Haywire: why you should care
Here's the easy sell for my blog demographic: Michael Fassbender is in it!
FASSBENDER. Do I have your attention? Okay.
Fassbender is in this movie to get beat up by Gina Carano, and you should care because that's hot. Also, the fight choreography should hopefully be fucking amazing, because Gina Carano is the former TOP FEMALE MIXED MARTIAL ARTS FIGHTER OF THE FUCKING WORLD. And you should care, and stuff. You really should.
Also she's smoking fucking hot, and we're shallow here. We like pretty people beating other people up. However, please just give this a moment of consideration: Gina is not just a pretty girl who happens to have, like, one amateur fight. She is not an actress with a light cream glaze of faux badassery on the donut of her filmography. Fighting is not a gimmick. Gina is the legit fucking deal: for years, in women's MMA, no one could beat her. And that's awesome.
She also is five foot eight and weighs 145 pounds, and she's staring in her own goddamn Hollywood movie opposite Ewan McGregor. If you don't think that's progress for women and a great sign in the socio-cultural beauty race that polices the shit out of female bodies, then you're not paying attention. Her body is different than what we're used to on screen. If it's not different enough: this is still major progress.
Watch me talk about this for a few disjointed very opinionated paragraphs! Or, you know, just scroll to look at the pictures.
"But Zombs!" some of you are saying to this picture of a pretty conventionally attractive woman, "how is this any different from, like, anorexic runway models?"
Um, because she can kick your ass? Because she is not maintaining her physique on cocaine and cigarettes?
BECAUSE THIS:
and these fucking arms
and this
This is DIFFERENT from the current Hollywood ideal. This is DIFFERENT from that bullshit garbage standards we're fed in magazines. This is work. This is not the best body, or the type of body you SHOULD want to have--do what you want, guys: it's the only thing that's sustainable--but it is a type of body that is a legitimate, healthy choice/option, and it's a type of body that our society is still plenty fucking weird about.
So I feel that if you're supporting body diversity, this should be on your list.
I am so fucking tired of women who are profoundly fucking weird about other women lifting weights. I am so fucking tired of women who are profoundly fucking weird about women who do fighting sports. There's this terrible inherent and often internalized misogyny, where chicks won't pick up a five pound weight because being "bulky" is masculine and gross. And so women stay physically weaker. Because they are afraid.
Weight lifting is different from MMA, to be sure, but getting stronger does not make you bulky. Being stronger is pretty rad, because then you can do more physical stuff. And that's cool.
For martial arts, it's often that women are told to not go into grappling. Because, say, Brazilian jujitsu uses a lot of core strength and builds all sorts of abdominal muscles from unexpected angles--so it does thicken your middle.
Thicken.
"It'll make you," the type of person--so often female--who is trying to dissuade you, will say with a wince, "you know, thick."
And you know, it does. And that's okay, because it's cool and functional. But even by your bullshit beauty prescription:
...thick doesn't look that devastating.
The fucking horror, guys.
When Gina was on American Gladiators, they hid her mid-section. Because, you know. Gross, apparently.
And I know, I know. She's a top athlete and shit. But she's also just pretty normal looking a lot of the time:
Though sometimes they light her, too, too soften her
Have I used this one yet? IDK, look at it again if I have.
And look and how awesome/adorable she looks here:
Because black eyes you get in the pursuit of a combat sport you love? Are awesome.
Here's my favorite picture of her ever--not a staged picture; legit ring side, albeit while training instead of competing:
Basically, I want muscle and fighter girls in on the body acceptance train. Because it's different and weird and isolating and people treat you very, very differently when your even modest muscles are hidden behind a cute little zip up jacket, compared to when you shrug that shit off and pick up a kettlebell to do some reps.
And a lot of people aren't nice.
It's not the same as being thin. It's not the same as just going on a jog. Our society does lip service to the idea of women's exercise. Cardio is in.
Weights and fighting are not.
I am kind of sick of the athletic female body being lumped in the same category as, say, female bodies we're supposed to side eye, like runway models and anorexic actresses and shit. Ultimately we don't want to body police in ANY direction, but the often bandied about statistic these days is that the average American model is 5'11 tall and weighs 117 pounds, and that is...not entirely cool that this is the ideal for many people, or it's supposed to be.
For Black Swan, Mila Kunis weighed 95 pounds. Portman weighed less.
I know, I know. 5'11 and 117 pounds might not sound too different from 5'8 and 145, but, guys: IT TOTALLY FUCKING IS.
For one, Gina can actually fucking menstruate regularly. Really, it cost her a lot of money during her MMA career--at fight weigh ins she became notorious for being a couple of pounds over 145 sometimes, and, as it turns out, sometimes she was on her period and bloated. Legit, right? I mean, who amongst us hasn't been like, well, shit, I totally was going to wear that thing, but it's period time and now it doesn't fucking zip up?
