Pointe, pushups and Plato

I met Sarah at a strange point in my life. Nico and I were living in Houston, trying to make enough money to support the start of the Olympic dream in earnest and file hundreds of pages of green card paperwork. I started working at a gym, and met Sarah, who was coaching there. She seemed to me like a jacked goddess, totally in command and impossibly experienced at what she did. Since then I’ve followed Sarah from afar, celebrating her when she shares a win and vaguely wondering whether she’s doing okay when she doesn’t post in that strange cadence of being long distance, loose friends over social media. I’ve always been so inspired by her and slightly in awe, so I’m really excited to introduce her to all of you. 

Sarah is from Omaha, Nebraska, and grew up in ballet and gymnastics. I asked Sarah what her relationship was like to sports and fitness growing up, and she laughed while twisting her blonde hair around her finger. She said she didn’t consider the hours she spent at the barre as “fitness.” Why is it that we don’t consider athletic pursuits that are traditionally dominated by women as athletic? We have tired discussions about whether or not cheerleading is a sport, while those athletes are nursing broken ribs and icing sprained ankles after hours in the gym. Sarah never thought she would pursue a life in fitness. She was a theater kid and a dancer: sports were for jocks. 

But even back then, Sarah was curious. A self-identified autodidact, Sarah sometimes struggles with learning from others, but when the manual is in her hands, she is insatiable. She loves taking on new challenges, and seeing how quickly she can master difficult variations. Many, many years later, Sarah wandered into a Crossfit gym while on vacation from her fast paced gig in management consulting. The strength and body awareness she had gained from gymnastics and dancing, combined with her itch of trying new things met in a perfect storm: she wanted to go all in. Fitness can be both a beautiful and dangerous place to have a personality like Sarah’s. Being talented, disciplined, curious and stubborn can lead down paths that are hard to walk back from. Sarah started to see changes in her body from training, but she knew there was a whole other world out there. Her curiosity was sparked by seeing the insanely lean and cut women who flashed on and off her screen as she scrolled: could she do that? Could she push her body towards a radically different shape and size? She wanted to know if it was possible, and if it was, how to do it. She wanted to explore the edges, the limits of how her body could both look and perform. 

A lot of people tuned in for the results. 

Sarah is by far the most followed person that I know in person. She has almost 40 thousand followers on Instagram and over 380 thousand on TikTok. Sarah is a gentle, private person, shy in social situations and hesitant to approach people she doesn’t know. Yet she has lived this phase of her life in front of thousands of strangers. When I asked Sarah to do this interview with me, this was a big part of what I wanted to talk about. I’ve found social media to be a really hard space to navigate as an athlete and a human, and I only have a fraction of the number of eyes on me that Sarah does. Turns out, it’s not that nice. Putting a consistently excellent version of your body online all the time is exhausting. 

Everyone says they want to see “real people” on social media, or the “struggles behind the scenes.” We both laughed without humor, Sarah rolling her eyes. The numbers don’t lie: people want to see TikTok Sarah: a tanned, toned, lean machine. And since the algorithm demands constant, consistent content, the creation of said content is a constant battle: Sarah feels bloated, but she had planned to shoot today. Should she eat a smaller lunch? Should she push the shoot to the next day? Is there content from when she looked leaner that she can repurpose? Maintaining a facade of fitness is demanding when our bodies naturally ebb and flow. 

And after all that? Here come the internet trolls: “That doesn’t work, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, she’s fake…” etc. etc. There is a double standard in the industry between men and women creating content that gives advice. (Aka most all content from fitness influencers.) Female creators have to work twice as hard to get people to take them seriously, and trust the advice they have worked so hard to learn to give. Sarah has become exhausted by the process of creating content that is exciting, stimulating, educational and sexy, only to have thousands of strangers on the internet tell her how, or how not, to do her job.

Even if she wanted to do this forever, she can’t. Another thing the algorithm doesn’t want to see? Aging bodies. Careers online in fitness are only good for as long as your youth holds, then we’re swiping to the next young thing. Sarah says she’s curious about what comes next in the body positivity movement. She pointed out that body positivity is mostly targeted at women in bigger bodies: not women in stronger, or, god forbid, older bodies. Women with muscle aren’t beautiful or feminine: at best we’re manly, at worst people question whether we deserve to be women at all, or debate whether we can tolerate more pain or violence.

So Sarah has been slowly extracting herself from the world of Dexa scans and weigh ins, carb cuts and shiny content. She’s discovered that a lot of that world doesn’t feel as good as it looks. She’s still training, and connecting to her body, but in a way that feels gentler and kinder. She’s rediscovered dance, is dabbling in calisthenics, and staying curious about new challenges: she’s ready for a different adventure.

A lot of that new adventure is about ideas and words. I’m so inspired by Sarah’s ability to think critically about the fitness and social media machine, and how we as athletes value our bodies, work and our contributions to society. So wherever Sarah is going I know she’ll go there with determination, thoughtfulness and curiosity, and I can’t wait to watch it from afar. Or maybe I won’t, but I’ll worry a little less when she doesn’t post from now on. I’ll know that she’s teaching herself a new handstand, or reading Aristotle, or something magical in between. 

For big thoughts, Sarah recommends…

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf and Perfect Me by Heather Widdows for critiques/analyses of beauty standards. She says, “neither book is perfect but both are thought-provoking and interesting.”

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde for a study of vanity.

The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt, not for fitness people specifically but just an interesting study on the meaning and value of work.

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You can follow Sarah on Instagram @sarahherse, and check out her incredible fitness app here.

Written by Skyler Espinoza

Photo Credit to Focused Fitness Media

Finding My Spark

This year is a hard year on a lot of people I know. The Olympic and Paralympic Games represent the peak of a lot of my friends’ careers, and the pressure to qualify is enormous. For many, it is so much more than a career. The Olympic or Paralympic dream often starts young, and consumes us. It consumes athletes, media, nations, histories and imaginations. As a human being in the midst of all of the consuming, the difference between becoming a Paralympian or Olympian can feel frighteningly absolute. A friend who recently failed to qualify for the Games said simply, “What a waste of my life.” 

 At the suggestion of my sports psychologist, Nico and I recently rewatched the Pixar movie Soul. For those who haven’t seen it, it tells the story of a jazz musician, Joe, who falls into a coma (and the mystical space between life and death), right before his big musical break. While there, he befriends a soul, 22, who is hesitant to come to earth because she hasn’t found her “spark.” He helps her find her spark, I cry, life, death and everything in between is told with gorgeous animation and music. 10/10 would recommend. 

