riseofavalkyrie

[riseofavalkyrie]

Most women who use a gym will have experienced that moment of psyching herself up to walk into the free weights area, knowing that many of the men who dominate the space will regard her on a range from nuisance to freak. And yes, you can technically just walk in, but there’s that extra mental hurdle to clear that most men simply don’t face, and it takes a particular kind of self-confidence not to be bothered by it at all. Some days, you just won’t feel like it. It’s the same story in the outdoor gym in my local park; if it’s full of men, I often give it a miss, not relishing the inevitable stares and all too clear sense that I don’t belong.

The inevitable reaction from some quarters to such complaints is to tell women to stop being delicate flowers – or for feminists to stop painting women as delicate flowers. And of course some women aren’t bothered by the leering and macho posturing. But women who do avoid these spaces are not being irrational, because there are plenty of accounts of hostility from men when women venture into supposedly gender-neutral shared exercise spaces. Like transit environments, then, gyms are often a classic example of a male-biased public space masquerading as equal access.

The good news is that this kind of male bias can be designed out and some of the data collection has already been done. In the mid-1990s, research by local officials in Vienna found that from the age of ten, girls’ presence in parks and public playgrounds ‘decreases significantly’. But rather than simply shrugging their shoulders and deciding that the girls just needed to toughen up, city officials wondered if there was something wrong with the design of parks. And so they planned some pilot projects, and they started to collect data. 

What they found was revealing. It turned out that single large open spaces were the problem, because these forced girls to compete with the boys for space. And girls didn’t have the confidence to compete with the boys (that’s social conditioning for you) so they tended to just let the boys have the space. But when they subdivided the parks into smaller areas, the female drop-off was reversed. They also addressed the parks’ sports facilities. Originally these spaces were encased by wire fencing on all sides, with only a single entrance area – around which groups of boys would congregate. And the girls, unwilling to run the gauntlet, simply weren’t going in. Enter, stage right, Vienna’s very own Leslie Knope, Claudia Prinz-Brandenburg, with a simple proposal: more and wider entrances. And like the grassy spaces, they also subdivided the sports courts. Formal sports like basketball were still provided for, but there was also now space for more informal activities – which girls are more likely to engage in. These were all subtle changes – but they worked. A year later, not only were there more girls in the park, the number of ‘informal activities’ had increased. And now all new parks in Vienna are designed along the same lines.

The city of Malmö, Sweden, discovered a similar male bias in the way they’d traditionally been planning ‘youth’ urban regeneration. The usual procedure was to create spaces for skating, climbing and painting grafitti. The trouble was, it wasn’t the ‘youth’ as a whole who were participating in these activities. It was almost exclusively the boys, with girls making up only 10-20% of those who used the city’s youth-directed leisure spaces and facilities. And again, rather than shrugging their shoulders and thinking there was something wrong with the girls for not wanting to use such spaces, officials turned instead to data collection.

In 2010, before they began work on their next regeneration project (converting a car park to a leisure area) city officials asked the girls what they wanted. The resulting area is well lit and, like the Viennese parks, split into a range of different-sized spaces on different levels. Since then, Christian Resebo, the official from Malmö’s traffic department who was involved in the project, tells me, ‘Two more spaces have been developed with the intention of specifically targeting girls and younger women.’

–Caroline Criado-Perez, Invisible Women (2019)

[riseofavalkyrie]

[riseofavalkyrie]

[riseofavalkyrie]

Musings of a [Single] Shield Maiden:

Read the above thread.

Some people close to me have wondered why I don’t date. Well, other than I’m focused on my life plans and working through my issues, (and the last time I tried having a steady relationship, he tried to dissuade me from going to the gym because apparently I went too often, which he covered up with BS reasons) after reading this woman’s thread, it makes me never want to date. Ever.

Though in better shape, I still exist in a fat body. And while the body is becoming fitter, it’s still currently a body that people don’t find physically attractive. Because attractiveness is subjective and varies from person to person, if someone finds me unattractive, I don’t get offended. I shrug it off and move on. The factors of attraction have never been politically correct; but some people think it’s acceptable to “pull a pig” or date a fat girl on a date or as a joke, which is cruel and rude.

