not a goddamn unicorn.
