The Personal is Political, the Political is Personal

This may be a crazy attempt at something else, but I’m trying to think about ways to make writing not such a painful process.  So, I’m going to create a paper for my class through this part of my blog.  We’ll see how this works.  I’m going to edit it as I go and then, hopefully, post the final product while maintaining the fragments I have.  Thanks, Ananya, for being open enough to even allow me to explore this as a possible choice for writing this paper.  It’s also giving me a chance to play with ideas about how we (de)construct our bodies in virtual formats, an idea I hope to pursue further in my eventual dissertation.

This paper is an experiment, an experiment in reading, watching, doing, and writing.  The writing part is self-explanatory.  The reading sections will come out of my research into these particular questions.  The watching is a list of fragments from my observations of watching these exercises performed by actual bodies in class.  The doing section will include not only my attempts at some of these exercises, but also various modes through which I connect and ground this research in my own body.  I want to compose these sections separately and in the end play with how they might all fit together in a paper.

Doing 

“The two most neglected muscles during pregnancy? Lower back and abs. Yes, you can work those muscles. “  pregnancy.org

I lay on the ground on my back with my feet planted.  I tilt my pelvis until I feel my abs engage.  I simultaneously extend my left leg out and my right arm above my head and then repeat this movement on the other side, all the while keeping my back pressed into the ground which keeps my pelvis tilted and my abs engaged.  20 reps.  Then I move onto pelvic thrusts (yes, thrusts).  I tilt my pelvis up again and raise my hips into the air while clenching my gluts as hard as possible.  Hold for one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand….seven seconds.  20 reps.  I rest.  I always rest before the final one, the plank.  I lay on my right side, feet on top of one another, flexed, and my right forearm at a right-angle to my body.  I lay my left arm down the left side of my body.  I fix a point on the wall and then lift my body into the air so that only my foot and forearm are touching the ground.  Hold for ten seconds then go to the other side then do both sides once more.  I always feel like a huge wuss after that last one.

I have this hip thing.  I’ve had it for a long time.  When my sister was pregnant the most painful part of her pregnancy, she says, was her hip separation pain.  So, getting ready for possible pregnancy, I go to the doctor to see what I can do about my hip thing.  At the physical therapist’s office I’m told I have, let me see if I can get this right, posterior pelvic tilt.  The right side of my hip is cocked upwards and tilted backwards.  To correct this problem I do these muscle energy exercises which gradually move my pelvis back into the correct position.  Then I do core strengthening exercises to make the muscles connected to my pelvis stronger so they can hold the new, correct position of my hips in place.  Plus, reading on all the pregnancy websites, like pregnancy.org, in addition to my doctors’ advice, it seems that it’s imperative that my abs and lower back be in shape for pregnancy.  I dig it.  My hips feel centered for the first time in my life and exercise has become something more than just trying to get fit.  I’m not trying to get fit for fun; I’m getting fit for a purpose.  My husband once asked a nurse while he was at work for tips on getting ready to get pregnant.  “Tell her (your wife) it’s akin to preparing for a marathon.”  Labor is a marathon and I’m in training.

Reading 

“The most important exercises for girls are those that develop the muscles about the waist and abdomen, not alone because great muscular power in this region is required of women, but because of the effect which exercise of these parts has upon both stomachic and intestinal digestion.”  Dudley Allen Sargent, Health, Strength, and Power, 1904

Then while researching my project on the late-nineteenth century physical culture movement, I find this passage from Sargent’s book.  I begin to wonder about a piece of advice that has remained intact for over a century.  Am I falling prey to a medical discourse that asserts it knows more about my body than I do?  Is this discourse trying to shape my body in particular ways?  Abdominal strength is required says Sargent and the “expert” on pregnancy.org.  My skepticism begins to wane somewhat when I realize that the advice I’m being given operates during a particular part of my life and for a particular reason.  Sargent’s ideas about training the female body extended this particular part of a woman’s life to encompass her entire lifespan.  Sargent’s book divides people into six categories:  children, boyhood and youth, young men, girls women, middle-aged men, and old age.  Women are not named once they fall outside of their reproductive capacities.

In 1904 Dudley Allen Sargent published his major work Health, Strength, and Power.  Known as one of the founding fathers of the physical education movement in the United States, Sargent spent the majority of his career at Harvard running the Hemenway Gymnasium.  During the summers he ran teacher’s workshops and also taught young women from local colleges.  However, his training system travelled throughout the country including to Wellesley College established in 1875.  The increasing presence of women’s colleges led to a debate about the potential dangers of higher education for young women.  One of these dangers was a neglect of the physical self.  As part of Wellesley’s initial goal, physical well-being became a staple for the college for years.  The school implemented numerous physical training systems, one of which was the Sargent system.  At the end of Sargent’s book he outlines some 56 different exercises appropriate for various ages and genders.  This paper argues that the exercises specifically targeting women constructed female active bodies in particular ways.  Not only do the exercises strengthen specific muscle groups, such as the abdomen, but much is said by which muscle groups are left out as well.  These exercises were simultaneously enabling and disabling female bodies for their entrance into twentieth century athletics.

