resisting the fem-bot ideology

There's a box elder bug lounging on the top of my laptop screen. It's like he thinks he's a cat and my laptop has become a cat's equivalent to a couch back in front of a sunny window. My bug friend reminds me of climbing. A lot of things remind me of climbing. This blog, tabbed in my favorites bar reminds of climbing when I'm sitting at my desk all day.

Climbing, I think, is always associated with "pushing one's limits" or "reaching for one's goals." Naturally, the sport is about perseverance, endurance, and strength. A question now. Is this climbing ideology gender specific? Or rather, does my variety of calm, cool, and collected feminism get morphed into a disgustingly distorted fem-bot ideology in my pursuit of the summit? I don't want to get to the top of this mountain only to find my safety harness isn't clipped in. Because that's not bravery in the face of overwhelming opposition. That's stupidity. I want to retain my calm, cool, and collected feminism and it seems that climbing will allow me to leverage just enough "gutsy" without too much "grotesquery."

Kathrine Schweitzer addresses this concept of the grotesque female athlete in her book, Marathon Woman. My mom gave me this book for Christmas and it has become the single most influential piece of writing in my development as a woman and an athlete. Kathrine explains that during the early days of press coverage of women's running, it was a very real fear of hers that the general public would be shocked and horrified by the pictures taken of women during and after long distances races because of the exhaustion written on these women's faces. This look of exhaustion can likely be found on any man's face too, but then men were expected to be able to endure physical challenges - like marathons. Kathrine was afraid of a public outcry deeming running too difficult for the weaker sex. Among these imagined voices there would be just as many women as men, Schweitzer recalls.

And finally in 1984, the women's marathon becomes an official Olympic event. The first champion, Joan Benoit, wins gold in 2:24:52. That same year, in the men's Olympic marathon, 29 male athletes do not finish. In the women's event, only six do not finish. Paula Radcliffe, Olympic athlete, world record holder, mother, and personal hero of mine, ran a breathtaking (literally) 2:23:09 at the New York Marathon in November of 2007 ten months after giving birth. Is Paula gutsy or grotesque? Or does fame make a person an exception to the "grotesque clause"?

The bug has climbed down to the middle of the screen now. He - or she - doesn't need a harness because nature designed her to climb. So a climbing she will go.