Today is Love Your Body day and I wanted to give my readers permission to do something that may seem possibly counterintuitive, transgressive, or pessimistic.
You don't have to love your body.
You don't.
Sometimes bodies do things that are out of our control. Sometimes they are sick, broken, or cause pain (physical or mental). Sometimes they keep us from doing things we want to do (like bellydance or CrossFit). Some days our physical bodies interfere with our mental states, and some days our mental states interfere with our physical bodies (I know, false dichotomy, Cartesian-style...but it's still useful). Some days our bodies cause some major issues in our lives, and it's ok to be upset by it. Bodies can be expensive with medical bills, adaptive equipment, various products taken internally or externally, various foods that either make us feel better or worse, various physical activities that impact us in different ways on different days.
I'm going to be honest and blunt and profane. Right now, I fucking hate my body. I'm living in a haze of pain and painkillers and breakthrough pain. I'm living in a state of jealousy where I envy their ability to do the things that I want to do, and their ability to not just lose words and trains of thought because of pain spikes. I mourn the loss of my more abled self, even the one that was still in daily pain and nerve problems but was able to still push mentally in scholarly contexts and physically in athletic contexts. I'm embarrassed by the emails I've had to send to professors and peers about my semi-bedridden life, compounded by the fear that my disability is feeding into popular notions of the fat body as a lazy, inherently broken body. I'm constantly wasting energy expecting unwanted advice, comments about how my body is something scary and untouchable, and what happens when the "get better soon" well-wishers find out I might not ever get better (and whether or not to just graciously accept the lie or tell the truth).
My STANDard, photo taken in 2007
On better days, I can get to the point where I have a dysfunctional relationship with my body, full of ambiguity and ambivalence. A day where I can more readily accept the neoliberal notions of body acceptance as an individual process. Those days where I see the beauty in the dissonance, much the same way as the author from Building Radical, Accessible Communities Everywhere states in this Love Letter to My Body. Some days I'm able to revel in what my broken body gives to me despite (and sometimes because of) it's brokenness. My broken body has shown me who in my life is worth keeping around and who isn't worth the few spoons I have in my daily arsenal.
Today is not one of those days...but that's ok. My fracture shifted two days ago, causing the most pain I think I've ever been in, even greater than when I actually broke my vertebra. It makes life really difficult right now, particularly with my doctoral coursework. My pain is not under control, and with the recent change-up in my medical team, there isn't much I can do about it short of going to the emergency room or hiding in my apartment. It is what it is, and it's one of those times where self-love is a load of crap and I'm dependent on the love of others to get me through....but it'll be ok.
See, I don't have to love my body, and neither do you.
Video is from the UK's Channel 4, advertising the London 2012 Paralympics through it's "Meet the Superhumans" ad.
Adapted sport, challenged athletes, disabled sport, Paralympics, Special Olympics. These terms use language that bifurcates sports that are explicitly for people with disabilities. This split creates a power dynamic that impacts various cultural flows (Appadurai, 1990). By separating sport categories by ability or impairment, and more specifically by adding qualifiers like "wheelchair" to basketball, "blind" to football, or "para" to triathlon, a subject versus object divide is created that makes the disabled athlete othered by the alternate designation that demarcates itself as different or separate from the prototypical athlete. This invokes an ideoscape of adaptation that makes the disabled athlete viewed as disingenuous at worst or an inspirational novelty at best.
Athletes that require the least amount of adaptation to their sport ventures are privileged. Since the archetypical Western athlete is seen as one that is white, male, able-bodied, and a good citizen of his nation-state, any deviations of this body lends itself to embodied qualifiers. In women’s tennis, Venus and Serena Williams are many times constructed in terms of their not-whiteness, with whiteness considered the default tennis player (Douglas, 2005). Any time their perceived behavior deviates from the script of the archetypical athlete (particularly when the behavior is thought to threaten the interests of the nation), their otherness is highlighted. This is also evident in the case of many indigenous Australian athletes in the Sydney 2000 Olympics (Gardner, 2003; Elder, Pratt, & Ellis, 2006), as well as with the black United States track and field athletes in the HBO documentary Fists of Freedom (Stem & Roy, 1999). The more the hegemonically atypical body resists the mold of the good citizen-athlete, the more resistance it encounters in its athletic pursuits. Resistance itself sometimes forces ideals and institutions, both sporting and general, to adapt.