Watching

I spent part of class yesterday watching my fellow classmates do some of the Sargent exercises.  Watching others’ bodies work through these century old exercises was enlightening.  While reading Sargent’s book I found it difficult to not view all the exercises as categorized by gender and age.  For example, it’s difficult for me to be rational about a book that only includes exercises for women up to an including their reproductive years.  It’s as if gender (and I read sexuality) disappear once fertility dries up.  As a result of my inability to de-binarize the exercises, I created other categories in an attempt to force myself to think otherwise.  For class I brought in, I think, fifteen different exercises and categorized them as follows:  competition, metaphor, and labor.  I chose these categories for a couple of reasons.  First, the exercises do tend to fall into these categories of performance.  In general all the exercises in Sargent’s book imitate perceived “real” actions.  For example, tree swaying performs the perceived action a tree might have in the wind.  Second, I wanted my classmates to perform these exercises without a pre-conceived notion of whether or not the exercise was for men or women.  If they knew which gender would perform which exercise, habitus kicks in, meaning there may have been a conscious or unconscious attempt to either perform or subvert habitual notions of masculinity or femininity.  Ironically, I felt some performers/exercisers made an assumption about the exercise’s gender anyway.  I paired my peers and gave them each a set of three different exercises.  There were two groups performing competition, one group performing labor, one doing metaphors and a group performing the throwing exercises.

The first two groups were the competition exercises.  Both pairs were composed of both genders.  These exercises were all/only designated for men because competition was viewed as a male-only preserve.  While it is easy/dangerous to assume a conscious effort to keep women out of competitions, oppressing women to the domestic sphere, this move was dictated and justified by medicine and biology.  In various sections of Sargent’s book, his encouragement of women’s physical activity takes on an almost feminist tone. 

“The hours spent in the schoolroom, added to the hours required for study at home, interfere very much with natural growth and development, and unless something is done to provide for more physical activity than is required in the following out the ordinary school curriculum, the average girl reaches maturity in a more or less enfeebled condition” (68).

At other places he rails against the constrictions placed on female bodies by clothing, most particularly the corset, echoing early feminist rhetoric surrounding the Victorian tyranny of women’s clothing choices.  However, Sargent makes no mistake; competition was innately a masculine characteristic.

“While rejoicing, therefore, in the emancipation of women from anything that interferes with the full development of her body, limbs, and vital organism, let us be sure that we do not recommend for her adoption as an aid to this development exercises that, when pushed to extremes, tend to unsex her.  I refer to the highly competitive games and athletic contests now being introduced into many of the schools and colleges for women” (75).

As a result, the exercises that imitate “sports” at least competitive sports are not open to women in Sargent’s book.

The two pairs doing competition exercises were of mixed gender.  The first group had the fighting gladiator and the crouching start.  The second pair had the long pass (football), the boxer’s guard, and fencing.  Watching these bodies in class perform these exercises, they seemed to turn more into a dance in my mind.  The moves were fluid and graceful.  They did not bear the traces of the muscled, bare-chested man pictured doing the exercises in Sargent’s book.  Of particular note for me was the long pass.  I’ve thrown a football.  In my mind this exercise conjured images of Peyton Manning and John Elway stepping back into the pocket and heaving a hail Mary.  In front of me in class I watched a woman with a dancing background and a Peruvian man perform this movement and it took on completely different qualities.  It took on a yogic grace.

I have to pause here and reflect.  In a “real” paper this would be a footnote, but, alas, blogging doesn’t yet have that capability so feel free to skip.  This is where habitus, essentialism, and ethnography (a science of watching) come to blows in my mind.  There are multiple habituses interacting in the moment of this performance; the performers’ individual bodies, the habitus of Sargent’s performative discourse in his description of how the exercise should be carried out, the image of the man’s body performing the exercise in the book, the image of bodies in my mind, and my bodily memory of throwing a football.  How do I encounter this moment, a crystallization of the problem of academic research?  Do I attempt to ignore the genders and ethnicities of the bodies in performance?  No.  If I acknowledge their genders and ethnicities how am I not essentializing them?  I have no access to their internal experience of that moment.  Are they just performing Sargent’s discursive habitus?  If they are, which is really impossible, then another set of questions pops up concerning the exercise.  The exercise is actually designated to be performed by middle-aged men.  Is it, therefore, not supposed to be an imitation, but a nostalgic metaphor to be performed by men who formerly performed the “actual” long pass? 