Quite frankly, it’s a limbo pole so low that that people shouldn’t try to shimmy under it; yet apparently many do for a laugh.

I will be the first one to tell you that I won’t go the way of Sonalee Rashatwar and tell you you should find fat/obese people attractive if you don’t; but you should realize that they are human and treat them with respect and care. Just like you would the super fit girl you’re flirting up at the gym (when it was open...I mean. Damn you COVID).

Date someone or don’t. Don’t date someone on a dare.

[riseofavalkyrie]

[riseofavalkyrie]

[riseofavalkyrie]

An epiphany (thanks to Chicago Med)

A scene on Chicago Med between a father and daughter brought about an epiphany in my journey in establishing a connection with my father.

The scene between father and daughter had them discussing her feelings after she witnesses him dealing with a possible case of Munchausen By Proxy and she calls him on not being a good father and pointing out that it wasn’t okay. The father even admits that his actions weren’t okay and genuinely apologizes to her. The scene cuts away to the hospital at large...

I mentioned previously that my father has only issued one apology for being a “pisspoor father”.

Yet, as many of us know, there’s multiple parts of an apology: the acknowledgement of the action, the apology for the action, and the pledge to rectify or remedy the action so it doesn’t happen again.

The reason this scene hits home: he’s only acknowledged that he was a pisspoor dad and was sorry for that fact alone.

That’s it.

He didn’t acknowledge how his abandonment and neglect affected or possibly hurt me. He also didn’t offer a way to rectify or fix the situation. The thing is, he propped open the door a little. However, it keeps going shut as the lack of inaction. As Matthew Hussey posted by anonymous:

I can’t be much more succinct than that. Either get stuck in or sod off. Don’t leave me to hang and wait. I’d rather have good traffic that wants to be in my life there than have someone who drifts in and out at will who truly has no desire to be there.

[riseofavalkyrie]

[riseofavalkyrie]

Progress is Pain...

And with pain comes progress.

Sure, not all progress requires a masochist’s thirst for pain, but a lot of the work in the gym involves the breaking down of muscle in order for it to regrow into a stronger and at times, larger, muscle.

However, there are other harbingers of pain. Those usually come from the current condition of your mental and emotional well-being.

I’ve started incorporating regular therapy visits as part of my overall health regime. Thankfully, through my work EAP, I’m allowed 6 free visits with a therapist in the network. Thankfully, the therapist I’ve selected is in the network and I’m covered. (Sidenote: I’m well aware of the privilege I hold with being able to have an employer that provides this service and I wish that many had access to such programs through their employers or through any resource).

One of the things we discussed this first go around: my relationship with my father. If anything, it’s nonexistent. I exist; He exists and pretends he has only three daughters when, in actuality, he has four. It’s been this way since I can remember, actually. Mom seems to think that because my interests weren’t in line with his, he just seemed to not care. Which if you understand anything about attachment theory, this sets up a dangerous precedent per Carl Jung, known as the Electra Complex.

To break this down: Jung, who was Freud’s contemporary, saw his Oedipus complex and said... “Hmm, that’s interesting, did you ever think this might apply to women? Freud, being Freud said, “Silly Jung, Oedipus is for boys!” (I’m grossly paraphrasing, but from the reading I’ve done, Freud didn’t really go too deeply into the relationship held between girls and their fathers and mothers, it makes for interesting reading, really). But Jung said, “No? Excluding women from this really is short sided. There is a connection between your theory on a son’s relationship with his father and mother and the vice versa for daughters and their relationship with their fathers and mothers.”

Okay, so with this shit show of a summation is to go over the fact that basically, I may agree with Jung more than Freud (I’m a Psych major, I think I can make that determination on which psycholanalyst I prefer) and that more than likely have an Electra complex. When Pops chose to not really establish an connection/attachment in the formative years (0-6), and then, subsequently, my parents divorced when I was the age of four, there was no way to fix or repair that lack or attachment.

What came afterward is his marriage to my stepmom when I was about 6-7 (she is by all accounts, a good woman, just not always aware that her version of Pops isn’t the same one I [or my sister] know), and two more daughters (Both now grown: the youngest one is engaged, the eldest is with boyfriend #3, which is hopefully going well). Soon after that came the lack of vists, the lack of child support payments to a mom who worked hard, but didn’t want to push too hard until she’d had enough because “he has bills to pay too”. What memories of the visits we had, he was barely around, and I felt like I was standing on the periphery of the family dynamic wondering why the hell I was even there.

