The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching Physical Equality Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching Physical Equality Book

The 2000 Games in Sydney mark a centenary of women competing in the Olympics. There are more female competitors than in any previous Games, competing in 25 of the 28 events. Twenty-four-year-old Ila Borders, the first woman to play men's pro baseball, already has her jersey hanging in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York, and dreams of making the majors. Title IX has revolutionized access for women to sports, and we have plenty of sports heroines to look up to. Despite all this, gender biases and stereotypes still persist. Though the (very visible) athletic physiques of Brandi Chastain and Gabrielle Reece may have diversified the repertoire of desirable bodies, one study claims that 80 percent of 11-year-old girls have tried dieting. In her latest book, The Frailty Myth, Colette Dowling, author of the bestseller The Cinderella Complex, discusses these issues and takes on the idea that women are physically weaker than men. Physical activity is good for women's self-esteem, she argues. In purely biological terms, activity in girls has been shown to protect against the onset of osteoporosis later in life. Physical exertion increases levels of endorphins, which enhance mood. A strong and fit woman is, at a most fundamental sense, able to outrun or fend off an attacker; Dowling cites hair-raising statistics on the number of assaults--large and small--on the female body. And perhaps most important is the psychological edge--exercise gives women and girls a broader sense of competence and confidence that affects the way they relate to the world. This is a popular history, peppered with anecdotes and rhetorical questions to the reader. It is at times an inspiring read, at other times shocking and depressing. Women have come a long way since the dark days of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the rest cure, and warnings to parents that educating their daughters could be a threat to reproductive well-being. For Dowling, physical equality is nothing less than "the final stage of women's liberation." --J. Riches Read More

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  • Product Description

    Can women be equal to men as long as men are physically stronger? And are men, in fact, stronger?


    These are key questions that Colette Dowling, author of the bestselling The Cinderella Complex, raises in her provocative new book. The myth of

    female frailty, with its roots in nineteenth-century medicine and misogyny, has had a damaging effect on women's health, social status, and physical safety. It is Dowling's controversial thesis that women succumb to societal pressures to appear weak in order to seem more "feminine."


    The Frailty Myth presents new evidence that girls are weaned from the use of their bodies even before they begin school. By adolescence, their strength and aerobic powers have started to decline unless the girls are exercising vigorously--and most aren't. By sixteen, they have already lost bone density and turned themselves into prime candidates for osteoporosis. They have also been deprived of motor stimulation that is essential for brain growth.

    Yet as breakthroughs among elite women athletes grow more and more astounding, it begins to appear that strength and physical skill--for all women--is only a matter of learning and training. Men don't have a monopoly on physical prowess; when women and men are matched in size and level of training, the strength gap closes. In some areas, women are actually equipped to outperform men, due partly to differences in body structure, and partly to the newly discovered strengthening benefits of estrogen.

    Drawing on extensive research in motor development, performance assessment, sports physi-ology, and endocrinology, Dowling presents an astonishing picture of the new physical woman. And she creates a powerful argument that true equality isn't possible until women learn how to stand up for themselves--physically.

  • 0375502351
  • 9780375502354
  • Collette Dowling
  • 1 September 2000
  • Random House USA Inc
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 352
  • 1st
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