Interesting discussion.

Why thin hips for women and big bulgy muscles for men? Maybe because when the generation that is now in their 30s were playing as kids, the girls played with Barbie dolls and the boys played with G.I. Joe and other Mr. Muscle Man toys … ;-)

And do I have a blog? Not really. Write on different lists and sometimes somebody uploads something I wrote, as in this case. These days I mostly write on the disease I have had since 1994, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, and the different ways the CDC finds to hide it from the public (it tends to be endemic but it also occurs in cluster outbreaks, which scares the bejeebers out of CDC).

Nice little piece of work here. Blog on.

Odd, that’s not something I’ve ever heard, even in passing. Where does one usually run across this particular myth?

—Myca

And that’s before we get to the drugs. The abuse of which is common knowledge. I had the drugs in mind when I said that the bodybuilder look is as natural as breast implants.

I’d said something earlier about the peacock syndrome. What I had in mind was that bodybuilding doesn’t make one stronger in a useful way, doesn’t make you healthier, and, in the eyes of many, makes you less attractive. But some people think it’s worth it, because it makes them look more exaggeratedly masculine.

For that matter, there’s the fiction of females being the only bodybuilders who might take steroids in order to gain larger muscles. Uh-huh. Sure.

Now, transpose this to the gender issue, and suddenly, it seems we are not talking about the same kind of problem. People are, for the most part, deeply convinced that being a man or a woman is the first and most objective thing to define us. Well, no and no. Processing every piece of information that comes to your mind through the filter of “I’m a boy” or “I’m a girl” means you’re already conforming yourself to the expectations of society. Some might say that it has nothing to do with society, that it’s simple biology. So you’re conforming yourself to biology ? People who were small at one point of their lives should never attempt to play basket ball, then. They were sent a message by biology, after all.
Ridiculous, right ? Because it DOESN’T MATTER. As an individual, and that’s how we take our decisions, you can’t give a crap about those cosmic/social omens. Screw biology (sorry ’bout that), your will ultimately is what makes or undoes you.
So maybe most men will find it a little easier to put on some muscles. Does it mean they will ? Does it mean women, through exercise, can’t become much stronger than a lot of men ? Does it mean there are no women who can outdo everything 80% of the masculine population does (what a horrible way to talk about 50% of the world, don’t you think ?) ?

See, here’s the thing. Since we are all genetically unique (and the question of twins will help us shed some light on the subject), we are all biologically unique. And that’s just the first deal of cards. What we do with it can completely transform and surpass those initial abilities. Twins, precisely, if trained in wholly different sports, can obtain opposite abilities. You can have a miler and a sprinter, a Fosbury and a Jonathan Edwards, or, gasp, even a football player and a dancer. If they happened to be boys, you want to bet the one who chose to become a dancer felt much more pressure from society, and maybe even his parents ? And if our twins happen to be girls, you want to bet … actually, our society can’t even accept girls in football !
Does this have anything to do with biology ? Not at all. It’s simply a matter of social norms. Jake, what makes a good football player ? Not sheer speed, not raw strength, and even less other “objective” proofs of manhood. Do you remember why Todd Pinkston was so criticized at the end of the regular NFL season ? Because he dropped several passes on big plays, for fear of being roughed up by defensive players. Specifically, what makes a good football player is his willingness to get hurt. That, and a great sense of the game. If Ray Lewis was but a brainless thug unable to feel the game, he wouldn’t have made a tenth of the tackles in his career. A tenth, and I mark my words.