There’s a lot of talk about “sparks” in the movie, and the assumption that once we find our “spark” (or passion), then we have found our purpose. 

I didn’t grow up loving sports. I didn’t play travel anything ball, I never played in AU (I am honestly still not really sure what that stands for), and I didn’t drive my parents towards insanity and bankruptcy in a gymnastics gym. I was a stubborn, bossy child and throughout my youth and young adulthood I went through a similar path to 22: I didn’t have a spark. I liked art and singing, math and yearbook, I liked skiing and making fudgy brownies. I really liked eating ice cream. I wanted to be a doctor, then a concert cellist, a Disney animator, a linguist, a librarian, an FBI agent. I finally found my spark with the rowing team in college. It felt (at the time) like the exact amount of miserable yet wonderful, ecstatic yet painful, new yet different. I went all in and never looked back, finally deciding that sports was my thing: the thing I was born to do. I think I was also sick of searching for my spark. I wanted to burn. 

Ten years later I’m still burning the flame of being an athlete. Slowly I’ve changed from the young person who loved art and music and big books to someone who spends most of her day doing, or thinking or writing or talking about, sports. Because it’s my passion, right? Over the years I have been guilty of the misunderstanding that also plagues Soul’s protagonist, Joe: the idea that our spark is our purpose. In Soul, 22 starts to think she’s found her spark when she says that she loves walking, and the smell of pizza, the way leaves fall towards the sidewalk. Maybe leaves falling will be her spark? Joe responds, “That’s not a spark, that’s just living.” The subtext in the story is that some things are worthy of being sparks, and others aren’t: some things are worth being purposes, and some aren’t.

The real world is not that different. There are things that are worthy of being life purposes: Changing the world! Becoming an Olympian! Curing cancer! And some things that aren’t: Walking. Watching leaves. Making a really, really good sandwich. It also feels, this year, like becoming an Olympian or a Paralympian is a worthy purpose, but trying to be one isn’t. So which one is it going to be? 

Both the protagonist of Soul and I had to go on the same journey to learn that conflating your passion and purpose makes life very difficult if your passion takes you places you didn’t anticipate. Your spark isn’t your purpose: it’s what makes you excited to live.

I love sports, and I love that for me (as the kids say). I get so excited to watch sports, cheer on my friends, race my friends, ride with my husband, get sucked into a toddler t-ball game or read some really good sports journalism. I still believe that sport brings good people together to accomplish special things, and it deserves all the investment and attention in the world. I also don’t regret making it my spark, or all the years and tears I’ve poured into making it my passion. But I have worked hard to separate my passion from my purpose, and I know that no matter what happens, my life is special and valuable just as it is. 

I know this sounds corny and predictable, but let’s remember my friend in the opening paragraph y’all. Many people I know are questioning their whole life’s purpose because of their passion. 

If you found yourself relating to my friend in the opening paragraph, that if you’re failing at your spark you have no purpose, try to remember that those things should be separate. Your spark might be what makes you excited to get up in the morning, but it should never validate your worth.   

And if your spark is making you feel miserable instead of stoked? Time to strike a new match!

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Written by Skyler Espinoza

Photo Credit to my mom, taken when I was busy trying to find my spark, age 5

Follow the Money

The WNBA draft is not an annual event circled on many calendars. Heck, women’s basketball is not even a topic many of us usually talk about. But with college basketball superstars Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese now officially heading to the W, the draft has become a topic as hot as these stars themselves. Tickets to attend sold out in 15 minutes.  

During the pandemic the NCAA gave a no-strings attached extra year of eligibility to all student athletes, which has enabled the possibility of an extra year of college playing time. This in turn has led to big decisions for college basketball’s biggest stars: declare for the draft or stay in college for that extra year? The WNBA is a famously difficult league to crack into, with only 144 total roster spots on offer, and the choice hasn’t been an easy one in past years. But the “will she won’t she” conversation has reached new heights this year in the glow of Caitlin Clark’s halo. One of the hottest topics within this topic is the question of money. There is a popular belief (found anywhere an average male basketball fan has access to X), that these college stars will be taking a massive pay cut as they move to play professionally in a league that draws in far fewer fans and revenue compared with the collegiate circuit. 

Will celestial stars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese make less money moving away from the college game, or more? How will their endorsement deals change? Why has the college game become more valuable, and how can the WNBA follow? Finally, what can other sports and leagues learn from the meteoric rise of women’s college basketball?

In order to understand the argument of the Twitter Chads, it’s important to first understand not only how much money these women are making, but how they are making it. To continue to use our two superstars as examples, Clark’s endorsement portfolio is valued at over $3 million, while Reese’s is just under $2 million. That’s a lot of money, especially when compared with a rookie salary in the WNBA, which, at the max, is $77,000. Comparing those two numbers it’s easy to see why staying in college seems like the better bet, but this argument overlooks a fundamental misunderstanding about how these women are getting their bag.

In 2021, NIL took the college sports landscape by storm, allowing athletes to make money off of their Name, Image, and Likeness. This created two primary payment pathways for college student athletes. The first type is NIL deals that look and operate like professional sponsorship or endorsement deals, cloaked beneath the NIL label. Think Caitlin Clark and State Farm. State Farm pays Caitlin Clark to be a State Farm Athlete, and she participates in commercials and events for them, and posts about insurance on her social media. Deals like this are purely between Caitlin Clark and State Farm. They have nothing to do with the University of Iowa, and so deals like this aren’t going anywhere as Caitlin moves to the next level. In fact, she inked two new NIL deals with huge brands right when she announced that she would be moving to the WNBA. Caitlin Clark’s endorsement portfolio (and Reese’s and many others) is hers alone. 

The second major pathway for NIL money to find its way into athletes’ pockets is through NIL collectives. An NIL collective is essentially an organization set up on behalf of a university to provide money and brand partnerships to athletes attending that specific college/university or program. It’s become a powerful recruiting tool, with schools with more powerful NIL collectives able to entice higher profile recruits. Any NIL collective money is tied to participation in a college program, and won’t follow athletes to the next level. This type of NIL deal is much more common in men’s sports, especially football and basketball (think donor-funded opportunities that benefit all the guys), and therefore it makes sense why the Twitter Chads would expect Caitlin Clark’s college money to disappear when she leaves Iowa. But this is not the type of money she is making. All her NIL money is hers, not Iowa’s.

