Goddesses running

Yesterday morning the sidewalks around Valley Forge were busy with people out for a walk or a run.  The walkers were of all sorts and conditions.   Young and old, men and women, boys and girls, families, couples, solitaires, gangs of middle-aged brothers and sisters, posses of little kids, teenagers in love walking hand in hand, teenagers out of love walking with arms folded and solid walls of silence between them.  Some were fit and trim walking with the purpose of getting fitter and trimmer.  Most seemed to be out for the sake of being out, enjoying the scenery and each other's company.

The runners were of one sort and in perfect condition.

Thirty-something women.

Running alone.

My first thought after the fifth blew by me was that they must represent a demographic fluke brought on by the holiday.  I figured they were all the hostesses of this year's feast escaping for some necessary alone time before their day was swallowed up by cooking and entertaining and coincidences of planning and scheduling had forced them all out to the park for their daily run at the same time. 

"I'm going out for an hour.  You watch the kids and when the timer goes off, take the pie out of the oven and turn it down to three twenty-five and put in the turkey."

But then, after the seventh or eighth ran me off the path---each one giving off an air of simultaneous blindness to my presence and irritation at my getting in their way as if I was an obstacle they sensed rather than saw and they resented having to break stride to avoid tripping over whatever it was that had the temerity to occupy a part of the sidewalk they needed to occupy---it dawned on me that they were all alike in another way besides the fact that they were moving faster than everybody else.

Each and every one was a goddess.

I don't mean goddess as in sex goddess, like Marilyn Monroe or Rita Hayworth.  I don't mean any ordinary centerfold or supermodel type of body beautiful. 

Think of marble statuary.

Think of a Minerva or a Juno or a Diana, on an altar, within a temple.

As I said, they were all in their thirties.  They were all handsome if not beautiful.  They were all dressed alike.  There were no track pants, no shorts, no baggy sweats.  They all wore spandex tights and short, form-fitting jackets or long-sleeved t-shirts, so that their figures and legs were clearly defined down to the smallest muscle and dimple.  None of them were greyhound thin.  None of them carried an ounce of extra body fat.   They were all perfect, like statues.

And like statues the effect of their perfection wasn't erotic in the least.  It was cold, forbidding, rebuking.

To look upon one was to be inspired, not to lust or romance, but to duty, sacrifice, and penance.   You felt called upon to give up dessert, go back to the gym, roll out of bed in the pre-dawn dark and start running yourself.  And all these things you would do in a spirit mixing heroic determination and despair, intensely focused on improving in order to be worthy, already self-loathing and self-condemning because you'd know in your heart you don't have what it takes and will never be worthy of either their perfection or their notice.

Wouldn't matter if you were male or female, when you looked upon one of these goddesses you'd feel what Odysseus' men must have felt when they washed up on Circe's island, that you are not the hero or the heroine of this particular myth and she didn't even have to bother with the magic, you already know you're a mere pig.

All right, I'm romanticizing.  But I'm not fantasizing.  There are male versions of this type, but none of them were out yesterday morning.  Older women run and so do girls, but while I suppose one or two might have been in her late twenties or early forties, it sure looked as if anyone who was under thirty-four or over thirty-eight had stayed home.  And runners (like performance bonds) come in all shapes and sizes, not all of them look as though they were carved by Pygmalion on one of his more obsessive days, but all the other sizes and shapes, makes and models weren't running where I was walking.

The hour between eight and nine seemed to have been reserved for female deities in serious training for a new Judgment of Paris.

Just one of those things, I guess.

Back at the parking lot I did see some mortals getting ready to run.  Two women and a man.  The women were in their thirties and trim and attractive but in more human terms and dimensions, and they weren't wearing spandex.  They were in nylon track pants and windbreakers.  They were surrounded by kids and the man was helping the kids unload scooters and skateboards from their cars, a minivan and an SUV parked side by side.  One of the women was unfolding a stroller, one of those three-wheeled, rocket-nosed strollers for parents who jog.  The other woman, a tall blond who kept slapping at her hair to keep it from being blown across her face by the light but steady breeze, stood apart from the group, hollering into a cell phone.