Doing 2

In my spare time I pretend to be a regular person (graduate students aren’t normal people, ask any of them).  I work at an airport and ironically I sell people cosmetics and hygiene products.  During my breaks I read all the magazines women aren’t supposed to read if they want to remain sane, Cosmo, Elle, Self, etc.  I somehow convinced myself through this magazine to sign up for this online get in shape thingy.  I’ve done this type of thing before and it’s been helpful.  I’ve even dieted before, but this time I’m more interested in the getting strong part as opposed to the losing weight part.  It’s an odd situation to put myself in, specifically myself.  Susan Bordo in her book Unbearable Weight talks about how when she lost 25 pounds her colleagues and staff accused her of being hypocritical.  She discusses her dilemma and comes to the conclusion that

“[e]ven though my choice to diet was a conscious and ‘rational’ response to the system of cultural meanings that surround me (not the blind submission of a ‘cultural dope’), I should not deceive myself into thinking that my own feeling of enhanced personal comfort and power means that I am not servicing an oppressive system” (31).

I find this space of being interesting because as a self-reflexive subject she must hold two opposing positions within herself.  Her body and its, dare I say, health operate in direct opposition to her stated stance on the power of images in the construction of female bodies.  Unfortunately for me, she doesn’t resolve this dilemma in her book.  So, here I sit watching my hands fly across the keyboard and wonder about how I deal with this same conundrum.  I want to feel strong and in physically good health, but these terms aren’t being defined by me and are culturally, economically (in)(de)vested terms.  This online fitness routine has images and videos of various strength training exercises, eight per week, actually.  There on the screen was an exercise called “The Wood-Chop Squat.”  

 “Works abs, shoulders, arms, butt, and legs. Stand with feet hip-width apart, one dumbbell in both hands directly overhead. Lower dumbbell between legs as you sink into a squat, knees over toes (as shown). Return to start for one rep. Do 15 reps.”

 I pause in disbelief and pull out Health, Strength, and Power.  Scratch that, the book is beginning to fall apart.  I pull out the copies of the exercises I made for class.  Exercise 51, page 266, “Sawing Wood.”  

“Stand with feet about twenty-four inches apart, arms bent at right angles, with hands clenched and held fourteen inches apart, as shown in Fig. 101. [ . . . ]  Extend the arms downward until the hands come within six inches of the floor, with head and trunk inclined forward and knees bent, as shown in Fig. 102.  Now bring the body to the upright position by raising the head and trunk and straightening the legs, and draw the hands up above the belt at the waist.  Repeat. [ . . . ] Parts affected — Principally the extensor muscles of the back and legs.  If the movements are done energetically, the muscles of the arms, chest, neck, shoulders, and abdomen are also brought into mildly vigorous action.”

I recall watching my classmates do the Sargent version in class and talk about how odd it was that it was called “sawing wood” when the body was moving up and down and not side-to-side. 

 

So, here’s what I think the solution to the question is.  Why does it matter?  Why did I spend the last half hour looking for this picture?  Because I think this object contains a world, as Benjamin would say.  I didn’t search for nineteenth century American saws.  I found this image through the construction of the man’s body in Sargent’s photographs.  This object matches the bodily imitation of the labor of sawing wood according to Sargent.  This object reveals a multiplicity of meanings about the world Sargent existed in.  His exercises mimicked “actual” labor.  Sawing wood, in effect, is a performance, a pantomime of the “actual” work of sawing wood.  The saw is mimed.  The utility is lost.  The body becomes the end product in this action rather than a pile of sawed wood.

Thinking

Sawing wood with this particular tool was part of a social body experience at the end of the nineteenth century.  The action, the way the body moved while using this tool was common enough knowledge that Sargent uses it to describe how to place the hands while miming the activity.  As a result it seems this action would function as a particularly male rural social habitus.  Habitus, as Bourdieu asserts, is “inscribed in bodies by identical histories, which is the precondition not only for the co-ordination of practices, but also for the practices of co-ordination” (59).  Everyday life creates the conditions of a particular habitus.  For example, my body can recollect the action and movement involved in throwing a long pass, a social condition and habitus that would have been inaccessible to women performing Sargent’s exercises.  However, my habitus involving football is quite different than, say, that of Peyton Manning whose body has been shaped in very particular ways by the long pass.  The irony in the Sargent example of sawing wood is that the bodies he was shaping did not have that particular habitus.  Sargent is open about the fact that he is fighting a particular habitus, the college student.  By transferring the habitus of a rural laborer into US higher education Sargent hoped to create bodies capable of producing a new kind of labor.