So. One more time for the people in the back. All of the biggest women’s college basketball stars will keep their NIL deals and add a rookie salary on top of that, should they make a roster. They’ll be paid to play for the first time in their lives (and won’t have to go to economics 101 with Chad anymore!). They definitely won’t be taking a pay cut. 

But what happens to Caitlin Clark after a few years of playing in the WNBA? There is no denying that women’s college basketball outstrips the W in popularity. Will the shine that currently sparkles around her dim? She might not take a pay cut immediately as she continues to ride the waves of collegiate fandom, but will her marketability eventually wane as she joins a league with lower attendance and viewership than the college landscape?

There are a lot of arguments and theories about why the W lacks popularity. It lacks the tribalism that draws fans to college sports, its teams operate in metropolitan areas already oversaturated with professional men’s teams, the league doesn’t market its players well, etc. I think all of the arguments have legs, some longer and stronger than others. However, I think there’s a simpler argument staring us in the face. The hype has arrived, and we’re standing on a precipice. People are excited to watch the game, and if the WNBA is on primetime, accessible TV, we are going to  immediately start to see the types of changes that have revolutionized the women’s collegiate game. If the WNBA is promoted and marketed appropriately, rookies will never question whether their worth will rise or fall in the league. I believe this because we’ve seen it already: in the rise of the college game. 

The women’s Final Four this year was the exhilarating homecoming and “I told you so” that women’s basketball fans have been praying for. Caitlin Clark dazzled, UCONN kept up with the very best, LSU continued to build their reputation as a title contender and South Carolina was perfection itself. Every round set a new record, with the title game drawing 24 million viewers at its peak: the most watched sporting event (excluding football and the Olympics) since 2019. In preparation for this article, I was reading up on past viewership records, and the records we were breaking this weekend surprised me: the last time we saw these numbers wasn’t since the 1980s, when the games were on CBS and 11.8 million viewers tuned in to see the dazzling Cheryl Miller play for USC. 

ESPN took over the rights for women’s college basketball in the early 1990s, making the women’s game far less accessible to the casual fan. In 1996, ESPN aired a total of 281 men’s games and 22 women’s games. With fewer games shown and virtually no media coverage of story lines, it’s no wonder that fewer people tuned in to the tournament, when more coverage was available. ESPN and other sports media outlets have not accurately valued the women’s game, and its popularity has suffered as a result.

A few years ago, things started to change. Paige Bueckers became a media darling, Sedona Prince exposed the glaring inequities of the women’s NCAA playing conditions, and the NCAA finally allowed the women’s tournament to use the official March madness branding. Due in large part to the changing culture around the women’s game, in 2021 ESPN decided to nationally televise all the tournament games in their entirety for the first time, and not feature “whiparound” coverage which switches to covering whichever game is “interesting” or “close.” They began to run stories about female hoopers, and the country paid attention. The women’s games were put on cable TV for the first time since 1995. 

So. When people tweet out “no one watches women’s sports” it is largely because, in the past (and sometimes still in the present) it was impossible to watch. And when ESPN tweets out how excited they are that viewership numbers are up, it is important to acknowledge that if they had decided to shine more light on the women’s game, the numbers would have been higher earlier. “If you build it they will come” needs to be changed to “if you make it accessible, people will access it.” 

Investment is a choice, and there’s a big return to be gained for that choice right now. This choice has to be made in the WNBA. The media deal problems that have plagued college women’s basketball still plague the WNBA. Last year some of the league’s most anticipated match ups aired on Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime!! Watching games isn’t always easy or accessible, they aren’t during prime time and good highlight reels are stupidly sparse. The coverage and marketing of the WNBA is so far behind the product, we’re just repeating the same history of the college game over again. In order to capitalize on the public interest in the women’s games, and ensure financial investment stays high, it’s crucial that the WNBA can keep investment in its players rolling forward through access and coverage of the games this season. 
Lots of fans of the WNBA have set massive expectations on the remarkably small shoulders of Caitlin Clark. They are hoping that the nation that watched her bring Iowa to back to back Final Fours will follow her into the W, and set viewership records ablaze. I think it’s a big ask, and it’s unfair to the young woman of whom we’ve already asked so much. The W is an excellent product. It’s thrilling to watch. Every game is elite. Perhaps most importantly, the fans that have come to the table for the college feast are hungry for more. But it is up to the WNBA to capitalize on this moment and advocate for media deals that showcase and value the talent at its true worth. Once they do that, people will watch because it’s too good to look away. Sponsors will come calling because the viewership numbers will be up. And the money will follow, and the Twitter Chads will have to find a different, tired take to push onto our timelines.

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Written by Skyler Espinoza

Photo Credit to IndyStar

I’m So Proud Of You –Your 10 Step Guide to Athlete Support

This is a blog bout losing. Sports is a lot about character development and teamwork, it’s about strategy and nutrition, but a lot of it is about results. At the end of the day we all want to feel like the sacrifices are “worth it” and in the eyes of many, that “worth it” is really tied up with which step of the podium you end up on. Of course the goal here, for optimal health, is to not set goals around results. Goals in general should always be process oriented, predicated on things you can control. But it doesn’t mean athletes don’t get gutted by poor results or performances, and often when you are in a support role to an athlete, it feels like you never say the right thing.

Chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’ve been in that moment. I know I have, both on the receiving and giving end many, many times. Whether you’re an athlete or the parent, partner, relative, friend or fan of an athlete, read up for a 10 step guide on how to support an athlete after a bad result or performance. If these steps don’t work, blame my sports psychologist. Or my parents, probably. 

Step One

You know what they say about assuming. (Don’t fucking do it. That’s what they say, right?)

I can’t tell you the number of times it has happened to me or a friend. You feel absolutely jazzed about a PR or a top 10, and a well-meaning family member will say, “Oh, you must be so disappointed.” Well Janet, I wasn’t disappointed but now you are making me feel like maybe… I should be? A surefire way to get on the same wavelength as the athlete you’re supporting is simply to ask: “How are you feeling about your result?” If they are feeling jazzed about it, it’s easy to get on the jazzed bandwagon. Your journey as supportive friend just became a lot easier. Put your own feelings aside and start gushing, Janet! “Omg!” “That’s incredible!” “So proud of you.” If you ask and indeed they are feeling shitty about it, proceed to Step #2. Important to note that this question is always a good question whether your friend got 1st or 111th. Leaving space for athlete emotions and feelings will always be your best first clue to how best to support them. 

