April 15, 2024 • 35 mins
2024 has been a phenomenal year for women in sports. With the record-breaking viewership of the women's March Madness finals, women's athletics have finally gotten the media coverage they deserve. However, recent research shows that by the time girls hit 14 years old, they are twice as likely to quit playing sports than boys. Christine Yu, award-winning journalist and author of “Up to Speed: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes” joins us on the show to unpack why this is happening and what we can all do to help the girls in our lives learn that a good body is a strong body. Plus, Danielle and Simone chat about wearing perfume to bed, acts of microfeminism, and men's emotional wellness retreats. What are your small acts of feminism? Email us your answers at hello@thebrightside.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright side, women's
sports is exploding, and yet at middle schools around the country,
teen girls drop out of sport at twice the rate
of boys. Author and award winning journalist Christine You is here.
She'll share how we can empower future MVPs now and
connect the dots between young female athletes and C suites.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's Monday, April fifteenth. I'm Danielle Robe.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
And I'm Simone. Boys. This is the bright side from
Hello Sunshine. What did you do this weekend? Did you
get some rests? Did you binge anything good?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I actually saw one of the best movies I've seen
in a long time. I went to go see Monkey Man,
and I was totally blown away. It was one of
the best shot movies I have ever seen. And I
actually thought about one of our interviews from last week
because color Me Courtney talked about how she wasn't invited
(00:57):
to parties and so she just started her own party.
And that's exactly what dev Patel did. He wanted to
be seen as a superhero like Marvel film type characters,
and people were not hiring him, and so he said, Okay,
I'm going to write produce, direct, and star in this film,
and it blew my mind. Everybody has to go see it.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
I can't wait to see it. It has been on
my list for a date night. Husband and I are
going to try and go see it together. But I'm
so glad to hear that it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I actually want to hear what your husband thinks as
a director.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I want his feedback.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
But other than that, I just went for a sunset
hike with one of my girlfriends and rested a little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It was a really good weekend. How about you.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I have been binging Ripley on Netflix. I don't know
what that is. So it's based on the story of
Thomas Ripley. It was a novel that got turned into
a film starring Jude Log, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Matt Damon
and so now this is a series version of it.
And it also is shot incredibly beautifully. I mean, it's
(02:04):
just breathtaking scenes. It's all in black and white, so
it's kind of a noir, has a noir feel to it.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I can't watch anything in black and white. It drives
me nuts missing out.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
It's really good. It's the first show that I've actually
been addicted to in a really long time, because I've
noticed that my fiction books, for the most part, are
more entertaining than a lot of what is on TV
right now.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, there's the phrase the book is better, and I
think Harry Potter defied that for a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
But other than that, usually the book is better.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
You're so right, Danielle. The book is almost always better.
And I'm trying to read more as a night time
routine as opposed to using screens or whatnot. But I
have to ask you about this nighttime routine that I've
been seeing on TikTok. People are putting perfume on before
they go to bed. This is absolutely insane. This is crazy.
(02:54):
I mean, we've all sprayed our sheets with like a
smell good spray or a room refresh before, but putting
on perfume to not even leave the house. You're not
going outside. This is such a waste. I wear on
tall from lay Labo. That stuff is so expensive. I
can't imagine actually wasting it before bed.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
This is so not for me personally.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I don't actually wear perfume at all during the day
because I'm really careful and thoughtful about toxins. Like I
have clean cleaning products. I try and use clean deodorant
and so perfume to me is one of those that
I'm really thoughtful about.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
And I just would not be spraying this at.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
All, let alone at night when you're not around anybody,
Like wash your body, wash your feet, and go to bed.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
See. I would love to be a toxin free, scent free,
clean girly, but I love the smell of a house
that has been freshly cloroxed.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Actually it gives me headaches.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Like I switched over to vinegar and water and it
works so well for me. But I don't quite understand
why people are doing this, because are they doing it
to smell nice for their partner or like what's the point?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
You know what? I will say that sometimes I will
put on perfume before a Zoom meeting and I'm not
going to see anyone, no one is going to smell me.