The really well adjusted, maybe.
For the rest of us, let's take a moment to empathize.
When you don't make weight for a fight, either you don't fight--it's cancelled--or you take a significant pay cut.
For those of you not down with the combat sports--that's cool; hey, thanks for reading this anyway--weigh ins happen at every level for both genders, because a weight advantage in a fight makes a huge difference. This doesn't mean that the bigger/heavier person always wins--other factors come into play, obviously, like technique and skill and cardio and just plain old is anyone sick that day--but it's enough of a factor that most combat sports have weight classes.
Like, Brock Lesnar shouldn't fight Nate Diaz in the ring. That shit would be unfair, you know?
This is Brock.
This is Nate.
They're both very good fighters, but Brock's a heavyweight and Nate's a welterweight. Brock fights at a billed 266 pounds plus; Nate, at under 155.
This is why weight classes exist.
[technically, Brock--now retired--weighed a lot MORE than that in the ring because wrestlers cut weight before weigh ins and then rehydrate and shit for the fight, but, uh, ignore my pedantic details. suffice to say: dude is huge.]
And if you don't think a couple of pounds makes a difference at ~145, uhhh, then. You're wrong, and I would like you to come with to a jujitsu class sometime.
I know various definitions of healthy exist, and what works for your body is not what works for mine, and your choices are no less valid than mine, and that's cool and I am ALL FOR this, and I would like to eat your portion of tofu and pb+j sandwiches, plz. Actually, just hand me that jar of peanut butter. kthx.
But someone who can be an athlete and train for hours each day and then get beat up a lot and just keep on going AND be articulate enough for an interview right after a knock out--
Is doing pretty good, health wise, I think? This is not the only definition of health. But it IS one, and I would like to see this as a more legitimized and less stigmatized option for women.
Or, like. I would like body advocacy to include muscled ladies (and I'm not even thinking pro female bodybuilder physiques here) in their offered counter-ideals to promote. Curvy is beautiful, but so is having muscle thighs that can choke a man, okay? I mean, it's pretty wicked sweet. Seriously.
And if you don't think this type of athletic babe in real life needs your support--guys, that breaks my heart. She does. She is constantly being given shitty advice by friends and magazines that she shouldn't lift weights and she shouldn't throw real punches, because then her body won't be "feminine" enough. Girls will tell you that you'll never get a man if you lift weights.
This shit is LONELY.
I'm not even talking crazy heavy, few people can ever manage to lift this much hell kind of weights. I just mean, like, fucking 20 pounders. If you are of just averaged privileged physical body, the type of body that most of the Western world is built for--you can board buses and carry textbooks and shit and have the often assumed full use of your limbs that makes people hog the handicap stall in the bathroom to do their fucking mascara--then, YOU CAN PROBABLY DO TWENTY POUND CURLS. It is not hard, given the above conditions.
But back to being just a pretty average girl, who missed all those BULLSHIT articles in Cosmo and related fuckery that tell you that women should only lift one or two pound weights. You're in the gym, doing, sure, why not, bicep curls.
You're probably there alone, because your friends are doing their chill 20 minutes on the elliptical and they think what you're doing is pretty weird.
"Okay, but don't wonder why your arms don't fit in dresses," people--girls!--will sometimes say. Have said.
"Don't let a guy see you doing that," as someone gives you the side eye.
Sure, there are plenty of dudes who think muscle babes are hot. There are plenty of dudes who think fuller figure ladies are super fuckable, but that doesn't make you feel that much better, does it, when everything else is still telling you that you're built wrong. and that you act wrong. because you don't want to be a lollipop head on a stick.
I have heard so many stories, too, a girls who DID meet a guy in the gym--and the guy was all into her doing the cardio routine, but come weight time, stuff got stuttery and weird.
This never happened to me, but I cackle at frightened men and lash squirming boys and girls to headboards, so there's a certain self-selection thing going on here.
Likewise, I watch fighting and I read Batman comics and criticize the fight scene art. Also, I'm pretty open about my sexual everything. I mean, no one's ever been blind sided by my interests.
In conclusion, I want to read about not just female athletes, but just NORMAL REAL GIRLS who happen to have fighty or weight lifty hobbies and their bodies when I go to confessional bloggy liberal sites. I want to be included. I want this sexism to be on people's radars so we can start to overcome it.
I want to get back to the fucking gym, because this staying inactive due to pneumonia thing is BULLSHIT and I just want to go lift things without wheezing before I EXPLODE HOLY SHHHHIIIIT.
Thank you; the end.
In conclusion, this lady who weighs as much as my boyfriend is going to pretend to beat up Fassbender and make it look legit.