Step Two

Okay, so you have a bummed athlete. Bummer. I find the most helpful second step is checking back in with their feelings. Something along the lines of “Do you want to talk about it?” or “I’m so sorry you feel that way. How can I best support you right now?” The things I think to avoid in step two are jumping in with your own interpretations or feedback on what went wrong. Unless you are this athlete’s coach, or they have specifically asked you for feedback, this is a body glide level slippery slope. “You should have just shot the ball!” “You needed to use your arms more!” “You should have pushed a little harder on the hills!” That type of feedback in that type of moment is just not helpful to anyone. It’s so tempting, and usually comes from a good place, but it really is like telling someone who fell out of a tree that they should have held on better. Just don’t do it.

Okay, let’s say you’ve held inner Coack K at bay and asked a very Brené Brown style “how can I help” question. Your athlete says, “fuck off.” 

Step Three

You fuck off. Come back later. 

Step Four

We’re back at your Brené Brown question, and your athlete says something like, “I just can’t believe that happened” or, “I’m such a loser” or, “This guy gets me every time, I’ll never win.” In my experience, this is the trickiest scenario for the support person. Because the knee jerk response goes one of two directions: either empty encouragement or more tree holding advice. The empty encouragement is the category of “You’ll get him next time!” “You’re so young still!” “This race doesn’t even matter!” It’s non actionable, and usually it makes promises that the athlete knows are empty. “You’ll win this race someday,” or some variation is such a common way to encourage athletes, but it’s just not true, or really that helpful. Your athlete might never win a single race. They might get injured and never compete again. The tree-holding advice has been covered in step two. Still not super helpful in the scenario where your athlete is opening up to you, unless your athlete explicitly asks for it. Also, it’s worth acknowledging that this is a very tough moment for the support team! Just like athletic performance, you will probably get it wrong and coach up your athlete in the wrong moment. Give yourself some grace but DO BETTER NEXT TIME. 

Step Five

Okay, so what might you say that might actually help your athlete deal with a tough performance? You’re a parent and your child has just blown the game by letting 6 goals past her. She slams the door and says, “I suck.” When any athlete performs badly and translates that result into “I suck,” they are conflating the result with their identity. Therefore, the correct response to this is to remind them that this result has nothing to do with who they are, only what they did. A good response for a child is literally the same response to anyone who feels like they are a bad person because they had a bad performance.  “I loved getting to watch you.” “I love seeing you play.” “I’m so proud of you, always.” “A result will never change the way I feel about you.” “I’m so honored I get to be here with you.” “Your journey is so amazing.” “You’re an awesome person.” “I love you so much.” You’d be surprised how much athletes of all ages behave like children. But don’t we all want to hear, “I’m proud of you?” It might not fix the situation, but hearing, “I loved watching you” is better every time than, “You should have protected the left side of the net.” This I can 1000% promise you. 

Step Six

Let’s say your bummed out athlete says something different. Same bummed out child, but she says “I’ll never be good enough at soccer to win.” Or your friend says, “All of this was a waste of time, I did even worse than last year.” (YIKES.) This is another super sticky situation! And I too have been made uncomfortable trying to console friends who say stuff like this. It feels stupid, contradictory and unhelpful to simply refute the claim, “I’m not good enough,” (“Omg yes you are!”) because, frankly, according to the rules of le sports, they weren’t! They lost! But we all know that millions of people do sports, and only a fraction of us win. If the situation feels calm enough, this could be a moment to have a convo about why your athlete does sports anyway. You could ask, “Is soccer only about winning for you?” If your child says yes, then there are other fish to fry. If you can get them to admit that no, they like spending time with their friends, they like running around, kicking the ball etc., then you can help remind them that they will always be good enough to enjoy soccer. No one gets to take that from them, ever. Same thing applies to your friend, whether she’s a weekend warrior or an Olympian. If her sacrifices aren’t feeling worth it, try to help her remember why she plays. If winning is the only thing that matters, maybe she needs a new gig. 

Step Seven

Let’s say you have an unconsolable athlete. Nothing you say seems to help. Maybe someone who even says, “You always say the wrong thing!” Or “I don’t want you to come to my next race.” Something that so many of us who are involved in sports have to come to terms with is the part we play in another person’s journey. Whether your athlete is 3 or 93, their athletic journey is their own. Your relationship to an athlete does not guarantee you access to their emotions or big moments. If you’re a parent or team manager, your relationship could guarantee you decision-making rights, but the most happy and motivated athletes have been proven to be ones that have maximal autonomy over their athletic decisions. If your child is an athlete and she says, “I don’t want you to be at the race,” she is taking a huge risk. She is trusting you to respect her choices about what she needs to do her best, while also trusting you to know that she loves you just the same. It’s not about you. She loves you, but something about your presence is hindering her performance. One more time for the people in the back: it’s not about you. 

Step Eight

Step eight is about you. I want to make it very clear that none of this is easy. As support people for others in sports, we work very, very hard. And we *never* see the podium, or get the public recognition that support really deserves. Sports is a massive effort that’s like an iceberg: the athlete floats along up top and there’s a massive team of people holding up from underneath. It can be absolutely crushing to hear, “I don’t want you here” after you’ve given so much of yourself to this person or project. But being a truly supportive person for anyone in life means if what they are asking for is less from you rather than more, that you give them just that. 

Step Nine

There’s a decent chance that everything I’ve written in here is totally unique to me and absolute garbage to the ears of your athlete. If all else fails, go back to step one, with a twist. When your athlete is in a good mood, ask them what they would like to hear, both when they do well, and when things don’t go their way. Simply ask, “What are your goals for today?” “If you do/don’t reach them, how can I best support you?” This conversation will signal to your athlete that you really care about them and want to center their experience. Even having this conversation with a very young athlete can be fruitful. Learning their one and only goal is “to win!” will help set you up for failure later on. So it could be a moment to help set more process oriented goals and then help them celebrate achieving those later even if they lose. 

Step Ten

If you’ve made it all the way to step ten, congrats! You officially really care about the athlete in your life. And that, my friends, is the only thing that really matters at the end of the day. Remind your athlete how much you like them, just the way they are. Everything else is temporary, and hopefully their mood won’t last long. 

Good luck!

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Written by Skyler Espinoza

Photo Credit to Nico Sandi

Spark Notes

I’ve been thinking a lot about the passion tax: in my generation in the States, we have been encouraged to “love what you do, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” The ultimate stamp of a successful career is when you’re able to make money off of your passion, and then give your whole life over to making money that passion. As my passion has become my career, my relationship to it has grown and changed in so many ways. It has felt claustrophobic and soaring, boring and exciting, itchy and calm. 