While adaptation is a common concept in terms of discussions of disability and impairment, it’s a concept generally used to refer to when an existing environment has been retrofitted to accommodate a specific person or group of impairments. Adaptation as a concept assumes an essentialism that privileges the status quo and enforces neoliberal constructions. Stone (2001), when discussing the shift from a collectivist society to a neoliberal one, refers to this as the “’four selfs’:self-respect, self-confidence, self-strengthening, and self-reliance” (p. 58). For a disabled body to be able to be accommodated in society, the person must be able to request the environment be changed in a manner that complies with the policies, procedures, and practices of that setting. The person must also have a familiarity with the financial and technological ramifications of the request for accommodation, and be prepared for the social implications that follow that may require the person to justify their continued need or desire to exist in that space (an opposing viewpoint on accommodation and environmental adaptation is through a concept called universal design, in which an environment is not retrofitted but is constructed to consciously allow as many types of bodies to function at their peak).
Adaptation in regards to sport and athletics is mostly used to denote sports for people with impairments (although can be used in the context of athletic training to refer to physiological adaptation to effort, muscular capacity, or the like). For example, wheelchair basketball as an adapted form of (standard) basketball, sitting volleyball as an adapted form of (standard) volleyball, or ice sledge hockey as an adaptation of ice (standard) hockey. These sports that have abled analogs are usually the most well-known. This is in part due to a palatability factor, for example popular culture’s fascination with the violence inherent in wheelchair rugby, also known as murderball, and partially due to a familiarity factor, in which the adapted sport resembles an able-bodied analog that the audience has previously watched or participated. The advertisement that the British television station Channel 4 created for the London 2012 Paralympics is a good example of this palatability of adaptation. Which bodies are included? Which sports are highlighted? What’s missing?
Elite athletes that participate on the international scene, specifically Olympic or Paralympic athletes, have media narratives that may attempt to generate interest in a particular team, a particular event, or a particular sport. For example, Oscar Pistorus is a track athlete that competed in both the Paralympics as a division F44 athlete and in the London 2012 Olympics. He was one of a very small number of disabled athletes that claimed a sort of dual citizenship in the elite sport world by participating in both events. Many news pieces that discuss his athletic success place his success in light of the congenital impairment that led to the amputation of both of his lower legs, sometimes in vivid detail. The idea that impairment must be biomedically justified combines with the media narratives that require a tale of struggling and overcoming one’s disability to create a supercrip. Supercrip (and superhuman or superhero, in the case of the aforementioned Paralympics ad) narratives are intertwined for disabled athletes.
While disability may indeed be a valid addition to the narrative of the super-elite athlete much like other narratives of struggle against other life adversity, the focus on the origin of the disability (whether congenital or acquired) makes the idea of disability as always able to be overcame a problematic construct. These narratives create a divide between levels of impairment and also levels of socially constructed disability because of the involvement of technoscapes and finanscapes (Appadurai, 1990). Those with more access to fiscal resources, whether by charity, employment, or other means, are more likely to be able to navigate their chosen environment in a way that meets their needs. This means that Pistorus is more able to be seen as able-bodied through the adaptation of specially designed carbon fiber running prostheses (although it could be argued, in Pistorus’ case, that the technology involved clearly marks his body as super-abled or possibly cyborg).
While the concept of adaptation is generally seen as constructive and beneficial to people with disabilities that participate in adaptive sport, it is critical to keep questioning the impact of adaptation on the construction of the disabled body. The continual focus on adaptive sport may overshadow the ways that the disabled community has contributed to the sporting world, like the history of the Gallaudet University football team’s invention of the huddle, and also overshadow the other ways in which people with disabilities find themselves in sport and physical activity.
Dear readers, what do you think? Does the concept of adaptation impact how sports for people with disabilities are viewed? Would combining the Paralympics and the Olympics change the perception?
References
My first wheeled 5k...I was the only wheeler
Appadurai, A. (1990). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. Theory, Culture, and Society, 7, 295-310.
Bernstein, R. (Producer) & Roy, G. (Director). Fists of freedom: The story of the ’68 summer games [motion picture]. United States: Home Box Office.
