MAUREEN writes:

Regarding your post on the apparent athletic superiority of women, I notice similar things all the time and it drives me nuts. Whether it’s movies where women hold their own in a physical altercation with a man, or a sitcom mom besting a hapless dad in some contest, it’s blatant, sheer lunacy and I don’t understand how anyone can fall for it. Just yesterday I was helping my fiance repair a friend’s deck. He was manually screwing a big bolt into the wood with a rachet, one-handed while standing on a ladder. It was hot, he was tired, so I offered to take over for a while. He laughed. I could hardly budge that rachet an inch, using all my strength and most of my body weight as leverage. He was doing it one-handed! With no leverage! He’s above average in fitness, but not radically so and I’m 5’9′ and no petite flower.

The difference was incredibly stark. At that moment I thought about exactly the kinds of media messages referenced in your post. We do women a grave disservice by promoting the idea that we are even close to a man’s equal, physically.  First off, it’s a gigantic lie and therefore it serves the father of lies. But it also puts women in physical danger; the idea that a woman can fight off an attacker without a weapon is absurd. And lastly, it sets up false expectations. A young girl seeing that might think that of course she should be able to make it over the wall without help, easily.  But she can’t and she won’t, and by encouraging her to pursue those kinds of achievements instead of the ones she was physically designed to accomplish, we’re shooting everyone involved in the foot.

He can fix a deck, I can fix a mean apple pie. What on earth is wrong with acknowledging that and embracing it!?  It’s a mad, mad world, I tell ya.

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