A Piece of a Woman's Mind

The first Summer Games of the Olympics in the modern era took place April 6-15, 1896 in Athens, Greece. Then May 20-October 28, 1900 the next Summer Games took place in Paris, France and were part of the World’s Fair. For the first time women were allowed to participate. There were 22 women who competed alongside 975 men. Small beginnings. In the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, 10,500 athletes competed, fifty percent of which were females. This is the first time there has been gender parity in the athletes competing. It only took 124 years and 30 total Olympic Summer Games to accomplish this feat. It is nevertheless a world record which will stand forever. You either have parity or you don’t. Unfortunately woman still don’t have equality and parity in most parts of their lives.

There were many outstanding female athletes in this summer’s games. I would like to mention only 2 of them. Simon Biles, dubbed the greatest gymnast of all time (GOAT), led the women’s gymnastic team to a gold medal in team gymnastics and in addition won two more gold and one silver medal in artistic gymnastics events. The 2024 games marked her triumphant comeback from the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 where she had to skip part of the gymnastics competition due to a disability called the “twisties” where gymnasts temporarily lose confidence in their ability to perform. Her refusal to give in to the negative feedback she received in 2020 and her determination to fight back and win are a great example to all of us when we experience failure.

Katie Ledecky, regarded by many as the greatest female swimmer of all time, won gold medals in the Olympic Summer Games in 2012, 2016, 2020 and 2024. Her total of 9 gold medals through 2024 has made her the winningest female Olympian of all time. She is the only swimmer, male or female, to win 6 World Championship gold medals in the same event, namely the 800-meter freestyle. She is the greatest!

Something else was very apparent during the games. The female athletes were dressed for success in their sport. The gymnasts had beautiful, tight, sparkly, skimpy body suits. The female swimmers had practical suits to allow streamlining in the water. No Miss America bathing suits. The female beach volley ball players wore very small bikinis. The winners in each match always had their bikinis on. The female cyclists wore streamlined body-hugging suits. The female soccer and basketball players wore short shorts. Women competing in track events wore minimalist outfits designed to give them their best performance. Many of these athletes wore elastic braces to help support their joints. None of the female attire bowed to how a male wants to see a female dressed. The sport dictated the outfit, not male preferences. Need I say that all the way up to the 1950’s women were not allowed to wear clothing which showed lots of skin except in bordellos and strip parlors. Again, hooray for the Olympics. Women got to show skin and it wasn’t an X-rated show.

All of these Olympic athletes inspire others in their sport and especially females in that sport. They demonstrate dedication to their sport which requires endless hours of practice day after day. Perseverance and belief in one’s self. Self-esteem.

Studies have shown that females are physically wired to be more emotional than men. This means we are more sensitive to criticism. All females are subject to criticism from their parents, their peers, their bosses and people they look up to. Many times those people are not aware of their ability to wound us with their criticism. Frankly, some people are just mean and enjoy criticizing others just to pull them down. These criticisms implant false images in our brains, our psyches. When we believe in a false image, our bodies and brains will work to make it come true. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I experienced something like this recently. Growing up I had an older sister who enjoyed purposely doing things to upset me. Now that we are adults she has told me about mean things she did just to make me cry or feel left out. For example she always told me that I was fat. She called me fat at every opportunity she had. In front of my friends. In front of other adults. This always upset me because I knew that being fat was undesirable. Being fat made you a social outcast and less lovable than someone who was thin. I came to believe that as a child I was fat. On top of that my mother bemoaned the fact that I was much too tall. I had a very negative body image. Recently a childhood friend sent me a picture of our Sunday school class when we were about eight years old. I was flabbergasted to see that I was actually thin in that picture. Yes, I was among the tallest in the picture, but that was something I had always accepted and even liked. But I WASN’T FAT.

I also experienced much negative feedback from men during my entire life. Many of them were threatened by the fact that I was so tall. I was also smart, and they belittled me for my intelligence. They also were fond of telling me what I couldn’t do instead of what I could do. They discouraged me from trying things that did not fit their idea of what a woman was supposed to do. Of how a woman was supposed to act. I know from observation that most other women received the same treatment during their lives. Men are still trying to put us down instead of lifting us up.  

Dove USA, which manufactures many beauty products for women, has established the Dove Self-Esteem Project in response to data that US girls and women have not received the positive nurturing they need in order to be happy and successful in life. The project has the following mission: “to highlight self-confidence as the source of beauty, not outward appearances, and societal standards.” They emphasize how young people can develop a positive body image which will help them be more confident.

Females need heroines and role models like the Olympians I talked about at the beginning of this blog. The good news is that we now have many more opportunities to see those successful role models than we did fifty years ago. If we see it, we know we can be it. In addition, however, we need to help each other mentally and emotionally to develop and maintain a healthy outlook on life. We encounter many obstacles in life no matter what we do. But we do not want to throw obstacles in our own way or block our own path forward through a negative image of ourselves and our abilities.

Hooray for the 2024 Olympics that made women equal to men in the number of events offered this year. If we see equality in a worldwide event such as that, we can hope for more equality in every aspect of our daily lives going forward. But we have to keep fighting for it. The men in charge never give anything easily to us. It took 124 years to get parity in the Olympics. Keep in mind that we do not have to be a high-achieving Olympian to inspire other women around us. Each of us has the ability to inspire, support and encourage the females in our lives just as hopefully they do the same for us. Sisterhood is the way forward.