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August 25, 2005
Doubt
I had dinner last night with a few former national lightweight rowing team compadres. Phew, that’s a lot of adjectives! The culture of rowing has a kind of stupid feature in the show of celebrating pain. Lots of t-shirts attest to this; I'm thinking of “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.” That is a groovy existential thing to sport on your chest when you're in your indestructible 20s, I suppose. But it occurs to me that the phrase remains true about the friendships one forms doing something very difficult together. So there’s an old love built on competition and survival among these women.
Anyhow, not to wax philosophical yet again. We don’t all see each other much (one now lives in France) but we fall into easy comfort with each other. We talked a lot about sports, of course. And, in light of my undertaking this little project, we were talking about sports magazines. I lamented the loss several years ago of Sports Illustrated for Women. In fact, the gap that I felt was left on the newsstand was part of what inspired me to explore this space. To my surprise, two of my jock friends said, “Oh, I was so disappointed in that magazine,” or “I hated it.” To me it was the only fitness magazine that addressed athletes who were interested in performance rather than appearance (though there was always some nod to beauty concerns). But these two were looking for the same format as SI for men, which is all about being a spectator and following the stars. This, they thought, would legitimize women’s sports, market and promote it. I was so stunned that they’d want a spectator magazine that I didn’t know what to say next.
Or what to say here. Since they are probably right, come to think of it, as SI-Women folded because of a lack of “numbers.” Lacking myself the wherewithal to follow or assign others to follow all the major (and often more interesting minor) sports where women are excelling, I must let Lisa and Carey down and cover just the little world of jockdom around me, the useful information that comes my way at random or by research, the interesting sporting tales of my friends and their x degrees of separation. My apologies, I guess.
I knew someone who called self-doubt a killer, and another someone who found people who lacked self-doubt completely boring. All new ventures, be they sports goals, jobs, projects, relationships, recipes… seem to have a moment (at least) of piercing dubiousness. Let it be noted that this is it, here.
And also that a good website that covers high-level women’s sports is Womens Sportsnet.com. There’s also a great one focusing on Canadian women’s sports called Women Warriors, and another Canadian one that focuses more on issues and social policies regarding women's and girls’ sports, with the archaicly lugubrious name of Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity.
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