I felt really honored to chat with Austin Killips about some of these sticky feelings and topics. I’ve admired Austin from afar for years, and have been particularly in awe of how she’s navigated her life and identity as an athlete in the eye of a culture war hurricane. What follows are some musings from two like minded minds on sport and all the parts of it we hold close to our hearts and bodies. As always, I feel lucky to muse with such cool humans. 

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Austin originally fell in love with sport for the same reasons most of us did: for the community. She described growing up in and around skate parks, failing to land the same trick over and over. The skate park lifted her up when she fell, encouraging her to try again. And it celebrated her successes when she finally landed those tricks. There were moments in the spotlight but the spotlight felt shared, and never shone too hot or too bright. 

However, the higher up you go, the thinner the air, and fewer the crazies who want to breathe it. Elite level sport is not designed to be shared. It’s designed to be incredibly specific and individualized, and finding community within it becomes an intention rather than a given. The more specialized her training became, the more difficult it was to feel the easy embrace of camaraderie, and Austin says she now has to be incredibly selective about who she rides with and when. A hard ride for you isn’t a hard ride for your buddy, and you may have to dress warmer than you want because your friend isn’t great on the descents. Often it’s easier to just go it alone, and really nail the workout the way it’s written to be ridden. Elite athletics culture encourages this monastic approach, and Austin flourished as a starving monk/athlete/artist. She has always been on the lookout for solitary efforts and events that test her against herself, cultivating a higher threshold for discomfort and an exploration of the hazy edges of limits. 

But while the #monklife was rewarding in and of itself, Austin, like all of us in high level sport, had a goal: to race her bike at the highest level possible. She spoke about how she could have dimmed her light, kept a lower profile, and maybe things would have been different. But she felt like that would be cheating the thing she loved, and she respected it enough to want to give all of herself to it. 

Then Austin won the Tour of the Gila. 

Then the UCI decided she would never win it again. 

Overnight the rug had been pulled out from under her feet, but it was more than that. Austin had seen American riders win the Tour of the Gila and ride that high straight across the ocean: to the promised land of European racing and a pro contract. Winning that race, Austin had put her hands on the new ladder that would carry her up, out and beyond. She could feel all of the hard work, the loneliness and the sacrifices start to fade in the light of the reward. But as soon as she set her foot on the first rung, the whole ladder collapsed at her feet. The light she saw blinded her instead of guiding her.

I expected Austin to be bitter about what followed that win. She didn’t mince words. It sucked. How could it not? One day she was at the peak of her career, the next day she was out of work with no severance pay. She was out of options and being attacked for it. But she didn’t sound angry, wronged, or bitter. She had made the decision to live fully in her effort, and she knew that all athletes, to some extent, play on borrowed time. She didn’t allow what happened to determine her relationship to sport. She has moved on from that moment to chase new highs, and still rides in search of all consuming projects.

One of the silver linings Austin found in the rubble was time and space to think. She explained that while she was working so single-mindedly towards her goal, she didn’t have time to stop and think why. Why am I doing this? What is here that’s good for me? What is here that’s hurting me? 

First things first, Austin threw out the idea of having a healthy relationship with sport. She explained that while she’s young and able, she wants to give all of herself to her craft, and that, by definition, just isn’t healthy. We both agreed that society has normalized extreme and unhealthy athletic behaviors because they tend to make our bodies smaller. Lots of people I know assume that by being an athlete I lead an extremely “healthy” life. But there have been plenty of times where I eat until I vomit, don’t eat enough, can’t sleep, sleep too much, and generally latch onto addictive and harmful habits in pursuit of a little more speed.  

So maybe if we just call it by its name it will be better? High level sport isn’t healthy by definition, and that’s not the point anyway. The point is to go a little crazy. Sport in its purest form toes the line between euphoria and pain: sometimes even between success and death. That, as Austin said and now I too will be saying, “is an out of pocket way to live.” Oftentimes mental health support focuses on how to get us up and running in time for race day. We wondered if there shouldn’t be more inquiries into the pathology of elite athletes: who did this to you? Why are you here? What are you running from or towards?

For now, Austin is in love with the madness. She is actively creating community wherever she travels, and is setting some new goals that will test her against herself. As we were winding down our conversation, I asked Austin what she wishes more people asked her about. She didn’t hesitate: “Movies!” She loves movies and documentaries and stories about stories, and somehow it didn’t surprise me that this soft spoken yet fierce, crazy and thoughtful woman would love stories. She talked about her love for Robert Altman, and I feel like this quote hovered underneath the skin of our discussion: “Wisdom and love have nothing to do with one another. Wisdom is staying alive, survival. You’re wise if you don’t stick your finger in the light plug. Love – you’ll stick your finger in anything.” 

We perhaps know better than to give our hearts to something so fickle as sport: we could be wise. But we love it goddamnit, and that will keep us sticking our fingers in the light plug again and again…hoping for sparks.

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Written by Skyler Espinoza

How My Derpy Dog Saved My Life

TW: Suicidal ideation

I had a dog growing up, but I was fond of him in the way that a child likes a friend she doesn’t have a lot in common with. He felt like a piece of my home, but never one that I was deeply connected to, or felt a deep sense of responsibility for (sorry mom and dad). I always used to roll my eyes at the paw print shaped bumper stickers reading “Who Rescued Who?” and couldn’t relate to people who treated their dogs like children. I had lots of friends with dogs, and my husband and I had talked about getting a pet, but he is a self-proclaimed cat person and our lifestyle includes a lot of travel, so talks never went beyond “awwing” at puppy videos. 

Almost 2 years ago, on a trip to Seattle, my husband and I made two new human friends and one doggo friend. Albert was a rescued greyhound with an amputated back leg living in the home of our friends Erin and Jonathan, and almost as soon as we met him we knew our lives were going to change. He was tender and gently playful for such a big dog, had a catlike ability to find the sunny spots but loved scratches and snuggles. He seemed like the perfect companion, and something in our hearts shifted. 

We adopted our own three legged greyhound a few months later. Galleta had been abandoned near a vet with her leg broken and we adopted her a few weeks after her amputation. We had to convince our landlord to let us adopt a dog, and go through a very rigorous adoption process to bring her home with us, and at times I thought “maybe we should just scrap the whole thing.” But we’d gotten in too far to turn around, and one sunny day in October I packed Galleta and into our small car and kidnapped her. She was gentle, nervous, submissive and a little scared: I didn’t hear her bark until she had lived with us for months. She was friendly but skeptical, and wasn’t very interactive. At first it seemed like my relationship with her would be like the one I had with my childhood dog: I enjoyed having her there, but she didn’t seem to like us that much, and she felt a little like a stranger. 

