How Public Radio Gets Me to the Gym
Going to the gym is the bane of my existence. I'm not an athletic person and there's almost nothing I despise more than getting up at 6AM every morning so I can check my email, drink a requisite cup of coffee, and get in a bit of exercise before catching the subway to work. But I do it. Every flippin' day, I command myself to do this thing I hate because I know it's good for me. Well, and because that's when I listen to NPR.
I developed a love of public radio when I was living in the stationary city of Atlanta, GA. To combat the notorious inertia of commuter traffic in and out of the southern metropolis, I tuned my station to NPR. Near the left the dial (a symbolic reflection of its politics?), I was introduced to the soothing voice of Terry Gross as she deftly interviewed the likes of actor John Malkovich, illustrator Marjane Satrapi, and musician Booty Collins – all with the same volume of couth and rigor. These stimulating conversations helped get me through a year of substitute teaching in some of the most challenging schools in the metro Atlanta area by providing a space of calm for my inevitably frazzled end-of-the-workday mind. So, when it came to going to the gym, this should have been a piece of cake. But it wasn’t.
Truth be told, I’d rather be baking that piece of cake (and I’m not a baker) than chugging along on a treadmill or straining to do just one chin up – on an assisted machine no less. I’m not obese person, or even overweight; I’m considered “normal” and healthy for a person my height and heft. It’s just that I’m tall and solid and I don’t like to exercise. I didn’t play sports as a child because my single mother of three didn’t have the money to pay for afterschool programs. So, I never got into the habit of seeing physical activity as fun. I saw it as something to be resented and envied, something other kids could do that I couldn’t. And eventually I convinced myself I didn’t want to play sports anyway. Who wants to be a dumb jock?
Later in college, as a campus activist who was developing a feminist consciousness, I wrote off going to the gym as “something anorexic girls do.” And god forbid I be mistaken for one of those. At eighteen years old, I was too cool to care about my body, and too much of a feminist dogmatist to make the connection between working out and health. And to be honest, if I had paid much attention and become more self-aware then, I might have realized that starving my body of exercise was probably just as bad as starving myself of food. Maybe worse, because in my case, I had a political justification to obfuscate self-delusion.
On my last birthday, I turned thirty years old. And while I didn’t have some cliché crisis about my age, I did finally admit that I must start taking better care of myself. Being vegetarian isn’t enough when you’re eating a ton of simple carbs without getting any cardio. So, I gave myself a birthday present: a membership to the gym.
The first visit was pretty excruciating. Lady Gaga was blasting at me from every possible angle and all I could see in any mirror-laden direction was the scowl on my sweaty face. The seconds dragged and I searched for an excuse to skip out early. Truth be told, I only stayed the full hour because my partner had come with me, and I didn’t want to cut his workout short by asking him to leave. So, I spent the time silently pondering how to make these daily excursions a little less miserable. The answer dawned on me: NPR.
If you look at my iPod, you’ll find that it contains absolutely no music – only podcasts. As I’m lacing up my sneakers, the familiar voices of journalists fill my ears and it’s go time. If I can stay focused on what Culturetopia’s Neda Ulaby has to say about Steve Harvey’s fruitless attempts to appeal to white people then I can make it through my warm up on the treadmill. By concentrating on the comedic banter of the Pop Culture Happy Hour crew, I find a way to ignore the fact that my heart is pounding at 160 beats per minute. Soon enough my workout is finished and I make a break for the showers, pondering the new knowledge I've just been exposed to and giddy about what I might learn the following day: perhaps the mysterious homing ability of pigeons or a review roundup of Freedom.
My method isn’t foolproof and sometimes it results in a gaff, like laughing out loud at Radiolab’s investigative antics or stifling a sob elicited from a story told at The Moth. I’ve solicited more than a few concerned glances at my seemingly bizarre behavior. But I do what I need to do in order to pull through yet another morning of reticence and resistance. You see, what I’m shedding isn’t pounds; it’s the past. And in my case, NPR is beneficial for both my body and my mind.
I really like this piece, Holly. Too much of the media coverage on these types of marches advocating women's right to be safe in public space (read: SlutWalks) have ignored the way they may further marginalize muslim women, no doubt because the people organizing them aren't doing so with muslim women (or other marginalized groups) in mind. It's nice to see what an indigenously organized protest against street harassment looks like for a change! Also reminds me of something Gary Younge told me about the SlutWalk in Birmingham, England: "a group of hijab-wearing Muslim women joined the SlutWalk – because the idea was that they support the right of people to wear what they want no matter what it is or for what reason they wear it." THAT is what solidarity looks like, not to mention disrupting/expanding the existing narrative so that your own rights/needs are included. Inshallah, their work will continue to be such a success!
Posted by mandyvandeven | July 26, 2011 4:03 PM
Echo, Forgive me if I'm misinterpreting your lengthy response, but it seems like you're saying that because women live under patriarchal oppression, all tools of the patriarchy are implicitly oppressive. Is that correct?
