The article actually addresses something Brad, Kevin, and I discussed at our book signing. An audience member asked us why so many young, successful female athletes disappear after high school. Asking the question doesn't make anyone the bad guy. These are important issues that need to be discussed. As the article points out:
...since 1980, just one female winner of the Foot Locker National Cross Country Championships has made an Olympic team, compared with seven male high school champions. Just four have won an individual N.C.A.A. championship, but none of those were in cross-country.
In regard to the changes young females and young female athletes experience at the onset of puberty, Melody Fairchild offers her perspective in a thoughtful and measured response by saying:
That is not a sustainable thing,” Fairchild said in an interview from her home in Colorado, where she is a personal running coach. Even more dangerous, she added, is the message young women get when they are encouraged to fight to regain their high school physiques. “We want them to embrace being in a strong woman’s body.”
Then the article goes into how Tuohy, a runner who is already breaking course records in cross country and track, her parents, and her coach are doing what they can to avoid mistakes they see others made. They are limiting her mileage, doing what they can to keep media attention to a minimum, encouraging her to stay in school and not go pro, and working to keep her healthy and her life balanced.
There's already a healthier trend in high school running programs that, fortunately, encourages young women to embrace their strength. Things are definitely different now than they were in the 80s, though there's still a very long way to go. Still, sayings related to being thin to win are no longer the norm. It should be noted, too, that nowhere in this article does it suggest you have to be thin to be successful. Nowhere in the article does it say or suggest that puberty is the problem. It very clearly states that the issue isn't staying thin but not building strength to sustain changes that naturally occur at puberty. There is a huge difference, an enormous one. In fact, the article suggests that a false assumption that an athlete has to stay lean is what often leads to disordered eating and low self-esteem and, eventually, the common crash and eventual disappearance of promising female athletes after high school.
I could spend more time on this and go through the article sentence by sentence, but that's it in a nutshell. I think people are misinterpreting the content of the article and taking a few lines out of context. For me, there are bigger battles to fight when it comes to what's going on in our society to promote, intentionally or not, unhealthy eating and lifestyle patterns, and mustering outrage at a pretty sensibly written article isn't on my list of time well spent.
Then the article goes into how Tuohy, a runner who is already breaking course records in cross country and track, her parents, and her coach are doing what they can to avoid mistakes they see others made. They are limiting her mileage, doing what they can to keep media attention to a minimum, encouraging her to stay in school and not go pro, and working to keep her healthy and her life balanced.
There's already a healthier trend in high school running programs that, fortunately, encourages young women to embrace their strength. Things are definitely different now than they were in the 80s, though there's still a very long way to go. Still, sayings related to being thin to win are no longer the norm. It should be noted, too, that nowhere in this article does it suggest you have to be thin to be successful. Nowhere in the article does it say or suggest that puberty is the problem. It very clearly states that the issue isn't staying thin but not building strength to sustain changes that naturally occur at puberty. There is a huge difference, an enormous one. In fact, the article suggests that a false assumption that an athlete has to stay lean is what often leads to disordered eating and low self-esteem and, eventually, the common crash and eventual disappearance of promising female athletes after high school.
I could spend more time on this and go through the article sentence by sentence, but that's it in a nutshell. I think people are misinterpreting the content of the article and taking a few lines out of context. For me, there are bigger battles to fight when it comes to what's going on in our society to promote, intentionally or not, unhealthy eating and lifestyle patterns, and mustering outrage at a pretty sensibly written article isn't on my list of time well spent.