But there is something about it being a mood booster
or changing your overall demeanor. So I don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
This is a funny question, Danielle. What is the last
thing you want to smell before you go to sleep?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
You know, I do have like an essential oil mix
that I have next to my bed that I spray
on my pillows sometimes, so I like a nice scent
on my pillows before I go to bed.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I'd like that.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
How about you.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I actually have a really toxic room spray that I
love to spray on my bed. But that's to see
that's different. I'm not spraying it on my body. It's like,
you know, goes on the bed, goes in the air,
in the room. It's great.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Okay, Well, goodbye, tough guy, Hello, wellness brow. I read
an article over the weekend in Fortune magazine about how
more men are rejecting the alpha male stereo tip and
they're going on these retreats to learn empathy. It kind
of made me giggle, because like, I don't know how
you need to learn empathy, but I'm glad that they're
learning it. But in the article, they describe these support
(05:11):
groups almost as like group therapy for men, and they're
going into the wilderness as strangers, and then they're going
to backpack, they meditate, they do cold plunges, and throughout
it all they're having these guided conversations to learn how
to talk about their feelings.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I love this. I am in full support of this. Actually,
one of my really good friends you and her husband
run a company and this is what they do. They
create these really lavish, elaborate wilderness retreats for men. They
do like mountain biking, camping out, but like with like
luxury meals and everything, and it's really really popular. They
(05:48):
get a lot of celebrities wanting to go on these trips,
so there's a huge demand for this.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Well. Research shows that just twenty two percent of men
said they'd turned to a friend in a time of need,
which is very, very low. And another survey found that
forty percent of men never talk about their mental health
out of embarrassment. And I think it was worth sharing
those statistics because there's clearly a huge need for this.
(06:14):
We always joke on the internet like are men okay?
But clearly they're not, like you have to get your
feelings out, And so if it's they're doing it in
a support group way, I love this. You know, I
don't love that term toxic masculinity because I don't think
masculinity when done right, is toxic, and so it's like
kind of puts men down. But I'm hoping that through
(06:35):
these support groups they find a way to like harness
their masculinity in a way that feels good.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah. I mean those stats that you shared are pretty staggering,
but also not all that surprising. I mean I see
it in small ways. Even in my own home. I
socialize with my girlfriends a lot, and my husband definitely
meets up with his friends less. So I think in general,
I think men are just socialized to have some shame
(07:03):
around opening up to their friends and just being vulnerable.
We know that that's been well established, So this seems
like a really healthy way to reverse that trend.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah, I like it.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I have a brother who's two years younger than me,
and I saw firsthand the pressure that he felt to
live up to a certain idea of masculinity or what
being a man was or is. And there's such a
small box for men. Like for women, you can do
a lot of things and it's accepted. You can play
(07:35):
a variety of sports, or be into art, or be
into theater. I think when you're growing up as a man,
it's like you're supposed to play sports and then you're
supposed to go out into the world and make money,
and there's not a lot of room for anything else.
And so This is not me saying poor men, because
you know there's.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Plenty of stuff that they have an advantage in.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
But I do think it's hard to feel constricted to
that box, and so talking about things must feel really nice.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, I don't think we talk about that enough. That
we deal with a lot of pressures, a lot of
them external to look a certain way, to dress a
certain way. But men deal with their own pressures in
our society too, and a big one is that burden
to provide if you're in a traditional gender role relationship. So, Danielle,
(08:19):
I told you I'm going on that leadership retreat in
a couple of weeks, and that actually sounds a lot
like these retreats that we were just talking about for men.
I'm actually really nervous about going on this retreat because
there's going to be group therapy in situations where I
have to open up and be vulnerable. So I think
I need to shed some of my tough guy identity.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, it's time for your wellness bro energy to come out.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
This is my wellness bro era.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Okay, so we talked about the guys, Now it's time
to talk about the girls. There's this micro feminism movement
that is popping up all over.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
My TikTok feed. Is it on yours too?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yes? I love this so much.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Been are talking about small, intentional gestures that they do
every day to help counteract the microaggressions that are baked
into our everyday lives. I'm going to give you an example.