Douglas, D.D. (2005). Venus, Serena and the WTA: When and where “race” enters. Sociology of Sport Journal, 22, 256-282.
Elder, C., Pratt, A., & Ellis, c. (2006) Running race: Reconciliation, nationalism, and the Sydney 2000 Games. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 41(2), 127-141.
Gardner, G. (2003). Running for country: Australian print media representations of indigenous athletes in the 27th Olympiad. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 27(3), 233-260.
Stone, E. (2001). Disability, sport, and the body in China. Sociology of Sport Journal, 18, 51-68.
Ableist to say the least, moreso with the taped Braille
I was on Twitter and came across a tweet from Amanda at Fat Body Politics that really got my brain going. The tweet had this photo of an elevator button panel (the photo on the right). This photo has been going around my Facebook feed between my physical activity & public health scholar friends and my body size & dis/ability activist friends, with some varied results.
Many of my public health & physical activity-minded friends talk about how every day physical activity needs to be encouraged, like taking the stairs instead of using the elevator (also called "non exercise activity thermogenesis" or NEAT for short). Sounds pretty benign huh? What this seems to lead to is architecture that places stairs in a very easy to find and access places and the elevator in an inconvenient (many times hidden) place. The other mode of thinking with this style of architecture is to keep the elevator more clear for folks who need it (people with mobility impairment or people hauling carts of equipment), but it can backfire.
So what's wrong? Well, I'll use my personal experience as an example. On days that I use a cane (or when my nerve damage wasn't as severe, on the days that I could manage without a mobility aid), I have to make a bunch of choices when I need to get to a different floor of a building (the same decisions happen with entering a building that has stairs, just sub "elevator" with "ramp").
Can I safely use stairs today? Am I feeling my legs well enough to not trip going up the stairs or fall down the stairs? Will taking stairs that are closer to my destination use more spoons than trying to find the elevator that's tucked away, nowhere near my current or final destination? Will taking the stairs lead to pain that makes me unable to work, do scholarly activities, or even work out (and do more efficient physical activity) later in the day? Which option will cause me less social grief as a fat person (because my body is seen as proof that I am sedentary simply because of its size)?
Not all disabilities are visible. Some disabilities wax and wane in their visibility (see my post PassOut for an example). A lot of invisible disabilities and illnesses involve a huge energy management component, and elevator usage can help that person live a more fulfilling life....when we aren't barraged with messages that tell us that we're horrible people for using the elevator for a "short distance" or that we're fat/out of shape/sick/disabled because we don't use the stairs for whatever reason.
As a doctoral student in kinesiology, I would love it if people were more active. It's what I study. It's something I'm passionate about. But...making healthist remarks about elevator usage doesn't help people become less sedentary. It's shaming and shame doesn't help people become healthier and happier people. Shame creates stress and the biomedical literature shows over and over again that long-term stressors (like shame, bigotry, and structural inequality) create less healthy people.
So instead of creating more problems in people's lives over whether or not taking the stairs is a part of their healthy life, how about this. We make sure that both modes of transportation are clearly marked in a way that encourages people to listen to their bodies, keeps them safe, and keeps them happier in the long run.
I was given a copy of this video for review on my blog. I've been looking around for commercially available seated dance videos, and this came up in a discussion I had with my friend Tracy over at A Foundation for Change. I decided to ask the makers of the Chair Aerobics for Everyone series for a copy to review on this blog, so here we are!
The introduction states that this is a full body workout that requires a chair, a shawl or veil, and a cane or broomstick. The instructor Ronit Amaya demonstrates a few quick movements, both upper & lower body. She says that this video is good for a variety of folks wanting a workout, from people who cannot stand for a length of time to others that just want a different kind of challenge.
You're given the chance to select either a full workout or quick workout. The full workout warmup shows the instructor perched on the edge of her seat and doing marches & step-touch movements with her legs (making this video potentially not as useful for folks who are paralyzed or need to be really careful with hip movements, like me). She demonstrates pre-workout stretches as part of the warmup, which can be problematic for many folks. With the body not fully warmed up, some people may be prone to injury. If you're new to exercise, the warmup given may be sufficient if you are really gentle with the stretches.
