Athleta Chi has a great blog post this week about a woman who wants to be a running coach for beginning runners, but worries that people don’t want to learn from a woman who looks like her. This is what she looks like:
Running Badass Extraordinaire, Amy
In the last year, she has completed two 25k races, a trail marathon in Mongolia, an 88k triathlon, a road marathon, an unofficial 50k, and a 60k ultramarathon in New Zealand. I would kill to train with this woman.
Instead of thinking about my body aspirationally (“I want to look like that”), I try to think about exercise aspirationally (“I want to be able to do that”), though I’m not always successful. One of my favorite yoga instructors doesn’t have perfectly chiseled abs. She’s got thunder thighs, like me, and broad shoulders. Despite not fitting the yoga-girl aesthetic, she can absolutely dominate the arm balances, some serious cirque du soleil shit. I watch her, and I think, I guess I don’t have to 115lb to balance on my elbows.
There are a lot of ways to be thin, healthy and unhealthy. As Beth Ditto points out, “To be thin and to stay really thin, some people literally do coke all the time. Some people smoke cigarettes instead of eating. That’s crazy. But that’s ‘okay’ because you look healthier.”
There are lots of ways to be overweight, too, healthy ways and unhealthy ways. I’m not saying there’s not a correlation between being fat and heart disease/diabetes etc. Of course there is. I’m just saying that the assumption that a Size 2 is more fit than a Size 14 strictly based on body type is not exactly a safe bet. Put them both at the bottom of four flights of stairs, or at the starting line of a 5K, or on a stationery bike, and dress size is not a great predictor of the “winner.”
There’s nothing objectively wrong with wanting to be thin. But there is something wrong with conflating fitness and thinness. They can be linked, but not inextricably, and the relationship is more complex than we give our bodies credit for.
Related Post: Today’s post was about why I read Athleta’s blog. This one is about why I buy their products.
Related Post: This yoga studio may have good intentions, but the methodology is seriously flawed.