“But we are constantly reminded that we are not living under natural conditions.  We are playing the game of life under unnatural restrictions, which require us to shut ourselves up in shops, offices, and warehouses, and assume positions, habits, and customs which are detrimental to us individually; however the results of our efforts might serve to advance the condition of humanity as a whole. [ . . . ] Steam-power and electricity are now bearing the heavy burdens of the world, and men are striving, through their mental efforts, to keep up with the increased volume of work that is poured in upon them, by the use of those swift and powerful agents” (78).

Sargent was pulling ideas about the body from a time and place disconnected from the one in which he lived in order to combat the urbanization of the body.  The good of the many was outweighing the health of the individual, in Sargent’s view.  This position reveals a certain nostalgia for a previous time and potentially a different space, romanticizing the world of the rural laborer whose body still inhabits the presence of that sawing instrument, while for Sargent’s students the wood saw became a fuzzy memory of a barely-experience, much like my recollection of a long pass in comparison to Peyton Manning who lives football. 

A further irony is that my embodied knowledge of a long pass, as a woman, was not comprehensible to the Sargent world.  While women were beginning to make it into higher education as well as offices and factories, medical discourse and physical discourse were still supremely concerned with women’s abilities to bear children.  Labor, it seems, child bearing was the only suitable social condition for women to strive towards and then, once successful, the event to spend life reflecting upon once the body was no longer needed.

Memory

My mom and I are walking through a mall, the usual arena for deep and often awkward family conversations.  When things get difficult public spaces always allow for the easy distraction as well as the performed indifference on personal issues.  I had just gone through a rough break up.  I was living with two gay roommates and living the life a single girl usually does after she’s been broken hearted and now finds all her emotional needs taken care of by a safe group of men.  We were actually in Victoria’s Secret discussing my life.  In Victoria’s Secret as I’m sifting through bras I say to my mom, “You know, I don’t know if I can tell you if I’ll ever get married, but I know I will have a baby some day.”

Shift.

I’m rushing to my first annual exam in a new place.  It’s bitterly cold; my blood pressure is up from walking fast because I’m late.  The doctor is friendly enough.  The exam is about as comfortable as can be.  Relaxing, a must during this annual event, was difficult.  Finished.  Sitting there on the table still in the poor excuse for clothing that they give you for these things.  “I just want to mention this to you, just so you hear this before you start trying to get pregnant.  You bear all the symptoms of someone with PCOS.”  I have a fairly close knowledge of this problem.  I numb up.  I ask how that’s possible.  I haven’t had cysts since I was a teenager.  Doesn’t matter, she says.  Hair.  I have more hair than I should?  Weight.  But I just lost over 40 pounds?  Cramps.  I manage them?  What do I need to do to find out if I have it?  It’s apparently difficult to diagnose, so I’ll just have to see what happens once I try to get pregnant.  I walk home and I think to myself that she’s right.  This is the thing.  The thing I will suffer.  The one thing I always thought, without fail, I would be able to choose to do.  Have a baby.

Doing 3

Fear is a powerful motivator.  I’ve been jogging.  I hate jogging.  Seriously, in the past, jogging was the closest thing to torture for me.  Other than going to the doctor to have them stick a needle in me, running a mile was an event I dreaded and lost sleep over I found it so terrifying.  I jog.  I don’t jog a mile yet.  I hear someone I know in my head talking about how he does all his best thinking while he runs.  My ass.  I think: breathe, don’t fall, keep going.  Over and over again.  I run with the dog I’m watching around the park once and then run/walk the second lap and then walk home.  My shins ache.  My skin is clearer.  I drink more water.  I sleep better.

Sometimes I feel like the academic habitus for women is in direct opposition to the one Sargent and the turn-of-the-century world imagined and created for women.  I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing.  How do we deal with this, though?  Sargent’s exercises shaped women’s bodies for one purpose, child birth.  These exercises worked the abs and lower back mostly and the upper body.  No legs really.  This disabled women from entering into the masculine domain of competitive sport, a barrier that was broken through rapidly in numerous places soon after Sargent’s book, leading him to write an essay on the evils of sport “manning” “our” women.  These exercises created docile bodies, bodies that became both subject and subjected.  But I have to ask, to what discourses is my body becoming habituated by?  My academic body is disciplined as well, but not for child bearing.  In fact, since entering academia it seems my body’s habitus is one of travel.  Not only have I moved my body to multiple states, cities, homes, and sites within cities, but this travel is encouraged and rewarded by funding.  The more mobile my body is the better.  Pregnancy, child birth hampers this mobility not only during pregnancy, but afterwards.  My habitus as a mother would/will necessarily contain not just my body but a child’s body as well.  So which disciplining device do I endure?  As my runner acquaintance would say, how can I be in these worlds, but not of them?  What if I want to be of both of them?