One of my favorites that I saw was this attorney
who said that she refers to people using she as
the default instead of he. And if that doesn't make sense,
it's like this, Okay, you call and you're trying to
(09:22):
schedule a plumber, and so you say, hey, can he
come out at eight am?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
We default he.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So in every situation she can, she defaults she, And
it's like this small little thing you can do to
flip the script. And so my favorite one is addressing
the women in the room first and asking for their
ideas before the men.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
It's so crazy that that's even that we even have
to label that as an act of micro feminism though,
like that should just be something that's customary totally.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
But it's all these defaults, right, like not yielding on
a sidewalk, listing women first on financial documents.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Not yielding on a sidewalk. Can we rewind from second?
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
This happens to me all the time because I'm five
to one. Maybe it doesn't happen to you. But like
people in general that are taller than me, but particularly men,
expect me to be the one to move to the
left or right if we're both walking the same direction,
like towards each other.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
When you work in television or production, it's often assumed
that the audio engineer is going to be an audio guy.
You call him like the audio guy. So I've started
to just refer to it as an audio engineer so
that it's not a gendered term. Yeah, let's see. I
like to confront cat callers and be like, what did
you just say to me? How about you? Have you
thought about anyways that you're acting out micro feminism?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
I try to hold doors for men all the time.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I'm from the Midwest, so I hold doors for everybody,
like I'm the one at the mall. That's like holding
the door for eleven people to walk through. But I
go out of my way to hold a door for men.
Or when I was in college, I was a waitress,
and a lot of the waiters that I worked with
were like career waiters, and so they had all these
sort of like tips, tricks, notions that I didn't know
(11:08):
anything about. And nobody wanted to wait on a table
of two women because they said that they tipped less,
and so one, I don't think that's true, but that
was a thing that they told me, And so I
always go out of my way to tip really well
because I'm like, I want people to know that women
tip well too.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, I don't. That's definitely not true. That's crazy. Another
one that people are saying is an act of microfeminism
is addressing women first on emails, like putting their name
at the front of the list of all the emails included.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Oh yeah, that actually is interesting to think about in
terms of like wedding invitations like missus and mister or something.
I actually hate missus in general. I like there is
no compliment for that. For men, everybody's a mister, regardless
of if you're married or not, and so I just
think everybody should be ms.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
That actually gets me thinking about the fact that probably
my greatest act of micro feminism is not changing my name.
All right, This next story is a perfect segue to
our next guest Iowa's women's basketball team announced that they're
retiring Kaitlyn Clark's number twenty two jersey for good.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Woooo. This is exciting.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
We don't have a lot of women's jerseys retired yet.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Very big news. So in a post on X the
team said, quote, there will never be another Kaitlyn Clark
and there will never be another twenty two TBD. I
should be able to keep that number whenever she moves
to the WNBA, and that draft is actually happening tonight.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Says Major.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Caitlyn Clark has been breaking records for the last few
years and she's continuing to do so we're going to
take a quick break, but when we come back, we're
staying in the sports world with journalist and researcher Christine You.
She's talking about sports science for women, sports culture in
the US and how we can help more girls stay
(12:58):
in the game. So we just talked about Kaitlyn Clark's
number twenty two jersey being retired, and I'm so excited
to see women's college basketball getting its shine.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Me too, Danielle. I mean, it really does feel like
a turning point in women's athletics. But the question now
is how do we keep this momentum up and also,
how do we support female athletes from the jump, not
just when they've reached Kitlyn Clark's status. Christine You is
an award winning journalist who's dedicated her career to answering
these questions. Her book Up to Speed takes a closer
(13:37):
look at girls in sports, and she reported that by
the time they're fourteen years old, girls are twice as
likely as boys to leave sports.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
She's here today to help us break down the research
and find out what we can do to teach ourselves
and the girls in our lives that a good body
is a strong body.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Welcome Christine, Welcome to the right side.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Thanks so much for having me so excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Danielle, should we start by telling her a little bit
about our relationship with sports?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yes, we have to.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Okay, so both Danielle and I are athletes, but with
a little bit of an asterisk because I like to
say I've experienced adult onset athleticism. I love working out,
I love staying active, I love fitness, but I sucked
at team sports as a kid.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I was totally in the same boat.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
I actually my parents joked I was an individual sports enthusiast.