"Where are you?" she demanded of the person on the other end.  "Why aren't you here?  Amy's here.  She made it out with the kids.  She even brought the baby.  If she can bring the baby, you can bring you!  Get over here!"

She was trying to sound jovial and teasing but there was a note of desperation in her voice too, as if the point of their all being out here was the company of the person she was talking to and the day would ruined if she---or he---blew them---her?---off.

There's one disadvantage to being a goddess.  Goddesses don't need anybody's company but their own.

Comments

[Apostate]

You are romanticizing. :) Not that there's anything wrong with that. You are, after all, a romantic.

But yes, they are inspiring. I get them. I'll probably be one of them one day - a certain type of lifestyle gets women to that place.

I was out running yesterday too, but I wore a running skirt (wonderful things, those) with a sleeveless running top, all black. The skirt is more flattering than shorts, but just as practical. It makes me look nothing like a statuesque goddess... more like a flirty teenager.

I saw several people out walking by the beach, but only a couple of other runners, two women and one man. The fitness goddesses were home.

[actor212]

So...Aqualung...at least you weren't sitting on a park bench...

[Fixer]

Dude, I love reading your blog, but "Think of marble statuary. Think of a Minerva or a Juno or a Diana, on an altar, within a temple." They ain't anything worth making a statue of. They are self-centered, self-absorbed, narcissist idiots who aren't worth licking the sweat off your balls.

I'm a romantic. More than once I've taken my wife to Paris for Valentine's Day. I would make a statue of her if I could sculpt. I'd paint her picture if I could paint (but Reubens probably beat me to it in another life). They make statues of women who are deserving of it.

[Linkmeister]

I've read something like that description before. Ah, here it is:

She is a Midwest blonde and she is something they seem to be growing out there these last few years. Big girls who look smooth and tight and well fitted into their skin. Out there when three of them come down the sidewalk abreast there is something overpowering about them, and you feel that your masculine ego is being hemmed in by a thicket of long, long legs. And they all seem to have an odd, casual lack of any physical self-consciousness. Their splendid bodies are not something to be aware of. Just something they want to keep clean, tanned, and at the proper temperature.

[snip]

If you think about those girls they are growing out there in the Midwest, and think about the way they act, and think of how they give a impression of being unused and waiting for something, it can begin to worry you. If nature is planning on setting up a matriarchy, it is only reasonable that the first step is to start developing the shock troops. Any one of them could swing a mace.

John D. MacDonald, Dead Low Tide, Fawcett Gold Medal, © 1953, Chapter 2.

That's a compliment. Not everyone writes a passage good enough to be compared to MacDonald.

[Apostate]

Love MacDonald, but he wrote about women the way one might write about cats.

But good comparison to Lance's piece here - I do agree.

[Linkmeister]

And yet he was married to the same woman for nearly 50 years.

I do kind of agree, though, although in few of his books did he create more than a temporary woman. Maybe Puss Killian qualifies by virtue of his bringing her back in the final McGee book.

[Apostate]

Linkmeister, I didn't mean to imply anything about him personally. Just the way he wrote about women. Also, I don't know what being married to the same woman for 50 years proves, unless it proves my point: He didn't know women, he just knew one of them really well.

Never a good substitute for a big sample size.

On the other hand, now that I think about it, perhaps I am more sensitive to his portrayals of women because I am a woman (and a feminist). He may well have a set of types for his male characters as well. Good excuse to re-read my rather large collection of MacDonalds.

[Linkmeister]

I was making an assumption that since he'd been married so long he should have been able to characterize women better.

But. As I think about the 47 books he wrote that I own, I can't remember any women with hunks of dialogue or actions separate from the male protagonists in any of them. Of course, he started out writing in the pulps, and the principal audience for those was male.

[Apostate]

If being married for long periods of time helped men understand that women are people, we'd have no sexism.

But sorry - I'm participating in a threadjack.