After the warmup stretch, the next section focuses on the lower body. She uses hip lifts, kicks out to the front, and leg circles in front of the chair. Like I mentioned in the warmup, this section will probably need to be skipped if you have paralysis or lower body impairment. For me personally, I could probably get by skipping the hip bumps and doing the rest of it.
The upper body section included some pretty arm patterns (the instructor didn't name them and I don't have a good name for them from my own dance experience), head circles, shoulder bumps (she calls them shimmies, but they're a slowed down 3/4 pattern), snake arms (she doesn't name them), torso circles, and an upper body undulation that she calls the snake (known more commonly as a camel in some dance communities). For someone without dance experience, it may be difficult to pick up some of these movements as they aren't broken down for the viewer. However, as a workout video, the purpose is to keep moving versus having precision.
The next section utilizes a cane. She uses a medical cane for the instruction versus a dance cane (probably because the target demographic might have one easily accessible), but demonstrates several movements that are covered in the earlier upper body section. These are movements that are many times seen in raks assaya (cane dance...the video is a friend of mine Xavier Shadowdancer performing a cane dance), so it's a nice addition to the video.
A veil or scarf section is next. Ronit uses a pretty small scarf for this section, presumably to show a prop that someone might have easily at hand (versus a full size veil). She uses the same shoulder bumps from earlier, then combines some more traditional veil moves. During most of these three sections (upper body, cane, & veil), the instructor is moving both her upper and lower body which as a dancer was a bit frustrating because she wasn't isolating her movements (great for keeping the "full body workout" theme going though).
The last section was a cool-down section that was very similar to the warmup. I really was hoping for more stretching and less cardio work as this section really didn't do much to transition to a "not working out" state (although that may be more of a function of my pretty decent fitness level). I was glad that she didn't advocate for any really deep stretches, something that can be potentially dangerous when done incorrectly (that's how I broke my vertebra actually).
Overall, this video would be best for folks that are new to fitness and have use of their lower extremities. The video uses bellydance moves as a means to move one's body in a fun way, but really doesn't teach bellydance technique (something that bothered me as improper dance posture can contribute to injuries). Thankfully the instructor didn't mention fat burning or weight loss often in the video, which was a nice change to traditional exercise dvds (although I wish it wasn't there at all). There were some audio issues that made the music louder than the instructor at times, but since her verbal instructions weren't about specific technique it was still pretty easy to follow her by watching.
I don't think this video is going to be part of my personal dance/fitness repertoire, but I can see it being good for someone with a bit of dance experience that wants to get their body moving. That being said, I would like to take a look at some of the company's other exercise dvds like Chair Salsa (which might have similar issues for my spine-related disability), Chair Tai Chi, and Chair Boxing.
Note: This is a blog post that's been in my unfinished queue for a while, partially because I do a lot of my blogging at work during our down time (I can't watch things with sound there) and partially because I wanted to make sure I was in a good head space to see this and critique it. Since the AMS Vans blog recently reminded me about this post, I figured that it was time to actually finish it.
There's this video that I've seen bopping around Facebook recently about a disabled veteran that "transforms" himself, goes from not being able to walk due to various impairments to being able to run at the end of the video, through the combined magic of yoga and weight loss. I've been torn about either wanting to ignore this video as "inspiration porn" to wanting to really look at his journey from various sociocultural lenses. So, for those of you who haven't seen the video, here it is:
Before I really critique this video however, I want to give a few caveats. First of all, I'm not trying to belittle his journey. It's his life, his body, and his experience, and no one can take that from him. I'm glad he found something that he found engaging (perhaps even enjoyable) enough to keep doing. I will also, in the name of reflexivity and feminist research techniques, state that this kind of narrative can be pretty damn annoying. We would never have heard of this guy if his yoga journey hadn't gotten him running or have made him thin (hell, would we be seeing this story if yoga had gotten him running without the weight loss??). Stories about disabled folks usually only pop up when we're being inspiring and "overcoming disability," doing things "in spite of" disability, or just being a supercrip.
Anyhow, my thoughts after watching the video (as I wrote the first part of this post before watching it, just to really analyze my feelings and assumptions about what this video would be about).