But as Galle began to trust us and love us, she wormed her way into my heart in the way only a rescued dog can I think. She came to us so vulnerable, literally broken, and we held her and loved her and whispered sweet nothings in her impossibly soft ears. We scratched her tummy and carefully wiped her dirty paws, and I’ve made clothes to keep her looking cute and feeling cozy. Every single morning she runs into our room when I wake up, throwing her body excitedly around in circles and whacking her tail against me, then our bed. Every time I walk through the door she jumps off the couch to circle me, and jumps up to my chest, her one front paw keeping her steady as she kisses my face. 

There’s a set of train tracks that run right near our house. There have been more moments than I’d like to admit over the past few years when I’ve been stuck waiting for a train to pass, and envisioned how easy it would be to just duck my head under the barrier, push one little scoot with my foot, and be stuck right in the middle of the tracks when the train comes. In those moments I obviously think of my family, and the people who love me most. But somehow in those darkest moments my brain convinces me that while those people would be sad, they’d ultimately understand.

The creature who wouldn’t understand, or be able to be devastated, then angry, or hate and then forgive me someday would be my dog. She loves me with a love that’s more simple than that. She understands that I’ll be there for her with scratches, treats and snuggles. She depends on me to get out of bed every morning so she can whack me with her tail, and that’s why she loves me. She loves me simply because of my presence. She depends on me being dependable, and not disappearing from one day to the next. So in those moments I think about her ears, and her tail, and her unabashed and uncomplicated joy, and it feels like a warm hug and a whisper in my ear that I am loved. 

I’m not saying that if you’re depressed, or struggling, that a dog is a replacement for professional help. But I am saying that I’ve found the most extraordinary love in the most unlikely place, and maybe if you’re struggling you can remember that love doesn’t always have to be big and out loud. It can be soft and simple. It can look ridiculous walking on three legs in a dinosaur costume, or drooling all over your couch. It can be constant, straightforward and gentle. If you’re very quiet at night, sometimes it even comes in the form of a little fart: the true sign of coming home. 

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Written by Skyler Espinoza

Connection

I first met Molly Hamrick over FaceTime. In an attempt to get to know each other, I asked, “which Parks and Rec character do you think you are most like?” She and I both agreed that we “wish we were Aprils but are really Leslies.” Secure in the knowledge that I’d found a keeper, both as a friend and a roomie, I moved in with Molly a few weeks later. We were both starting coaching roles at Stanford, me as the assistant of the lightweight rowing program, her with the openweight program. Since then Molly has grown from a colleague to a close friend, and has helped me through some of the toughest moments of the last few years. She was sweet enough to sit down with me recently as we celebrated our 5th consecutive Galentine’s day date, and I’m so honored and excited to share her story with all of you. 

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Molly grew up in Tampa Bay, and has all the tie-dye and a dad who likes to ride a cruiser in cutoff jean shorts to prove it. She played softball (think agro catcher vibes) growing up, her experience with rowing limited to one learn to row camp and years of watching boats float by her window on the way to school. But apparently Molly told anyone who asked that she knew she was going to be a rower one day. While we can get away with the “all spunk no skill” ball sport attitude in youth sports, the agro grinders are drawn to the call of the pain cave and Molly was no different. As she entered high school she fell in love with the immediate feedback of rowing, and how hard work produced tangible results. There is an unlimited amount of space for girls who want to mash on it in rowing, spaces that are sometimes limited to a time and place in other sports.

Molly also loved the feel of rowing. For people who’ve never rowed (and even some who have, aka me in my first years), the feeling of a great rowing stroke is hard to describe, and sometimes even harder to truly experience. It’s simultaneously powerful and delicate; deliberate and intuitive. Water is a moving, changing element, and to put a blade against it and try to control its force with your tiniest and largest muscles is a constant struggle, art and practice. The feel of your muscles against the oar against the water is often referred to with one elusive word: connection.

Molly felt immediately connected to rowing in the physical sense: she said that the connection to the oar handle and the water was something that always came naturally to her. She also started to feel stronger in her personality, more connected to her power and her voice. Once Molly had a taste of this powerful connection, she was all in. Four years later, Molly was pushing off a new dock far from home, as a tiger cub at the Princeton boathouse. Molly’s collegiate career was full of challenges, championships, friendship and tiger stripes, but probably the biggest connection Molly formed at Princeton was with her head coach, Lori Dauphiny. Molly smiled remembering a quote about Lori, that she “coached every stroke like a national championship depended on it.” Molly was drawn to Lori’s unbridled dedication and raw passion, and soaked it all in. She treasured the relationship with a coach who made her feel like rowing was important, and giving all of yourself to a team is a goal worth chasing. 

In the US, the rowing path towards the Olympics begins in earnest through U23 invites. Despite being in the top boat every semester following her freshman fall, and becoming a national champion her sophomore year, Molly couldn’t get a text back. The reason? She was too short. National team coaches believed that she wasn’t worth investing in because, no matter how fast she was, they believed she wouldn’t be able to match the titans of the senior national team.

But Molly wasn’t willing to give up on her dream of making that national team, and becoming an Olympian one day. After graduating, Molly moved her whole life to Boston to continue to train with the high performance group at Riverside Boat Club. A transition we don’t talk about enough in college is the huge leap from the college to the “pro” scene. Suddenly you are without your team, your coach, your school athletic training room and physical therapy, the dining hall and the emotional support of your community. In college, everyone shows up at the same time, and does the same workout. There’s barely any motivation needed to show up to practice, because 30+ of your best friends are going to be there. After college you’re often given a training plan and a “go get ‘em!” and left to your own devices to sort out the rest.

For Molly, the transition bewildered, then empowered her. She was initially thrown by the lack of schedule and her new surroundings, but quickly took to the challenge and let the training and the process envelop her. She piled on her own extra work to the prescribed training plan, and, at first, everything she did was making her faster. She had huge successes and setbacks over the next few years leading up to the Olympic trials for the Games in 2016, finding speed she never thought she had, and keeping her chin up in face of the closed doors. Molly fought through all of it and achieved a huge milestone on her path: she had made it back to Princeton and was training with the senior national team. 

But something was wrong.  