This conversation is really about whether those running goddesses deserve to lick the sweat off Lance's balls. Important question, that.

[actor212]

If being married for long periods of time helped men understand that women are people, we'd have no sexism.

And if there was no sexism, you would have remembered the "vice versa" ;-)

[Bill Altreuter]

What you are seeing is Title IX-- or, to be precise, one of the effects of Title IX, which has allowed women to be athletes in school, and, as a result, allowed them to be athletes in later life as well. Many marathons-- including Chicago, the largest in the country-- have reported that their female enrollment has exceeded the enrollment of men in the past three or four years. When I was in high school there wasn't a women's Cross-Country team because it was thought that distance running would disrupt the young ladies' reproductive organs. Now, in our lifetime, the young Dianas you describe know better.

I am not so inclined to believe that the march of history is the same thing as progress, but then every now and then something happens to suggest to me that perhaps I'm being too pessimistic. Two of my daughters lined up to run 8k with me Thanksgiving morning. One of them plays Rugby at her college, the other just completed her first half marathon. Neither of them are worried about sport making them less feminine-- both actually believe that sport makes them better women. Maybe history really is a narrative about our advancement. As I contemplate the coming of January 20, 2009 I like to think so.

[Apostate]

Bill, good point, except that I think it should be broader.

What we are seeing are the effects of feminism. I wasn't an athlete as a child because I grew up in a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. When I moved here, I started running and have now run marathons.

It's simply the freedom to be able to wear clothes that show your crotch and the ability to go outside that has created this phenom. And we got both this and Title IX from feminism.

[Uncle Merlin]

Kudos to Title IX for women in sports, but I think the type Lance is describing is different. These people are out to WHACK you in the head with their prowess. Amazon's for Women, Adonis's for Men.

"And like statues the effect of their perfection wasn't erotic in the least. It was cold, forbidding, rebuking."

I've seen this in the "Bars" and mind you, It took me years! to figure out they always go home alone!! No one asks them to dance; if you do you get "rebuked" roundly! I used to make a point of asking them to dance just to disturb their "movie". It was fun!

There was an "Adonis" at the gym this very morning he works out early, early and makes sure we see his 6ft4 frame bobbing heavily up and down for an hour on the Ellypticals. He wears revealling cut away shirts that just give you only a glimpse of the "truly no fat male waistline". He never smiles at any one, never participates socially in any way, never holds a door, never says good morning. Never "gives". Yet I have seen both men and women try to show aknowlegement of his form and he will return an aloofness that would freeze a gallon of milk across a room. And, mind you, always from that top stroke on that ellyptical to give it more accent!
I bet he goes home alone too! Nothing chillier than being looked down on from 6Ft4inches + 2 feet of Ellyptical.
Because of what I have seen I conciously never aknowledge his prescence on the machines or when he is strutting around the locker room naked and irritated like he is late to being somewhere important. It's foolishness!

A friend pointed out to me that since the cell phone craze hit, it appears to him everybody carries the idea that they are living in a movie in their heads and "they" have decided "we" the pedestrians are to be the "audience" for their "movies".
So the idea is too appear busy and attract as much attention as possible to make your "movie" real and then you ignore that attention! But I gotta say "actors" the daily sundries of your existence; these "movies"; are really, really BORING!

In REAL acting there is that 4th wall between you and the audience and REAL actors play TO that wall continually. Real actors are Entertaining and that is their goal TO ENTERTAIN the audience. That is entirely different.

Lance, I think Amazon's is what you saw that hour.
Even Hercules didn't get his Amazon, she was waaaay too cool too!

[actor212]

In REAL acting there is that 4th wall between you and the audience and REAL actors play TO that wall continually. Real actors are Entertaining and that is their goal TO ENTERTAIN the audience. That is entirely different.

The best description I've ever heard of acting is "public privacy," in other words, to live a private life for everyone to examine without being public.

Cellphones are precisely the opposite in the hands of these assholes. They make absorb the public life into the private and demand the "actor" be consistently aware that he or she is in public.