The video starts out with music that is usually associated with these kinds of videos...kind of cheesy, all fanfare. The text talks about how this fellow was unable to walk without assistive aids, had gained weight, and had been turned down by yoga teachers...except for "Diamond" Dallas Page. He shows clips from starting his journey, showing him wobble and fall out of various yoga poses, using a chair and props to help keep him from falling. The video progresses, showing him able to do more intense yoga poses, getting visibly smaller, eventually walking unaided and at the end running in a park.
The video's text essentially states that if he can do it, anyone can do it with enough motivation and willpower. He lost a significant amount of weight in less than a year. He states that he is no longer disabled by his back and knee injuries.
First of all, I want to direct you good folks to a recent post from Ragen Chastain at Dances With Fat entitled The Tricky Dangers of Experience. She says that "[o]ne thing that frustrates me about a lot of the discourse on the
internet is many people’s assertion that their experience is (or should
be, or will be) everyone’s experience, and that others should feel
obligated to make major health decisions based on their
experience/opinions." She's hit it right on the head. Just because this fellow found body transformation (both in size and ability) from yoga, doesn't mean that it would work for everyone if they just put their mind to it. I had the good fortune of finding a local yoga studio that isn't afraid to take me as a student, but my yoga practice isn't making my nerve damage reverse itself nor will it magically repair my fractured vertebra.
If it really was a matter of motivation and willpower, I would be abled. I would be belly dancing, doing mixed martial arts and CrossFit again. I would be running, riding my road bike, and competing in triathlons as an abled person. I wouldn't be whining on my blog about how I can't afford adaptive sports equipment like a recumbent trike, handcycle, or a racing wheelchair (although I would still be vocal about the disparities in access to sport and physical activity for folks with disabilities). I would be doing Olympic-style weightlifting like Sarah Robles at Pretty Strong (probably not as good as her though! She's headed to the London 2012 Olympics!).
Finally, this whole narrative makes fat be equated with disability, and thin equated with ability. This narrative sucks (Revolting Fatty talks about this in a recent post entitled "Me and the Model- the Social Model"). The more the OMG obesipanic continues, the more that fat bodies will be considered ill and therefore disabled, even when they aren't. This narrative makes it seem as if all of us fat crips would magically become abled if we just got off our fat asses and lost weight. My weight had nothing to do with breaking my L5 vertebra. I broke it because I had spondylolisthesis, didn't know it, and kept doing awesome feats of spine flexibility while being a semi-professional belly dancer. I was certifiably fat before the injury, and after. I was a fit fattie.
Congrats to this fellow on his journey, but I'm bothered when someone who has had an amazing transformation of some variety makes it seem like this is attainable for every person. Sometimes there isn't a magic cure.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how physical education experiences can impact adult physical activity (I know, I'm a nerd...but I'm working on my PhD in sociohistorical studies of kinesiology, so what do you expect?). I came across a blog post at Anytime Yoga about the author's experience with hating volleyball, and started really wondering what the is the actual purpose of physical education classes. I've been chewing on this for a while, especially for folks with disabilities that experienced special education gym classes.
Growing up, my "primary" physical disability was my congenital optic nerve hypoplasia in my right eye, which means I've been legally blind in my right eye since birth. I also had lazy eye (strabismus). The school district decided that I needed to be put in special education gym classes along with mainstream PE. I was pulled out of my elementary school classroom at fairly random intervals to attend the special gym classes....and I do mean randomly. I'm not sure if the school district didn't have enough funding for regular classes, if there was only one "special needs" PE teacher that the district shared, or if my regular classroom teacher didn't feel the need to pull me out of her classroom to have these "special" gym classes.
I do remember more joy in these classes. I didn't have "normal" classmates teasing me for having trouble with depth perception related activities (hitting, catching, kicking). My classmates in these classes were a pretty good mix of ages, between first and fifth grades, and we only had about five of us at any one time. It was more about learning and moving our bodies for fun than any obviously directed sport. We were all the kids that were picked last because our bodies were different in some way, and each of our bodies were different in different ways. We learned that our bodies had both strengths and weaknesses, and that was ok.
This wasn't a lesson I initially got from these classes though. Because of the sporadic nature of these classes, I never knew what subject I was going to miss. Sometimes it was something I wasn't as fond of (like math), sometimes it was something I really enjoyed (like music or art). It never replaced the regular gym classes, so some weeks I had gym 4 times a week when other kids had it twice a week.
