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Sparkle (1)
So, I've been thinking the last few days about athleticism and privilege.
When I say that I believe that everyone has a right to athleticism, I mean it. But am I saying it from my nice, secure position as someone who doesn't have to choose between feeding her children or paying her gym membership?
After some soul searching, the answer is . . . maybe.
I haven't always been privileged financially. There were many years when the $40 I spend each month on a gym membership was a week's groceries for me and two babies. For at least five years, I don't think there was a single month when all of my utilities were turned on at the same time.
It didn't even cross my mind to be an athlete in those years.
So, as I'm thinking about that, and I'm thinking--what the hell am I doing, telling people that anyone can be athletic, when really there are lots of people who don't have the energy left over to think about triathlons or roller derby or even taking a walk after spending half the night trying to juggle their pennies so they can have heat and water at the same time?
But it still didn't sit right with me, the idea that athleticism is only for the privileged. I dug deeper, trying to wrap my mind around my ideas. And then the reason why I wasn't settled with it hit me like a ton of bricks.
I could have been an athlete when I was a dirt poor single mother.
Here's a little tidbit about me you may not know. For many years, I was a devotee of Susan Powter.
Yes, I really was.
She and I share the awesome experience of having our husbands and the fathers of our children leave big fat us for skinny women. Want to know what's not fun? Having your ex-husband point out whenever he can fit it in to conversation that his girlfriend weighs 112 pounds soaking wet.
As if there were any world where I would want to hear about his girlfriend soaking wet.
Susan and I were about the same weight (when she was still fat.) We were both trying to raise children alone with broken hearts. And we both wanted to be thinner than our ex-husband's skinny girlfriends.
There was at least a decade when I did not eat one single bite of food that I didn't do the fat formula on.
And as poor as I was--and I was poor--I scraped and saved and went without so that I could buy Susan's kit that came with fat calipers, an exercise band, a couple of videos and some printed material. I honestly believed, with every fiber of my very young and naive soul, that if I could just fit into a size 2 black bikini like Susan did, my sad and miserable life would turn into a fairy tale.
I wore out those videos and blocked grocery store aisles as I did math in my head, but I never did get skinny. I haven't weighed 112 pounds since about the fourth grade. I did cook most of my way through Susan's cookbooks, I read all of her books (including the one about sobriety, even though I've never been a drinker.)
Over time the grief and misery over my imploded marriage eased. I fell in love again. I stopped wanting to be 112 pounds soaking wet.
So, here's the thing. I could have chosen to focus my time and energy and whatever little money I had on being an athlete. It literally never occurred to me. I had never heard of intuitive eating or that it was possible for fat and miserable not to be BFFs. This was the 90s when everything was fat free. I wanted to be fat free, too--just like everyone I knew.
But what if someone had said, "hey, Shaunta, if you want to be an athlete, you can be. And here's how to do it."
Susan talked in one of her books about walking half a block at a time, carrying one or the other of her babies. She did it to get skinnier than her ex-husband's girlfriend.
What if she'd done it to get stronger? What
