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teariffic1 's review for:
Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man's World
by Lauren Fleshman
I thought this book was great in many ways - I loved the focus on menstrual health for runners and the many explanations of why it's so important for female runners to eat well and maintain healthy weight even during hard training periods. I enjoyed the introduction of RED-S, the feminist approach to life and running, Lauren's explanations of her own allyship and her failures to be a good ally, and particularly the analogy to the diet industry / sports industry creating negative self-talk within women and particularly BIPOC/disabled women as a form of violence.
That being said, I disliked a lot of other things about this book. The writing style, with its constant lists and repetitions ("I wanted... I wanted... I wanted..." and so forth) got on my nerves, though the style is common in sports books. I think that Lauren did a pretty good job of acknowledging her privilege as a white runner in the book, but I would have loved more focus on racialized aspects of the sport, as well as intersections with ABILITY in the sport. I respect Lauren's decision to represent gender as binary within this book because of her explicit explanation that that was how she viewed gender at the time, but I still want a more nuanced explanation of gender within the sport. I also felt frustrated by Lauren's description of how she ALMOST helped Mary Cain, but didn't. It felt irrelevant - almost like a "name drop" to garner attention, when Cain was so greviously injured and hurting.
All this being said, I think this book is good on the whole, and I recognized myself in a lot of parts of the story, as a runner myself. I'm glad Fleshman wrote the book - I think younger female runners reading it will definitely be impacted in a positive manner.
That being said, I disliked a lot of other things about this book. The writing style, with its constant lists and repetitions ("I wanted... I wanted... I wanted..." and so forth) got on my nerves, though the style is common in sports books. I think that Lauren did a pretty good job of acknowledging her privilege as a white runner in the book, but I would have loved more focus on racialized aspects of the sport, as well as intersections with ABILITY in the sport. I respect Lauren's decision to represent gender as binary within this book because of her explicit explanation that that was how she viewed gender at the time, but I still want a more nuanced explanation of gender within the sport. I also felt frustrated by Lauren's description of how she ALMOST helped Mary Cain, but didn't. It felt irrelevant - almost like a "name drop" to garner attention, when Cain was so greviously injured and hurting.
All this being said, I think this book is good on the whole, and I recognized myself in a lot of parts of the story, as a runner myself. I'm glad Fleshman wrote the book - I think younger female runners reading it will definitely be impacted in a positive manner.