Life is sweet.
FASSBENDER. Do I have your attention? Okay.
Fassbender is in this movie to get beat up by Gina Carano, and you should care because that's hot. Also, the fight choreography should hopefully be fucking amazing, because Gina Carano is the former TOP FEMALE MIXED MARTIAL ARTS FIGHTER OF THE FUCKING WORLD. And you should care, and stuff. You really should.
Also she's smoking fucking hot, and we're shallow here. We like pretty people beating other people up. However, please just give this a moment of consideration: Gina is not just a pretty girl who happens to have, like, one amateur fight. She is not an actress with a light cream glaze of faux badassery on the donut of her filmography. Fighting is not a gimmick. Gina is the legit fucking deal: for years, in women's MMA, no one could beat her. And that's awesome.
She also is five foot eight and weighs 145 pounds, and she's staring in her own goddamn Hollywood movie opposite Ewan McGregor. If you don't think that's progress for women and a great sign in the socio-cultural beauty race that polices the shit out of female bodies, then you're not paying attention. Her body is different than what we're used to on screen. If it's not different enough: this is still major progress.
Watch me talk about this for a few disjointed very opinionated paragraphs! Or, you know, just scroll to look at the pictures.
"But Zombs!" some of you are saying to this picture of a pretty conventionally attractive woman, "how is this any different from, like, anorexic runway models?"
Um, because she can kick your ass? Because she is not maintaining her physique on cocaine and cigarettes?
BECAUSE THIS:
and these fucking arms
and this
This is DIFFERENT from the current Hollywood ideal. This is DIFFERENT from that bullshit garbage standards we're fed in magazines. This is work. This is not the best body, or the type of body you SHOULD want to have--do what you want, guys: it's the only thing that's sustainable--but it is a type of body that is a legitimate, healthy choice/option, and it's a type of body that our society is still plenty fucking weird about.
So I feel that if you're supporting body diversity, this should be on your list.
I am so fucking tired of women who are profoundly fucking weird about other women lifting weights. I am so fucking tired of women who are profoundly fucking weird about women who do fighting sports. There's this terrible inherent and often internalized misogyny, where chicks won't pick up a five pound weight because being "bulky" is masculine and gross. And so women stay physically weaker. Because they are afraid.
Weight lifting is different from MMA, to be sure, but getting stronger does not make you bulky. Being stronger is pretty rad, because then you can do more physical stuff. And that's cool.
For martial arts, it's often that women are told to not go into grappling. Because, say, Brazilian jujitsu uses a lot of core strength and builds all sorts of abdominal muscles from unexpected angles--so it does thicken your middle.
Thicken.
"It'll make you," the type of person--so often female--who is trying to dissuade you, will say with a wince, "you know, thick."
And you know, it does. And that's okay, because it's cool and functional. But even by your bullshit beauty prescription:
...thick doesn't look that devastating.
The fucking horror, guys.
When Gina was on American Gladiators, they hid her mid-section. Because, you know. Gross, apparently.
And I know, I know. She's a top athlete and shit. But she's also just pretty normal looking a lot of the time:
Though sometimes they light her, too, too soften her
Have I used this one yet? IDK, look at it again if I have.
And look and how awesome/adorable she looks here:
Because black eyes you get in the pursuit of a combat sport you love? Are awesome.
Here's my favorite picture of her ever--not a staged picture; legit ring side, albeit while training instead of competing:
Basically, I want muscle and fighter girls in on the body acceptance train. Because it's different and weird and isolating and people treat you very, very differently when your even modest muscles are hidden behind a cute little zip up jacket, compared to when you shrug that shit off and pick up a kettlebell to do some reps.
And a lot of people aren't nice.
It's not the same as being thin. It's not the same as just going on a jog. Our society does lip service to the idea of women's exercise. Cardio is in.
Weights and fighting are not.
I am kind of sick of the athletic female body being lumped in the same category as, say, female bodies we're supposed to side eye, like runway models and anorexic actresses and shit. Ultimately we don't want to body police in ANY direction, but the often bandied about statistic these days is that the average American model is 5'11 tall and weighs 117 pounds, and that is...not entirely cool that this is the ideal for many people, or it's supposed to be.
For Black Swan, Mila Kunis weighed 95 pounds. Portman weighed less.
I know, I know. 5'11 and 117 pounds might not sound too different from 5'8 and 145, but, guys: IT TOTALLY FUCKING IS.
For one, Gina can actually fucking menstruate regularly. Really, it cost her a lot of money during her MMA career--at fight weigh ins she became notorious for being a couple of pounds over 145 sometimes, and, as it turns out, sometimes she was on her period and bloated. Legit, right? I mean, who amongst us hasn't been like, well, shit, I totally was going to wear that thing, but it's period time and now it doesn't fucking zip up?