I did everything that didn't have to do with a team.
I was an ice skater. I did like solo dance.
Only later in high school did I do more team stuff.
I did dance team. But Simone and I are self
proclaimed athletes. Nobody has given us that title. No one,
(14:45):
and we were curious about your relationship to sport. Did
you have an experience or a personal tie that drew
you to this research topic.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
I will also preface this by saying I was, by
no means a very good athlete at all, but I
just loved it, like I loved playing sports. But I
didn't really start playing organized sports until fourth grade. And
it was almost like an accident because I had switched
schools at that time and my new school required us
to play sports. So I almost feel like if that
wasn't the case, I'm not quite sure I would have
(15:18):
found sports in the same way. Because my parents, being
very good, you know, Chinese immigrant parents, really wanted me
to stay, you know, pay attention to school. But like
I said, it really opened the door to like moving
my body and knowing myself in a much deeper way.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Christine, I want to get to the heart of your
reporting and this staggering statistic. So, by the age of fourteen,
girls quit sports at twice the rate of boys. Why
is that?
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Yeah, when I came across that statistic, like, I had
to read it multiple times because it is it is,
like you said, it's staggering. It's just a huge number.
And so we see between the ages of like around
six and twelve, participation, right, betfre boys and girls are
roughly the same. You know, by seventeen, fifty one percent
of girls have dropped out of sport by that time.
(16:06):
And it's again, it's this Banana's number that I think about,
and I think about the all of the good things
that can come from playing sports and being physically active,
and how that impacts your health, how that impacts like
just your person in general, and how we're creating this
environment that really makes it really difficult for girls to
(16:27):
be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
But there are multiple factors that contribute to this situation, right,
So can you walk us through those factors?
Speaker 4 (16:35):
Yeah, there are definitely a number of factors. One is cost.
So when I was growing up, you had your team
sport at school, or you had pe at school, and
a lot of schools are cutting sports teams. At the
same time, we've seen this rise of travel and club
sports and this like specialization and professionalization of youth sports,
(16:56):
and it costs a lot of money to play in
those leagues. It's because this pay to play situation. And
the research shows that there are disparities in participation by
race and ethnicity and by socioeconomic status. So white girls
and girls from higher income families have significantly higher participation
rates than black and Hispanic girls and those from lower
(17:18):
socioeconomic backgrounds. These white and higher income girls also tend
to participate in like two or more sports as well.
And I think it goes back to you know, what
we were talking about in terms of cost, right, A
lot of times it costs money to be able to participate.
It's hard to get to these two sports practices and
games all the time too.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
But that's across genders.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Now, that's across genders for sure, but it definitely shows
up for girls, and you know, kind of part and
parsonl with that, you could also say that there are
some gender beliefs around that too, Right, some families might
think that it's more okay or acceptable or to invest
in sports for their boys, because that's an accept did
(18:00):
thing for the boys to do versus girls. Right, girls
are supposed to be like feminine and you know, well
mannered and not resolved exactly. So those are definitely two
big issues around there. But for me, I think one
of the biggest challenges is really just adolescents itself. Right,
It's this period of time when girls' bodies are changing
(18:23):
so dramatically and drastically, and it's not just growing at height, right,
Your hips are widening, your developing breasts, your relationship with
your body is shifting in such a way that you know,
can be really uncomfortable in trying to understand how to
then navigate spaces like sports and athletics where your body
is really on display. And I've heard stories from so
(18:46):
many women who have been made to feel like it's
there there's something wrong with their developing body, with their
maturing body that makes it unfit for sports. So, for example,
you know, I heard from this woman Alex Reese, who
was a ballerina from the time she was little through
her teens and once she started developing breasts. She said
(19:08):
her dance teachers were horrible to her. They made her
feel really badly saying she needed to do a better
job raining in her boobs right, or then would criticize
her because the sports bra she would wear would show through,
like they could see it right under her uniformer, under
her leotard, without really, you know, understanding the fact that
leotards really don't provide any sort of breast sport at all. Right,
(19:30):
There's another woman, Maria Napolitano, who also was a super
active kid, but then ended up giving up high impact
sports like running in softball because she felt like her
boobs were too big. She ended up transitioning to a
sport like fencing, where you know, you wear a chest
protector and you wear this big jacket so it could
almost like smush down her boobs and cover it up
(19:50):
so it was less embarrassing, it was more contained. But again,
these stories over and over and over again from women
who felt like they lost years of their athletic lives
because they couldn't find sports for us. They were made
to feel like their body was wrong or something was
not right, and that it was just a misfit with
being active.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
I actually really identify with that.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I remember around eighth grade I started developing a chest
and I felt shamed by teachers, by coaches, both in
and out of sports. To be honest, what role does
the shaming of girls developing bodies play all of this?
