Girl Power

Who are we kidding? Look at that - look how she moves - it's like jello on springs – they must have some sort of a built-in motor. I tell you it's a whole different sex.

Jack Lemmon, "Some Like It Hot"

42 year old Dara Torres doesn't move like jello on springs, and will be kicking your ass later for thinking so.

Unlike most of your inert, corpulent husbands and boyfriends, sitting on the couch thinking about whether to get a third roast beef sandwich and licking cheetoes residue from their fingers, I’ve been exercising relatively non-stop since 1978 (save for times trying to rehab from injuries or my heart surgery). When I first started, and particularly when I went to Texas and started working out at Gregory Gym, almost the only people I saw in the gym lifting weights were men. There’d be about one woman for every 20 men in the weight room. Also, running on campus or out on the trail (or in Kingwood on the ironically-named asphalt “greenbelt”), most of the runners were men, and while you’d see some women walking, it was rare to see women running. Women took aerobics classes. I distinctly remember talking to women at the time about this, and reading about it too. The prevailing attitude was “I don’t want to get big and muscular.”

Nothing gets by me, of course, and lately I’ve begun to notice feeling outmanned while working out. That’s not a comment about my still incredibly high above normal testosterone levels (I mean really, the tests don’t have a measurement as high as my levels). Rather, I’ve noticed that most people at the gym are now women. Most people out running, and particularly most of the people really out training hard, are women. More and more, women have begun to outnumber men at triathlons, fun runs around town, training groups, and other recreational athletic competitions and endeavors like fitness competitions. Westlake housewives everywhere are killing themselves with pilates, yoga, weights, running, tennis, macrobiotic/South Beach diets, botox and other cosmetic enhancements, while their Frank the Tank husbands log a lot of couch time.

What up?

This obviously relates to what is considered “attractive.”

In between glances at your watch and discreetly looking around to see if there’s anything more interesting going on around you (without letting your wife or girlfriend see), have you ever noticed at the museum all those Renaissance paintings of nudes? Let me put it a little more directly - all the naked fat chick pictures? Yeah. Believe it or not, back in the day, that’s what counted as hot. Those women were the Marissa Millers and Petra Nemcovas of their day. Probably explains why the bikini was so long in coming.

That kind of body type really doesn’t turn the heads so much anymore (except maybe at the trailer park or on Springer), but even as late as the 1950s and 60s, the “ideal” woman had a somewhat veal-like soft body quality. Think of the sex symbols from then: Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Brigitte Bardot, Grace Kelly, Mamie Van Doren…those girls weren’t logging a lot of gym time. The look was soft: soft skin, soft muscles, slender, with large breasts (where possible). Marilyn Monroe, sexiest woman in the world, and all that, was a size 12.

Less than 40 years later (really a short timespan), with eating disorders, exercise, and speed all the rage, today’s “ideal” female body type is starkly different: athletic, toned, hard, lean, and with large breasts. Conformity to meet this ideal is brutal. Let a female celebrity gain, say, 20 pounds and go from a size 0 to size 6, and the collective media lowers the boom. With Dara Torres and Elle MacPherson walking around over 40 and all rocked up, no wonder Debbie Clemens felt the need to hit the HGH. Which Roger had no idea was going on.

I think tastes changed, like they always do, when TV and movies and other media began featuring stronger-looking women. This happened gradually, but in stages. Keep in mind that during all this progression, the adults of today (particularly in the key advertising demographics, and particularly men) were growing up watching, admiring, and feeling the impact these women were making on culture.

This all started on television. First and foremost, and always, was Emma Peel (Diana Rigg). She paved the way for Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon), Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter), Police Woman (Angie Dickinson), and eventually Charlie’s Angels. These were attractive women, but turn your back on them and they’d kick your ass. Emma knew (and used) karate, and could fight with knives. She had a male partner, but for the first time, the woman sometimes was saving the man from danger. She was just as smart as the men, and generally outwitted them. But she was also attractive and very sexy. In their own way, all these later incarnations were strong and tough, but feminine.

