Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man's World

In these opening chapters, Fleshman’s pivotal theme, Empowerment and Joy From Running, is introduced both through the athletes Fleshman coaches and in her memories of her own early running career. Fleshman conveys the sounds and sights of the runners’ warm-up: “flexing their knees, clearing their watches, and bouncing a few times to get the feel of the track” (5). The women’s confidence and belonging in the space is established through their routines, and a vivid picture of the scene is painted in the reader’s mind. Through her reflections as she watches the women, Fleshman characterizes running as empowering and exciting: “[M]y body remembers the feelings of capacity and possibility that competitive sport gave me for over twenty years” (6). Fleshman further describes running as relaxing and meditative. The inherent mental calm and clarity provided through the ritual of running training once the women begin their session is conveyed in the description of the “metronomic pop-pop-pop-pop-pop that lets each of their minds spread out” (6). Although much of her memoir is a critique of the systemic difficulties experienced by female athletes, her memoir is also characterized in this Introduction as a celebration of running, and of athleticism more broadly, in terms of being a platform for self-connection, self-exploration, and the achievement of one’s ambitions. Fleshman aims to instill this lifelong connection to running in her athletes; this is something that is often lost through the stress caused by the misogynistic systems that fail to nurture female athletes.

In this section, Fleshman also introduces another of her pivotal themes, Male Physiology and Sexism Shaping Norms in Women’s Sports. She addresses the duality of her memoir in her Introduction, explaining to her readers that “this book is a sports story and a love letter to the running life,” as well “a story about a girl growing up in a world built for men” (8). Framed through her own struggles as a young woman, Fleshman introduces the struggles inherent in female puberty for athletic girls. Fleshman articulates that unlike boys, who experience athleticism as a natural extension of their masculinity and of their developing bodies, girls are often hampered by their experience of puberty. The “experience of jumping rope with breasts,” an example of intense movement that would make a developing young woman aware of her radically changing body, leads many girls to feel that movement and athleticism is “something they will leave behind along with their child body” (19-20). Physical discomfort experienced by young women in these settings is exacerbated by the hyper-sexualization of girls, which makes them even more acutely aware of their own bodies; Fleshman sees her classmates “press down their breasts with their hands, complaining of soreness when playing tag,” as well as constantly “adjust[ing] the unisex gray T-shirts stretched over their chests” (18). Physical realities of female bodies, as well as cultural norms that sexualize women, make “constant awareness of their own bodies” “the new normal” for developing young women (18).

Fleshman’s relative ease as an athlete in her less developed body explains the framing of “female puberty framed as a threat to performance” (7). This insidious conceptualization, which is borne of systemic misogyny, leads to pressure for female athletes from coaches and from the athletes themselves to achieve a body ideal that is “nearly impossible during their stage of physiological development” (7). Measures taken to “prevent or reverse” female puberty, which usually focus on fat reduction and overtraining, has a range of harmful impacts, including physiological distress, disordered eating, and the disruption of hormonal functioning from skipped periods. Skipping periods leads to bone density issues, leading female athletes to experience stress fractures at three times the rate of their male athletic peers. This collection of problems is known under the banner of “the female athlete triad,” which Fleshman explores further in later chapters.

The sexism in Fleshman’s family of origin is illustrated in Frank Fleshman’s explanation that while male athletes, like Rocky, would start to run faster, the young women Fleshman’s age would “turn into women. Get hips and tits and into making out behind the portables” (17). Developing girls are demeaned and sexualized, whereas developing boys are characterized as increasingly powerful. Further establishing inherent male superiority, Frank complimented his daughter’s bravery through a male lens: “‘Did you see that?!’ he yelled to his camping buddies. ‘My girl’s got balls the size of Texas!’” (14). Young Fleshman internalized the messaging that “it was the ultimate compliment because it wasn’t female” (14). Through this, bravery and athleticism are characterized as essentially male to the impressionable young Fleshman, undermining Frank’s insistence to his daughter that “you can do ANYTHING!” (9). Furthermore, Frank’s abuse of Joyce and once of Fleshman further establishes the cultural norm of lip service to equality being undermined by blatant male privilege: “Dad got the best chair, the first serving, and the last word” (11). This foreshadows Fleshman’s experience of sexism in the world of collegiate and professional sports.