So, are women more fearful than men ? Hard to say. Let’s take the question apart, shall we ? Society’s answer would be yes, of course. Everyone knows that mice in particular make women hysteric, and men were born to chase them away while women weep ontop of a chair. Riiight. Society’s perception is that women should act this way and men that way. So tell me how this knowledge will not influence either’s reaction ? Some women will decide to react exaggeratedly not to offend their companion’s essential sense of virility (because there’s no way anyone is going to say that virility isn’t presented as a superior value in our society), some men will vanquish their fear of mice so as not to “make fool of themselves”. Good for them. It’s always good to “do the thing which you think you cannot do”, after all. That’s how we grow as persons.
And that’s exactly the problem, isn’t it ? That women aren’t supposed to grow as much. Imagine, regarding strength, that each of us has internal limits, that can only be reached by intensive training. Now, imagine that everyone gets the exact training to achieve that (and it wouldn’t be done, even in this hypothetical world, because not everyone would want that much training. So, are women lazier ? Less resistent to pain ? Curious, because in this case society says exactly the contrary…). So, now that everyone has been given a chance to reach their peak of strength, let’s compare the results.
Maybe the ten strongest in the Earth would be men. Maybe n°11 would be an amazing woman, too. Maybe in the first hundred, there would only be 13 women. But who do you think would be in the lowest thousand ? There would be men as well as women, no doubt. A matter of laziness, remember ? And maybe the mean would be superior for men. But you probably would have n°655 334=a man, n°655335= a man, n°655 336= a woman, n°655 337 a man, n° 655 338 a woman, and n° 655 339 a woman. Would that matter ? Not at all. And you would probably have n°1001=a woman, and n°837, and so on, and the only thing that would accomplish is to make people stop assuming that men are stronger than women, and that it means they are naturally better than women at everything that requires strength, and everything else that society views as praiseworthy too, for that matter.

So, is anybody saying that biological differences don’t exist ? No. What we are saying is that they do not bound anyone, and that underlining them causes unjustified injustice within society, which I personally define as having a political agenda. And if somebody insists that, since we are talking about top-notch athletes, minimal advantages count a lot, then be coherent and reserve sports for Black men, because it is also common knowledge that Blacks are much stronger than poor white men, and much more “endowed”. More testosterone, Jake and Robert, you know ?
White people perpetuated the myth of the hordes of Black rapists, but they can’t admit it logically means Brian Urlacher the-much-revered should be sent to a bridge club ? Something is fishy here..

And as for actual world records confirming the unbreachable gap between men and women, the answer still is “come back later”. The topic has already been discussed here, and one of the main points is that women have began training hard relatively recently, because of previous social biases, which means that they are probably nowhere near their peak. Besides, less athletes (because some people don’t dare defy everybody’s expectations, which doesn’t justify the discrimination) means a smaller pool, and Science and Statistics tell us that the value of the results just isn’t the same. And we are just starting to explore new training methods, adapted to how everyone responds, as Mary Schweitzer showed. Gee, opportunities really haven’t been the same, have they?
Oh, and since systemic prejudices have hardly disappeared, no wonder women’s sports continue being viewed as second-hand activities with half-athletic participants. I am sure that thirty years after Blacks gained the right to go to school, their education levels still hadn’t caught up with those of WASPS (on average, and you know what they say about that). They still haven’t, have they ? And I’m sure some white supremacists use that statistic to assert white men’s natural superiority over Blacks. “Centuries of oppression, generations of internalized resignation” don’t go away just like that.
How about we compare biological differencies after centuries of equal conditions ? And even better, how about we stop thinking in shady and irresponsible binary oppositions ? Hopefully, after a hundred years of social equality, we’ll finally see ourselves as individual human beings, inalienably free and bound to each other’s fate by will .

Good point. When you see those Strong Man competitions, most of the winners are undoubtedly pretty hefty, but also have a lot of body fat, especially compared to body builders, and thick, shapeless bodies.

Also, most body builders do little to no cardio or aerobic exercise, and therefore, despite the muscles and definition, are not in good shape at all. But again, we’re back to “strength” being defined exclusively by how many kilos you can lift, not how far or long you can keep moving. If you want some examples of amazing strength, look at rock climbers.

How body builders got to be a symbol of “healthy” for some is beyond me.

drumgurl, if your male co-workers are berating your looks, you might ask them if they’d like to take the dispute to HR to settle the matter. That might shut them up. (Ditto female coworkers who hate you–that’s not feminist, that’s just fucking pathetic.)

Coming up next - Pres. Summers gives off-the-cuff comments on why there are so few women blogging about politics . . .

In high school I applied for a job at a pizza place, and I almost didn’t get the job because the owner I talked to (a rather hefty woman) saw how skinny I was and thought I wouldn’t be able to lift the heavy rubber floor mats. My mom (who knew the owners) had to go convince her that I was strong enough to work there. (It’s especially odd because her husband was a fairly scrawny fellow, and he had no problems with the mats.)

I think the reason why thin is the ideal-but-not-really is because of money. What would marketers do if women found out men like the average type? Our economy would crumble! (I’m only half-serious on that last comment, for reasons too numerous to explain.)

Sorry Robert, too late. You said I could screw everyone! No, just kidding. :)

(Well, not literally. That would be rewarding the wrong behavior.)