Around the same time, women athletics began to take off. The first really famous of this bunch was Wilma Rudolph, who won three gold medals in the 1960 Rome Olympics despite having a sprained ankle. Then in 1968 came Peggy Fleming, another attractive woman athlete, with grace and beauty, but also an athleticism not generally associated with female beauty. Then in the early 1970s, girl next door Chris Evert began dominating women’s tennis, routinely besting the likes of Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova. Again, these women were attractive and athletic, physically accomplished and yet desirable as well.

Pushing on to the 1980s, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition made a monumental change in popular thinking about women’s body types. Unlike other forms of cheese from that era, the SI swimsuit models weren’t soft, doughy, compliant looking playthings, but were fit, lean, athletic, and looked like they could compete in the swimsuits they were modeling. These weren’t anorexics or Twiggys—these women were muscular and toned. And big as well.

Finally, thank the hair bands. Yes, the 1980s heavy metal videos were ridiculous. Larry Flynt thinks maybe they went a little far in objectifying women. But once you look past all that, and admittedly it’s a bit difficult to do so, you notice the women being objectified weren’t the more customary waifish stick figures that had been in magazines. Kate Moss could never have been in a Whitesnake video. These women looked like if you crossed them, they’d cut you. They, too, were big, athletic (well, the ones who weren’t smoking anyway), and strong. (BTW, 25 years later, the Hot for Teacher video is still pretty robust. Man, I sure miss Diamond Dave.).

That last bit aside, during all this time, society was changing as well. Women gained economic options—they could go to work as something other than a teacher or secretary. They could keep working after getting married or even after having kids. They could even be independent, like Mary Tyler Moore. As they became used to more freedom and to options long deprived, it was only natural they’d want to play the same games the boys did. Title IX ushered in that freedom to play sports, to train, and to excel at athletics that until then was seen as inconsistent with the unyielding soft, “ladylike” image women were held to. These girls grew up playing sports and being in shape. Unlike their male counterparts, who eventually became sloven prisoners to video games and cheap beer, women became more interested in athletics and training as an expression of that new strength. Also, I think it offered an opportunity for the kind of interaction and teamwork with other women, with training classes and groups, workout partners, and team or partner sports, which more characterize women’s relationships than men’s.

As media began to feature these kinds of women prominently, it was only natural that the masses would follow. Little boys who became big boys during this era grew up with these kinds of women dominating the cultural landscape. Little girls who grew up to become big girls began to look at them as having the type of look that society at least allegedly aspired to.

Now, women can and do play all the boys’ games. While men and the front porch most of them have hanging off their mid-section sit on the couch, hang out at sports bars, or hole up deer blinds on weekends. Now that’s progress!

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24 ways that women are similar to fish. This is from the “Barney’s Blog” section of the “How I Met Your Mother” page on the CBS web site:

1. Both attracted to shiny objects
2. More fun to catch while drinking
3. Neither travel well
4. There’s others in the sea and/or bar
5. Three words: catch and release
6. Both travel in protective groups
7. Small bladders
8. The deeper you go, the scarier they get
9. Their weight largely determines their value
10. [EDITED: My lawyer has requested that I remove this one from the blog… hint: crabs!]
11. They get all ornery if you try to grab their tail
12. Bears will eat either of them
13. Sometimes I likes ‘em wild, sometimes I likes ‘em farm-raised
14. You must document great catches or no one will believe you — video preferred
15. Easier to reel in if you let them wear themselves out first
16. Seen the movie Splash? Case closed
17. Cold blooded. Looking your way, Stacy.
18. Neither can operate a vehicle
19. They both eat things
20. The harder they shake their tail, the farther they’ll go in life
21. Scales are important to each of them
22. They never have to buy drinks
23. Umm… Eggs? Duh
24. Can hook either with a great line

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Like Pam in Urban Cowboy, these girls know exactly how to get themselves a cowboy. Pay close attention ladies: