The female gaze

Thu, 30 Jan 2003 20:28:00 +0000

I look at women's asses -- and tits, to use another word I never actually utter, at least not when my mother is listening. I look at women's thighs, too. Their ankles, their upper arms. Now that it's winter, I miss the biker shorts, the halter tops, the skin-licking swirl of summer's sun dresses. Still, there is the great indoors. And on the subway, sometimes, the coats come off.

Women do eye women, no surprise there. What has struck me is that looking at other women's bodies is, for me, a habit as ingrained as tucking my hair behind my ears. It's a tune I can't get out of my head. When teenage girls with their cigarettes out mob past me on the sidewalk; when the weary cashier hands me my change folded into the receipt; when a friend shifts her weight as together we push playground swings -- I realize I am doing it. It's my machinery buzzing, and I can't turn it off.

I suppose that suburban women eye suburban women -- in the Wal-Mart checkout line, from the high roosts of their minivans. But in New York City there is a glut, there is an embarrassment, of women. You can't get away from us. We are all over the place. There are, like, millions of us here, and most of us are walking the streets.

Motherrunner

Thu, 08 Aug 2002 19:00:00 +0000

Before I was a mother, I was an ultrarunner. I ran marathons, then back-to-back marathons, then a 60-kilometer race, then a couple of 50-milers, then, at last, a 100K (61.2 miles). Before I had kids, I worried that my ultrarunning was a sign I was unfit to be a mother. The loneliness of the long-distance runner has nothing on the oddball misanthropy of the long-, long-distance runner. But I was married, and I wanted kids, so I had one, a daughter, and two years later, a son.

Before I gave birth, everyone, including my childbirth educator, told me that ultrarunning was good preparation for the trials of giving birth. That was crap. I've hurt during an ultra, but I never found myself screaming Jesus-fuck, just kill me. But if ultrarunning did not train me for childbirth -- my labors were sprints -- the sport did, perhaps, prepare me for motherhood.

Salon.com > Eileen Kelly

The female gaze

Motherrunner