Project Valkyrie: WiiLog

[truepenny]

Another half hour with my perky little Big Brother.

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I am, for my sins, a child of the eighties, which means that my experience of physical education was shaped, or warped, by the Presidential Fitness Awards. And here's the thing. I remember, all too well, how they explained to us that girls have poor upper body strength, but what nobody ever said was: You can do something about that if you want to. Maybe they thought it didn't need to be said, but with a president who wanted to convince us that ketchup was a vegetable, I personally think nobody should have been leaving that stuff to chance.

Because seriously. No, my upper body will probably never be as strong as my husband's--unless I go crazy and give up this writing gig to become a bodybuilder, which . . . no. But that doesn't mean I have to be weak. Just because I can't do as many push-ups as he can doesn't mean I can't do push-ups.

The Presidential Fitness Awards, in retrospect, were all about telling us how we didn't measure up to the arbitrary standard imposed by somebody in authority. (Who was it? I don't even know.) And I think it would have been better, both more empowering and more conducive to instilling good habits of exercise, to say, okay, here's where you are. Here's what you can do to become stronger and faster. It's just looking at things the other way round, but it feels different. Doesn't it?

Of course, it would also have required gym teachers to, you know, teach, which considering the number of years in a row I was forced to play flag football without anyone ever once explaining how the goddamn game was played . . .

*ahem* Yeah, I might still be bitter about that.

Comments

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Hm. I suspect not for true child-bodies, though quite possibly yes for someone like you at age 16.

For me, these tests were a more pressing feature of high school than younger, and not only would it have started being true for me at 12-13, it would have been true of most of the girls in my class by the times I'm remembering.

But did you, in the body-shape you're remembering, feel that you had notably less upper body strength than boys comparable to you in size and athleticism?

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Not at all, as a child. When I was 12-16, any boys comparable to me in size weren't likely to be athletic in the least. I was *tiny*.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

I remember them more from upper elementary. But then, I'd hit puberty by that time.