My Life at the Gym

by Malin, Jo

• ISBN13: 9781438429441
• ISBN10: 1438429444
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-01-07
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Very often, my workouts are the best part of my day,” notes feminist writer Jo Malin. My Life at the Gym celebrates women’s experiences of exercise and the found spaces for this activity as places of community with other women. Neither elite athletes nor dancers, the contributors to this volume are well aware of the negative cultural messages about women’s bodies that may influence body work. Yet, like many women, they have found comfortable and healthful spaces that allow them to enjoy exercise and take care of the physical needs of their bodies. Through diverse essays, personal accounts, and poems, contributors portray everyday lives in which meaning comes from movement and from the companions they move with in a variety of activities from running, walking, swimming, and skiing to boxing, Morris dancing, and yoga, among others. A unique, positive, and largely unremarked view of exercise and its place in women’s lives, this book will resonate with and inspire many readers.

Author Biography

Jo Malin is a Project Director and Grants and Grants Specialist in the School of Education and Adjunct Assistant Professor of English at Binghamton $$$ State University of New York. She is the author of The Voice of the $$$. Embedded Maternal Narratives in Twentieth-Century Women's $$$ and the coeditor (with Victoria Boynton) of Encyclopedia $$$ Women, Writing and Solitude.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. vii
Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
The Dance
An Elegy for Dancing	p. 19
Kaleidoscope Dances	p. 31
From Ballet to Boxing: The Evolution of a Female Athlete	p. 43
The Women's Dance	p. 61
The Gym, Weight Room, Studio, And Pool
You Spin Me Right Round, Baby: Resistance, Potential, and Feminist Pedagogy in Indoor Cycling	p. 65
Beyond the Lone Images of the Superhuman Strongwoman and Well-Built Bombshell toward a New Communal Vision of Muscular Women	p. 79
Enduring Images	p. 91
The Gymnastics Group	p. 95
Gym Interrupted	p. 101
Naked Truth	p. 111
Women's Yoga: A Multigenre Meditation on Language and the Body	p. 117
On The Road, the Slopes, and the Lake
"Messing about in Boats": Rowing as l'Écriture Féminine	p. 125
Women Who Ski with Dogs	p. 135
If These Roads Could Talk: Life as a Woman on the Run	p. 145
Walking is an Exercise in Friendship	p. 151
Marathon	p. 155
List of Contributors	p. 157
Index	p. 161
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