The connection that Molly had always felt to rowing, the one constant over the previous decade and more, wasn’t coursing through her fingertips. She didn’t feel excited to be on the water, and her muscles weren’t responding to what her brain knew they had to do. She would be lengths ahead of her training group one week, then barely keeping pace the next. She knew the rowing stroke, and her connection to it and herself wasn’t there.

Molly knew it was time to put her boat on the rack. Over the years I’ve gotten to know Molly, and simultaneously gotten to truly know high performance endurance sport, I’ve become more and more impressed by this decision. It takes an incredible amount of self-awareness and confidence to make the decision to stop, and there are few people who truly understand that this decision is 1000% times harder than the decision to keep going. But Molly made it, and knew it was the right one. 

One of her first calls was back to Lori, who asked if Molly had considered coaching. Molly never thought she’d be a coach, and certainly not this early in her career. But she trusted her gut and packed her bags for Princeton yet again, this time to return as a volunteer assistant coach. Coaching would bring that connection back to her, and eventually bring her across the country to move into a dingy apartment with me, and start to guide a hungry Stanford team. 

I asked Molly to “pitch” coaching to me and my readers, because selfishly I want more of the incredible athletes I know to become coaches. Molly’s eyes lit up as she talked about the potential to have an incredible impact on the lives of young people. She knows that sport has the power to be a safe space to grow, to fail, to become powerful and unstoppable. She helps her athletes to discover their potential, grow their love for the sport and forge personal connections to last a lifetime. There are few mentorship roles in our lives more important than our relationships to our coaches, and Molly’s athletes are lucky to have such a good one.

Molly is universally beloved, tough in all the right ways and puts in the effort to build a meaningful relationship with each one of her athletes (even the shy ones). Those relationships begin years before Molly ever gets to coach an athlete. Throughout the recruiting process, Molly makes sure she is not only building a team that can win, but a team that will be just that: a team. She doesn’t take for granted the privilege and pressure of basically choosing someone else’s best friends for them, and it’s working. The trust that Molly’s athletes have in her is implicit and unshakeable: you can tell just from attending practice with her. And Molly doesn’t take that for granted either. At one point in our conversation she told me she makes sure to thank her athletes for their effort and trust in her. Who does that??

Anyway. If I could somehow become a collegiate rower and be coached by Molly, I would, without hesitation. But for now I guess I’ll have to settle with getting to be her friend, and crying a couple tears of pride and happiness every time Molly gets to add a ridiculously large natty champ ring to her growing collection. 

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Follow along with Molly and her incredible team this year @stanfordwcrew

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Written by Skyler Espinoza

Photo Cred to Zamani Feelings

This Ain’t Texas

Today’s blog post has nothing to do with sports. In honor of black history month, today’s blog is a little class is in session moment about Beyoncé and country music. 

I grew up in a town where about 10 radio stations worked, and 3 of them were country music. I was raised on country because I was raised in the country. Country music is a uniquely American music genre, because at its core it describes a uniquely American experience: good ol’ small town USA. I’ve gone through periods of my life where I tried to separate myself from country music, and there certainly are some artists I won’t listen to anymore because of the things they’ve said or sung (Don’t let the door hit you on your way out, Toby Keith.). But no matter how hard I try there is nothing that hits for me like country. 

(I will never be a cool mom. Sigh.)

Although I feel like I belong in country music, it doesn’t belong to me: it belongs to the South. I didn’t grow up eating fried chicken or collard greens, and I’ve never been to Nashville. The lyrics, the sound, the instruments, the dances, the twang all belong to the Bible Belt. Country music is a product of the South, but it has also shaped external opinions of the South. Country music as an export of that region has everyone else believing that only racist, white, undereducated people live there. 

You know who else lives in the south? Black Americans. Almost 60% of all black Americans live in the Southern region of the United States. There is a fundamental discord between the idea that country music represents life in the south, but doesn’t represent the lived experiences of black Americans. Oftentimes the lyrics of country songs are exclusionary of minorities at best, and aggressively racist and threatening at worst. There is a genre that exists to describe life in the south and it’s racist! What the actual hell!

Also, I’m not going to go all Ken Burns on people here and tell you the history of country music (but you should! Look it up!) but let’s just say that its deepest roots come from music sung by slaves. So let’s not pretend that this music isn’t black.

Enter our Queen. Beyoncé is from Houston, a fact that I think a lot of people forget (because we think that people from the South are uneducated and “backwards.”… say that out loud to yourself after learning who lives there). By recording a country album, Beyoncé is saying: this genre is worthy. The music of the South is important. The people of the South are worth listening to. Country music is black music, and deserves to be recorded by sophisticated, intelligent, beautiful and successful artists. Black Americans from the country deserve to be seen and heard in the country music industry. 

Her decision to move into the country space has had an immediate effect on country, and people who listen to it. The internet is blowing up with videos of queer people and people of color entering their “hoe-down” phases. They are reveling in the joy that is country music, some for the first time.

I love country music. I think it is comforting and finger snapping in a way no other genre quite gets, and if you are going through a breakup… let me tell you there is a country song for that. This music should be for everyone, and Beyoncé is making sure that everyone knows there are no limits to her influence, and her power to shape a powerfully exclusionary cultural narrative. There is room for everyone in the Beyhive, and if you haven’t listened to the new tracks, wyd. 

All hail the Queen. 

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Written by Skyler Espinoza

Photo Credit to Variety

Do I… hate men?

Hannah and I were lifting this week, and she asked me if I ever dated women. I asked her what prompted this sudden curiosity about my dating history, and she said, “You seem to really hate men.” I laughed it off. Of course not! I love men! In fact, some of my best friends are men. I have a dad, three brothers and a husband! (Alas no son, which would really make sure I could never ever be a misandrist, but maybe one day I’ll have one to boost my platform. A girl can dream.)

But Hannah’s comment and the way it made me feel has me reflecting on my relationship to men. So much of what I complain about on my blog is about men in sports, and almost all of the people I promote and uplift are not men. The HUGE majority of my negative experiences in sports have been created by men, and a lot of the institutional failings of sports have male fingerprints all over the designs. It made me think about how so many of my interactions with men in sports rub me the wrong way– and actually how the majority of my interactions with men in general rub me the wrong way. When a strange man approaches me, my hackles immediately go up. 

Is it me? Am I the drama?

