7 Decades of Self Denial
73 years being scared of jam
Hi All, While I continue to collate my fall season of podcast guests I’m rerunning some of these early essays from way before many of you ever subscribed. I hope you enjoy this one from the archives ( and that the woman I mention here never subscribes to this substack 😂)
News: This is the last week you can enroll in my Fall Virtual Run Club (super inclusive/extremely beginner friendly I promise) and all my Self Paced Series are on a little one week sale to synch up with Run Club sign up. If you’ve been wanting to work with me - now’s your chance.
If you love this content please consider a subscription - being paid for our work is important and all my income also goes to supporting my small team of young women that make running my business possible. Thank you so much.
Now onto the show - I hope you enjoy this essay, it’s a memorable one for me.
Someone recently proudly told me, she's been dieting for 73 years…
(she's in her 80's, so beginning when she was about 14 years old)
Often when people first meet me, and learn what I do, they VASTLY misunderstand what it means when I say I teach fitness. Clearly I need to work on my elevator intro because they seem to think that hidden under my jeans and t-shirt I’m all shredded arms and oiled legs. There is an immediate assumption that I love to yell at my clients and work on my ‘trouble zones.’ Nope! not me.
Unfortunately, this woman thought I would congratulate her on her 7 decades of self denial.
While I stuttered, ‘o-Oh!’ she went on to list a variety of foods she cannot have in the house for a variety of (unreasonable) reasons because they are BAD.
My personal favorite: jams and/or preserves of any kind. This one stuck in my head for how much it spoke to each of our own fears about where our unique desires might lead us. What delights might she spread that jam upon?? What chaos might ensue? Because I couldn't help myself, I asked her.. ‘what happens when you have jam in the house?’ I imagined the jam, slathered like blood, over nude, wild dancing bodies cavorting around her living room, howling at the moon through her Brooklyn Brownstone windows, chaos... cannibalism maybe.
'I eat it all.' she said. 'oh' I said.
Let's skip the part where on the list of foods to be scared of, jam is pretty low on the fright fest, being mainly fruit but ok SUGAR and ok you often put it on DUH DUH DUH BREAD! or (maybe you want to sit down) croissants! But seriously it's still a jar of fruit. (and bread and pastry have pretty much kept the human race alive since fire, ground grains and butter were invented but that’s a topic for another day!)
What she is really saying is that preserved fruit is the key that unlocks all that is wound tight and tamped down in her. That sweet dark spread lets loose all her wildness and other such frightening untamed feelings: joy, pleasure, sensuality. She has no way to hold them. She only knows those feelings are BAD, and with them, anything which elicits them.
For women, pleasure and joy often lead to BAD things, just look at what happens to every fun sexy woman in a slasher film - G’bye! Look at what happens to women in real life! - attacked? was she out late with a skirt on?? That’s just what happens to you when you’re fun and free!
Loss of control, big emotions; lust, anger, and scary things like sexuality, sexy feelings, sexy bodies.. which are often..soft, historically lead us to asylums in straight jackets. Now, because we have agency over our own property, bank accounts and education we get called angry b*tches and have our bodily autonomy painstakingly stripped away instead. Are we feeling free yet?
I used to be scared of potato chips. What madness might erupt were I free to open a bag all on my own! What debauchery?? Over time I also noticed chips appear at happy moments of my life: chatting in the kitchen with my boo, picnics at the lake in the summer, celebrations with friends, road trips, crushed next to questionable sandwiches purchased en route to adventures. The vast majority of the times I encounter or procure chips its because I want them, and they are part of the pleasure of the moment. (And sure, if I'm stressed I will eat them as distraction. 🤷🏻♀️such is life. Life goes on.) But realizing they are just a snack I really like gave them no more power over me than any spud should. More so, realizing the pleasure I take in eating chips is part of the pleasure I take in life, returned all the power I had given them back to me, where it should be.
Patriarchy, like all oppressive systems, is insidious.
It gets inside us.
We end up doing the work of oppression to ourselves and others without the oppressor being directly involved. We happily take the food from our own plate. We easily call ourselves names.
We don’t need to be shamed into feeling small, we work hard to be smaller.
We pass it on to the next generation or encourage our friends or family. We enact the goal of a system bent on making sure those within it feel, not only, never good enough, but wrong, watched, measured, stressed, unsafe, disempowered, disembodied.
It seems small to pinch your thigh and say it’s bad. But it’s big when that is part of a system which says women’s bodies are so valueless they are not worth autonomous human rights.
When we take part in self harm we make it OK for others to be harmed.
When we say our bodies are not OK we agree that other's bodies are not OK.
When I judge my chips, I judge your peanut butter.
When I'm too ‘fat’, so too must be you.
Food stuff is so powerful because we are literally talking about FEEDING OURSELVES.
It is how we stay alive. It is how we live.
Like a baby, like a dog, like a goldfish, like a plant. We all gotta eat. You can't avoid it.
It's going to happen every day for the rest of our lives.
How long are you willing to give up your body? your mind? your joy? We might as well start undoing that swallowed up, pre-digested patriarchy now.
I want you to enjoy the pleasure of jam for 73 years.
I want you to trust yourself.
At the very least let us all have more power than a potato.
Want to work with me?
This is the last week to join Virtual Run Club! The next one isn’t until January…!
My Self Paced Series enrollment is on a little sale till Oct 4th!
Look here for ways we can connect.