If so, I both agree and disagree with you. I do think it is possible to alter a tool to the point of having forged a weapon for dismantling, but perhaps that's a combination of my Marxist idealism and Shiva philosophy speaking: the key to the system's destruction can be provided by the system itself, as it was created to self-destruct.
I also think its important to not overlook one's agency, and the implicit paternalism in saying that the choices a woman makes for herself are disempowering (and the choices you favor are better) when she believes otherwise. This article doesn't have the voices of white males saying pole dancing is empowering; it has the voices of Indian women. And while the larger context should be considered alongside one's personal experience in discussions of oppression and freedom, why should the larger context take precedence? Should it not be considered in tandem with individual freedoms? If not, aren't you simply replacing one hierarchy with another? And what exactly does this non-male-centered sexuality look like? Can it not include something like pornography and pole dancing?
Posted by mandyvandeven | February 22, 2010 11:24 PM
Actually, Koibrush, that question should have been "what do you think this brand of feminism means for INDIAN women" since that is what this article is about, and the responses should pertain to the particular subject matter at hand.
Posted by mandyvandeven | February 22, 2010 11:07 PM
Koibrush: So what do you think this brand of feminism means for women?
I don't expect nor do I want readers to simply agree with me. I want to dialogue, and so I respond to the comments.
It should be clarified that what I have written here is what Indian women have told me about their own perspectives on whether erotic dancing is freeing or empowering, some of which I agree with and some of which I don't. Other things still I maintain an ambivalence about. What I do believe, however, is that it is important for non-Indians (particularly non-Indian feminists) to listen to Indian women when they speak about their own lives and forms of resistance and empowerment, as they are the experts in their own experience. And while a non-Indian cannot know what it is to be Indian, there is certainly room for empathy.
Posted by mandyvandeven | February 22, 2010 11:02 PM
What do you mean by "empowering" exactly? Empowering to whom? And in what way? And for how long? And who gets to decide what is and isn't empowering? And if you decide that erotic dance isn't empowering and another woman believes it is, are you not denying her agency and ability to speak her own truth? Feminists use this term "empowering" a lot without actually specifying what they mean by it.
Also, what do you mean by "traditional"? It's important to remember that India is not the United States. Which is to say that India doesn't have the same social and historical context as the US, and therefore, actions that appear to people from the US (or the West more generally) to be an adoption of "western post feminist amalgamation of hetero-norms about sexuality, femininity and consumption" may not actually be this way when viewed through India's, not America's, lens. Viewing it as a Western co-optation denies that there may be something uniquely Indian about the actions and experience, and if one takes that perspective, then you can also argue that adopting feminism and freedom that resembles the West is eroding "true" Indian culture. (This is what is being argued here by Hindutva groups and Indian feminists are struggling against this ideological framing.)
That being said, many feminists in America disagree with your assertion that erotic dance is anti-feminist or replicating sexist norms. There is wide variation in the experiences of men and women who participate in the sex industry. An alternative to the standard dichotomy of end sex work vs. have exploitative sex work is to reform sex work, which many feminists are doing (see: Audacia Ray, Courtney Trouble, Feminist Porn Awards, etc.)
Furthermore, taking a class in erotic dance does not make a woman a sex worker (though this is just the accusation--overt sexuality = whore--that would no doubt be lobbed at them from the conservative family/friends from whom Indian women hide the real nature of their fitness activity), and none of the women in this article are sex workers either. So you're mixing a few of your points together in ways that need to be more clearly delineated.
Posted by mandyvandeven | January 25, 2010 7:18 PM
Merryn- So do you see this as a kind of "false consciousness" on the part of Indian women?
Posted by mandyvandeven | January 22, 2010 4:18 AM
Thanks Parwati. I think the systematic oppression of Indian women is truth. But I also know my experience with India is severely limited in that I have only lived in Kolkata. The contributors to this book, such as Veena Poonancha, are much more qualified to address that issue than I am.
I wonder if it is actually that Westernization and Western culture is being adopted or if it's being co-opted. More and more I think it's the latter because it's not a wholesale import by any means. I also wonder if the changing economic makeup of India as a whole (i.e., a growing middle class) isn't a primary cause of the advancement of women's rights. But I'm also basing that on a Western model, as feminism in the US grew as middle class women entered the workplace in larger numbers. This is all simply my own speculation, of course.
Posted by mandyvandeven | October 16, 2009 10:45 AM
Marianne: Absolutely it would!
parwatisingari: You can buy the book online or perhaps in an Oxford Bookstore. Is there one in Goa?
Posted by mandyvandeven | August 18, 2009 3:09 AM
Thank you for your lovely comment! What I meant to say is that Deepa's films in general, not just the Elements Trilogy, focus on Indian women's experiences in the diaspora. Have you read Behind Closed Doors: Domestic Violence in India?
Posted by mandyvandeven | June 26, 2009 12:38 PM