I grew up in a large family full of boys, and was a huge tomboy growing up. My best childhood friends were boys, and I often had the thought that I’d much rather be a boy: I had the sense that life would be much simpler that way. In other words, I was not taught to dislike men. I never really thought of myself as a feminist/part-time misandrist until I went to college. Or more specifically, when I went to college and then came home. Over my freshman year winter break I was propositioned by one of my childhood “best friends.” He asked me to have sex with him, “because I was a girl and he didn’t want to be a virgin anymore.” Ask any woman you know. There’s absolutely a turning point where we understand that to be a woman, or really just not a man, is to be treated less than. By people we know, people we love, people we’ve never met, people on the internet. This type of incident is not sensational, it’s mundane.

I had to google “what’s the word for misogyny, but for men” while preparing to write this article. And chances are, you had to as well. WHY, in a world created by and for men, where men hold a HUGE majority of the wealth and power, where men are protected to abuse and destroy, can there possibly be more need and use for the word that means a hatred of women? Because misogyny is necessary to keep women feeling less than, and convince men that women deserve to be second class citizens. Misandry is simply a reaction to that oppression, and therefore unnecessary for maintaining the status quo.  

In sports, I’ve had men yell at me that I don’t belong, touch me without my permission, sweat on me, force me into uncomfortable situations and make me cry. And, as a white, cis, hetero woman in sports, I also know that my experiences are only a fraction of the discrimination and belittlement my friends of color and trans friends have gone through. The entitlement, the aggression, the gate-keeping and the discrimination of men in sport is just really quite overwhelming. Of course there are women who do this shit. There are women who bully people online and in person, and there are nonbinary people who are unkind and straight up shitty. But they just don’t perpetrate, in my experience, anywhere near the same level of bullshit. 

So really, what I don’t understand is how I could not have a prejudice against men. I have had SO many negative experiences with men I don’t know, and so few with non-men I don’t know, that I feel like I’d be a bit of an idiot if I didn’t have that cautious prejudice. How could I not prefer the company of women and gender diverse people when, when I meet them, the words out of their mouths are usually supportive and generous? I so rarely feel condescended to, or made to feel stupid or inferior in my conversations with women. 

I feel like somehow I’m legally obligated to say that OF COURSE there are exceptions. I love lots of men. The men I love are good, and kind. They are caring. They are loving. They are not afraid to be gentle, they are supportive in all of the right ways and care deeply for the people in their lives. I’ve also had wonderful interactions with male strangers, who have worked to be all things that men traditionally are not encouraged to be. They are good listeners and they are curious about the experiences of others. They ask before they touch; they think before they act.  

So perhaps it isn’t men I hate per se, but the masculinity and the superiority that many men latch onto like starved leeches. It’s the fragility and the yelling and the Taylor Swift-bashing nonsense that I just can’t stand. It’s all the freaking noise and nonsense. 

But also I think yes. I have a problem with a lot of men. They should change. 

The end. 

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Written by Skyler Espinoza

Lady Chatterley’s Butt

Oh yes oh yes!! This is a blog about butts! Sometimes I wish someone would pay me to write this blog, and, at other times, like this one, I don’t mind a bit because I get to write about exactly what I please. 

The story of how I ended up with Lady Chatterley’s Lover as one of my bedtime reads on my current training trip is a little too long and convoluted for my purposes here, but it’s with me in LA on my bedside table, wrapped carefully in one of those pretentious “classics” covers. I’m about 90% through the book, and decided to start watching the 2022 film adaptation in concert with my read, to see what the current take is on a book so scandalous that it launched an obscenity trial. 

While the book does indeed contain some quite graphic scenes and language, what caught my attention has been the descriptions of Lady Chatterley’s body. D.H. Lawrence takes pages and pages to communicate to us what a ruddy, “heavy” and “round” figure Lady Chatterley has. Her lover admires the “beautiful, curving drop of her haunches,” (Haunches! What a great word!) and pronounces about her rear end:  “It’s a bottom as could hold the world up, it is.” 

In the film adaptation, Lady Chatterley is played by a lovely Emma Corrin. They are every bit the English lady caught up in a torrid love affair, and do the whole thing rather nicely. However, their butt would certainly not hold up the world. Their butt would hold up Connecticut, at best. I just couldn’t stop a confusing feeling coming up during the sex scenes (of which there are many), when Lady Chatterley is divested of her flimsy period drama garments. She is so skinny I felt like I was being transported from England to Avatar, or she was about to sprout wings and devour her lover like some sort of banshee bird. I could see every one of her ribs, and her tiny waist barely flared to bony hips and a barely there rear end. 

Of course there is nothing wrong, inherently, with being incredibly thin. I’m sure the person in this film (whether it is Emma Corrin or a lovely body double) works very hard to have a body that looks the way it does. I’ve just spent so many years ingesting media that features women, and people in general, who have butts that could hold up the world, that when I see someone so waif-like and fragile, it throws me for a loop. My Instagram algorithm has figured out I would rather see someone with thick thighs throwing a hammer than a starved model, and rather see someone farming than dieting. 

As athletes, as women, we are told many things about our bodies. Something I’ve always wondered about is the empowering line of thought that goes something like “don’t love your body for what it looks like, love it for what it is capable of.” If that’s empowering for you, amazing! It has been for me, at times: I love what my body can do. But I think it also has the underlying message that strong or fat or thick or jiggly bodies are not lovable without a higher purpose. That if I have an actual butt, it better be good for something!

There are a lot of issues with Lady Chatterley’s Lover read about a century down the road, but something I appreciate is the object of all the Lover-ing is a woman with some haunches on her. And in the film adaptation, the filmmakers have cheated us a bit by saying that thick haunches are not what is required in the role of the lovable lady. Lady Chatterley, as Mr. Lawrence wrote her, is a solid and strong woman, even though pretty much the only thing she does in the book is wander around and have sex! She doesn’t throw any hammers or play rugby or squat huge amounts of weight in the gym. She just exists, and that in and of itself is lovable. Part of Lawrence’s aim in writing this book, he says, is to catch the mind up to the wild capacities of our bodies: to release us from the shame of our desires and the magic of our physical selves. 

Seems like we still have some work to do. 

All of our bodies deserve to be loved, by others and us, just as they are, and for doing little else other than existing. Love is not a reward for exemplary performance, but something that should be freely given to people just as they are: not as we wish them to be. Our bodies are the same. They deserve to be loved exactly as they are, not as we might wish them to be. 

So anyway. Give yourself a little tenderness today and appreciate your body, haunches and all, and thank you for reading this slightly strange edition of my blog. 

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Written by Skyler Espinoza