When I was in fourth grade, the special ed gym teacher came at more regular intervals, and I remember that the person came every time I had German. I was frustrated that something I wasn't as keen on was keeping me from something I really enjoyed....and I was also frustrated that my perceived impairment was not only creating a deficit in my scholastic work (learning German) but really wasn't making me more able to kick, catch, hit, or do anything physical. I looked more at the social disadvantages of those special ed gym classes because as a kid, I didn't see the point of gym classes. As a precocious kid, I explained to my parents that I didn't feel that the classes were doing anything for me and that I felt like I was constantly behind in my German schoolwork because I was consistently missing it. With this information, my parents had the school pull me out of special ed gym.
When I look back at the rest of my (mainstream) gym class experience, I keep wondering what the point of it all is. If school is supposed to prepare a person for adulthood, shouldn't gym class be about trying a bunch of different sports and activities in hopes that a person finds something that they can keep doing for the rest of their life? I've met so many folks that were traumatized by PE classes...how is this helpful to maintaining a healthy adulthood? Couldn't this be related to our current social issue of sedentary behavior?
I still sometimes wonder how I became an adult athlete with the torment and frustrations I had with PE as an older kid. I rarely found activities that I was any good at or that I found fun (being skillful can definitely help make something fun). I think growing up with parents with an adventurous spirit was what got me to the point where I wanted to be physical in a variety of ways, and I thank them for that spirit. It's led me to some interesting activities from a polar bear plunge to the MS 150 bike ride (that's where my bike photo comes from) to belly dance to wheeling a 5k...and more physical endeavors in the future, body-willing.
What do you think? How does your physical education history impact your current physical activity? What complicates your experience? If you could sit down and talk to your PE teacher, what would you say to her/him? What would you tell your younger self about moving your body?
So there's been some hype in the disability community online about a new reality TV show coming out on the Sundance Channel called "Push Girls." The basic premise of the show is to follow four Los Angeles women with spinal cord injuries (SCI) who use wheelchairs. A lot of folks in the activist community were worried about how these women were going to be portrayed (as was I). Well, they released the first episode on ITunes for free download yesterday and I decided to give it a test-run. Besides, there's a part of me that enjoys reality TV, although I haven't indulged in it in the last five or so years aside from "So You Think You Can Dance" and "Dancing With The Stars." Also, one of the women on the show is a hip hop dancer, and I'm just aching to see more PwD's dancing on tv ("Glee"...I'm glaring at you right now. Glaring intensely).
First, my initial concerns. These are all conventionally attractive women, all of them thin, most of whom are white. All four of them have spinal cord injuries, which is a very specific population of wheelchair users. They are all shown living in nice homes in Los Angeles, which demonstrates a specific socioeconomic status (one that many people with disabilities do not have access to for a variety of reasons). It feels like they're aiming for the "we're just like you, except we use wheelchairs" narrative for the show.
The actual show starts out like most reality shows and introduces the "real people" being featured. Tiphany, Auti, Angela, and Mia are four women living in LA who have been friends with each other for five or more years. The show introduces each woman and almost immediately dives into her personal story as to how she became injured with a spinal cord injury (all but one were from car accidents). This is a pretty standard narrative for talking about PwD's in mainstream media, meaning that before we really get to know anything about these women's lives, interests, or personalities, we find out how these people were injured.
We also find out pretty quickly that all but one of these women are paraplegic from their injuries, with Angela a quad. It felt like a good majority of the show was spent highlighting Angela's struggles while trying to make her seem as "normal" as possible, repeatedly showing her doing her makeup for the audience (she is a model, so this isn't too surprising, but still felt like an excessive demonstration of "normal" feminine behavior). Her video segments had this interesting push and pull between showing either how her life is different because of her impairment or how "normal" her life is despite impairment.
All in all, I think I'm going to keep following this show...but I think it's partly do to a continued frustration with the only other media portrayals of disability that I see (mostly "Glee" to be honest....which is pretty much a trainwreck for most anything related to diversity). I probably won't pay ITunes for the privilege of watching it though, so I'll have to see if Hulu or Netflix will have it.
