Mina Samuels's Blog, page 10
February 24, 2010
Women's Lib, Feminism, Womanism...
Women's Lib, Feminism, Womanism--all describe ways in which women have worked toward the ultimate goal of being able to live their lives as they choose, to pursue happiness in the manner appropriate to each of them, wherever they live, whatever their circumstances.
The theories and practices become more nuanced all the time. The work is not done, for sure.
But here's a great story from a woman who learned how to run like a girl, well, really, throw and hit like a girl, before any of those ...
The theories and practices become more nuanced all the time. The work is not done, for sure.
But here's a great story from a woman who learned how to run like a girl, well, really, throw and hit like a girl, before any of those ...
February 16, 2010
Delete "slut"
Gayle Barron, who won the Boston Marathon for women in 1978, once said that she struggled with being a pioneer. Not so much because of men's attitudes, but because her women friends thought she ought to be at home with her family, in "a woman's place," in other words. Her friends didn't celebrate her successes. Worse still, they disapproved. She wonders how much she held back from achieving her true potential, for the sake of keeping her friends.
Yes, that was 1978. Have things really c...
Yes, that was 1978. Have things really c...
January 29, 2010
Hers & His
Today I was working on the chapter in Run Like a Girl about the fraught-ness (if that's a word) of the relationship between women, men and sports. I titled the chapter, Hers & His, in homage to an exquisitely drawn, small Irish documentary I saw at the Sundance Film Festival a few days ago, titled His & Hers, a collage of interviews with girls and women, ordered chronologically by age, from two to ninety-two, each talking in some fashion about their relationship to the men in their lives, fa...
January 21, 2010
The Healing Properties of Kayaks
Paula's kayak got her through some hard times.
"Big Blue" was a "free" kayak, acquired through a credit card rewards program on a whim. The bright blue two-person kayak caught her eye and she imagined her husband and herself on a northern Wisconsin lake. They'd never kayaked before. When it arrived, her husband, who hadn't known she was getting it, asked what she planned to do with it. The two of them would stare at it out the window, as they drank their morning coffee. It began to grow...
"Big Blue" was a "free" kayak, acquired through a credit card rewards program on a whim. The bright blue two-person kayak caught her eye and she imagined her husband and herself on a northern Wisconsin lake. They'd never kayaked before. When it arrived, her husband, who hadn't known she was getting it, asked what she planned to do with it. The two of them would stare at it out the window, as they drank their morning coffee. It began to grow...
January 11, 2010
Who We Are Is How We Move
I met with two incredibly energizing women today, and am, incidentally, now in danger of taking up yet another athletic pursuit--karate. Here's just a tiny slice of what we talked about.
"Who we are, is how we move," Michelle Gay, founder of the Society for Martial Arts Instruction, a former dancer and black belt in karate, as well as a Certified Laban Movement Analyst, told me. "Movement is somatic."
In the dictionary, somatic is defined as being "of the body, as distin...
"Who we are, is how we move," Michelle Gay, founder of the Society for Martial Arts Instruction, a former dancer and black belt in karate, as well as a Certified Laban Movement Analyst, told me. "Movement is somatic."
In the dictionary, somatic is defined as being "of the body, as distin...
