Posted on: Tuesday, October 26, 2004

ABOUT WOMEN
Feminine, athletic a tricky mix

By Christie Wilson
Advertiser Staff Writer

For the past couple of months, since school started, my 16-year-old daughter and I have been engaged in a running semi-argument. I hate to nag, but I cannot get the girl to work out regularly.

During the summer, she gets plenty of exercise paddling and running around on the beach. But summer's over and training for the high school paddling season doesn't start until December, and she's under the delusion that walking between classes is all the exertion she needs.

Besides, she snidely points out, she's carrying an eight-period load, including an SAT prep class that starts at 6:55 a.m. — way more work than you ever did in high school, Mom — and she needs all the rest she can get.

I appreciate that, but if she would just build into her schedule a half-hour at the Y a few times a week — instead of all that precious time wiled away on the computer instant-messaging her friends — she'd have more energy for her other activities.

I want her to develop healthful habits so when she goes to college and beyond, she won't have to experience the same heartbreak I've struggled with of being a plus-size woman in a petite world.

But she's afraid her male peers might see her at the gym. Sweating.

"Huh?" I said, perplexed. "That's a good thing. It's means you're an active, strong young woman who cares about staying fit."

She looked at me like I had just landed from Mars. "Boys don't want a girl like that," she said dismissively. "They want someone who's weak, with skinny arms and legs."

Could this be true in 2004?

I was an athlete for most of my life, volleyball and ocean sports being my primary activities. When I was in high school, volleyball was the only team sport for girls. Otherwise there was swimming, track, tennis and bowling — acceptable feminine pursuits. Because my sporting options were limited, I tried track and field one year. Since I've never been accused of being "fleet-footed," the coach decided the shotput was a better fit.

It was mortifying. I hung out mostly with the sprinters. At track meets, I stayed as far away from the ring as I could between tosses. I was pretty sure boys didn't like girls who threw a shotput, and in the pre-Title IX early 1970s, I was probably right.

And there was the lesbian thing. Most hard-core jockettes were lesbians, right?

Back then, they may have been a little bit right on that point. Although Hawai'i has always been ahead of the game when it comes to appreciating female athletic prowess, we'll never know how many talented girls were discouraged from playing sports because it wasn't ladylike and because guys don't like girls with muscles.

I figured that 30 years later things would have changed.

To a degree, it has — if you noticed all the attention heaped on women during the Olympic Games, especially on those bikini-clad beach volleyballers.

Then again, maybe it hasn't.

Reach Christie Wilson at cwilson@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 244-4880.