So, slam cut to current times as I’m all but weeping in my therapist’s office and she finally looks at me and says “I see so much pain when you talk about your father and there’s no way you can work toward healing if you don’t talk to him. Privately. Even if you write it down, that will help you get it together and even if you have to read straight from it, it will keep your thoughts and ideas together.” So, slowly, I’ve been putting together a letter.

However, if you wanna know how that’s been going...it’s currently stalled as the first rough draft is at work in my cubby drawer, I’m out for a biopsy with the OBGYN, and another knife to the gut came specially delivered via Facebook. I notice when people unfriend and normally I don’t search them out. But recently, my mom mentioned that my sister had been getting messages from my Dad via FB and they were messages and things that I would have appreciated.

At one point, he and I were friends on FB. We currently are not. Which would be fine if it also weren’t so obvious who his family is to him.

And he wonders why I don’t contact him.

Too many years of our birthdays being three days apart with no call, no card, no anything.

Being told at 19, to your face, that he didn’t want you around. I took him at his word.

One attempt at an apology for “being a pisspoor father” was made. That was on my 27th Birthday; I thanked him for his mindfulness (to be fair, I was production managing a show and I had a craptonne to do), but then, he launched into a diatribe about my half sisters and their interests. Didn’t bother to ask what was on my plate for that day.

After a recent dinner with my sister and step mom, wherein he barely spoke three to five sentences or so, that I needed to get in contact more...

Nope. None of this is okay. And yet you expect me to tell you it is? You haven’t been in my life since I was about five. You drifted in an out when it was convenient and yet you expect me to be happy you’re here? That the lines of communication aren’t littered with the debris of your neglect as a father and my fear of being, yet again, told I’m not worth it by your actions alone.

How can I love you when you’ve taken it away time and time again and made it conditional? I can’t deal with this cavalier disregard for my emotional well-being.

When I’m ready, you’ll know it.

[riseofavalkyrie]

When your work pays off.:

If anyone tells you losing weight, gaining muscle happens overnight, know that they are the devil spawn of P.T. Barnum and Jillian Michaels and they are indeed selling you snake oil.

The results you see here took over a year to get.

Per my scale this morning (and two other times this week) my weight stands at 259.9 down from 310.4.

In addition to that, a little side trip happened yesterday and yielded some exciting finds. I can wear size 16 jeans comfortably. My trouser size is a 14L. My shirt sizes are 14/16, with poplin/button down styles erring on the size of 16.

Y’all, I haven’t been this size since middle/high school.

In addition to this, the muscle mass is coming in nicely. Slowly, but surely this will continue to improve.

[riseofavalkyrie]

Finally a motivation video without fitness models, but with ordinary girls!

[riseofavalkyrie]

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[riseofavalkyrie]

Andrea Gibson, Take Me With You

[riseofavalkyrie]

This thread!

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[riseofavalkyrie]

This journey started on 7/Jan/2019

I signed on for an 8 week challenge with friend and trainer Scott Holliday. He’s a local bodybuilder and personal trainer.

The plan has been simple:

Five meals per day, spaced out at about 2-3 hours per day. Each meal was planned out with specific parameters in mind with substitutions in case I need to go buy something.

Workouts consist of three weight based work outs (Legs, Back, Chest) ended with HIIT sessions of 5-10 minutes and 20-30 minutes of cardio. On the off days, fasted cardio of 20-30 minutes.

My starting stats for the program

5’ 9”

310.4

BMI: 45.8

Current Stats

5’9”

292.9

BMI: 43.3

My workouts have gone up to four weight based workouts (Legs, Shoulders, Chest, Back), HIIT intervals of 10 minutes, 30 minutes cardio. Off days of 40 minutes fasted cardio.

I’m currently getting over the mystery illness of 2019 which is being treated by the generic of Levaquin, which means I haven’t left the house much save to go to the doctor and the stores that sell the medication I need. However, I’m looking to dig into the latest plan Scott has given me to the best of my ability.