The really well adjusted, maybe.
For the rest of us, let's take a moment to empathize.
When you don't make weight for a fight, either you don't fight--it's cancelled--or you take a significant pay cut.
For those of you not down with the combat sports--that's cool; hey, thanks for reading this anyway--weigh ins happen at every level for both genders, because a weight advantage in a fight makes a huge difference. This doesn't mean that the bigger/heavier person always wins--other factors come into play, obviously, like technique and skill and cardio and just plain old is anyone sick that day--but it's enough of a factor that most combat sports have weight classes.
Like, Brock Lesnar shouldn't fight Nate Diaz in the ring. That shit would be unfair, you know?
This is Brock.
This is Nate.
They're both very good fighters, but Brock's a heavyweight and Nate's a welterweight. Brock fights at a billed 266 pounds plus; Nate, at under 155.
This is why weight classes exist.
[technically, Brock--now retired--weighed a lot MORE than that in the ring because wrestlers cut weight before weigh ins and then rehydrate and shit for the fight, but, uh, ignore my pedantic details. suffice to say: dude is huge.]
And if you don't think a couple of pounds makes a difference at ~145, uhhh, then. You're wrong, and I would like you to come with to a jujitsu class sometime.
I know various definitions of healthy exist, and what works for your body is not what works for mine, and your choices are no less valid than mine, and that's cool and I am ALL FOR this, and I would like to eat your portion of tofu and pb+j sandwiches, plz. Actually, just hand me that jar of peanut butter. kthx.
But someone who can be an athlete and train for hours each day and then get beat up a lot and just keep on going AND be articulate enough for an interview right after a knock out--
Is doing pretty good, health wise, I think? This is not the only definition of health. But it IS one, and I would like to see this as a more legitimized and less stigmatized option for women.
Or, like. I would like body advocacy to include muscled ladies (and I'm not even thinking pro female bodybuilder physiques here) in their offered counter-ideals to promote. Curvy is beautiful, but so is having muscle thighs that can choke a man, okay? I mean, it's pretty wicked sweet. Seriously.
And if you don't think this type of athletic babe in real life needs your support--guys, that breaks my heart. She does. She is constantly being given shitty advice by friends and magazines that she shouldn't lift weights and she shouldn't throw real punches, because then her body won't be "feminine" enough. Girls will tell you that you'll never get a man if you lift weights.
This shit is LONELY.
I'm not even talking crazy heavy, few people can ever manage to lift this much hell kind of weights. I just mean, like, fucking 20 pounders. If you are of just averaged privileged physical body, the type of body that most of the Western world is built for--you can board buses and carry textbooks and shit and have the often assumed full use of your limbs that makes people hog the handicap stall in the bathroom to do their fucking mascara--then, YOU CAN PROBABLY DO TWENTY POUND CURLS. It is not hard, given the above conditions.
But back to being just a pretty average girl, who missed all those BULLSHIT articles in Cosmo and related fuckery that tell you that women should only lift one or two pound weights. You're in the gym, doing, sure, why not, bicep curls.
You're probably there alone, because your friends are doing their chill 20 minutes on the elliptical and they think what you're doing is pretty weird.
"Okay, but don't wonder why your arms don't fit in dresses," people--girls!--will sometimes say. Have said.
"Don't let a guy see you doing that," as someone gives you the side eye.
Sure, there are plenty of dudes who think muscle babes are hot. There are plenty of dudes who think fuller figure ladies are super fuckable, but that doesn't make you feel that much better, does it, when everything else is still telling you that you're built wrong. and that you act wrong. because you don't want to be a lollipop head on a stick.
I have heard so many stories, too, a girls who DID meet a guy in the gym--and the guy was all into her doing the cardio routine, but come weight time, stuff got stuttery and weird.
This never happened to me, but I cackle at frightened men and lash squirming boys and girls to headboards, so there's a certain self-selection thing going on here.
Likewise, I watch fighting and I read Batman comics and criticize the fight scene art. Also, I'm pretty open about my sexual everything. I mean, no one's ever been blind sided by my interests.
In conclusion, I want to read about not just female athletes, but just NORMAL REAL GIRLS who happen to have fighty or weight lifty hobbies and their bodies when I go to confessional bloggy liberal sites. I want to be included. I want this sexism to be on people's radars so we can start to overcome it.
I want to get back to the fucking gym, because this staying inactive due to pneumonia thing is BULLSHIT and I just want to go lift things without wheezing before I EXPLODE HOLY SHHHHIIIIT.
Thank you; the end.
In conclusion, this lady who weighs as much as my boyfriend is going to pretend to beat up Fassbender and make it look legit.
Life is sweet.