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Yeah, I feel like a big part of this is
the fact that when we think about developing girls' bodies,
it's often sexualized.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Right.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
We think about it in terms of reproduction, we think
about it in terms of fertility, all of these things,
but we just don't recognize it for what it is.
It's just your maturing body. It's just your physiology, it's
just your anatomy. It's just the way that your body
is developing as you are maturing into an adult.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Christine, I kind of feel like you wrote this book
for me, because I definitely have some regret about not
being part of sports and not sticking with a sport.
But for me it was a different reason. Like for
Danielle it was body image, for me, it was confidence.
I just really had this pervasive lack of confidence and
I felt so terrified whenever I was playing team sports
(21:15):
that I was going to let everyone down, that I
was going to fail. And I'm curious if through your
research have you learned anything about whether women are conditioned
to have a lower tolerance for failure.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
That's a really interesting question. What I have come across
is some research looking at there are all these ultra
distance events, right these like super long running two hundred miles,
swimming across the English Channel, those types of things, and
there's been research done on ultra distance athletes that really
look at their motivation, and it seems women tend to
(21:47):
be more motivated by the journey, if you will, by
this sense of like really trying to see how they
can improve themselves, see like what they can do better
versus the outcome, versus I want to win this race,
I want a podium. So that's the piece of it
that I think is really interesting, in the sense that
(22:08):
women tend to be, or can tend to be more
intrinsically motivated in that way. But to your point about confidence,
I think it's that's a really salient point too, right,
because there are so many spheres outside of sports, just
in life in general, where girls and women aren't given
that space to be confident in what they do, to
(22:28):
show up as their full selves. And what I think
is interesting about sports is that it could potentially be
an arena for girls to do that, right, it's a
pretty self contained place where you can kind of try
on these different roles, where you can experiment. I definitely
felt that pressure of like I don't want to screw
(22:50):
up and mess up for my team, But at the
same time, you know, I think for me part of
it was realizing too, it's also just a game, right,
Like there aren't super real consequences to it. Especially as
someone who's not planning to go play college sports or
anything like that, it was an interesting arena to test
those things.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
I think that's a better way of phrasing. What I
was trying to get at is this idea that like,
maybe as young girls we just put too much pressure
on ourselves in the game, whereas boys don't deal with
that same pressure.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
I feel like for girls, what's unique about sports is that,
you know, for boys, they have so many different places
where they can test that out though, where it's sanctioned,
where it's like accepted. Whereas girls, it feels like sports
can be one of these, like I don't want to
say safe places, because sometimes it's not, but like it
can be this arena where they can kind of test
(23:43):
these roles in different ways and kind of test those
boundaries and it allows them maybe to be aggressive, right
to own their accomplishments. I mean, I don't know if
you watch the women's NCAA game, but like, that was
amazing seeing these women out there on the court just
fully owning their abilities, their competence, their confidence in a
(24:07):
way that when girls and women do that in other spheres,
they're often criticized for it.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I'm so glad that you brought that up, because it
feels like we're really at an inflection point with women's
sports where there's this huge buy in from the audience.
Everyone is rooting for these athletes. But it hasn't always
been that way. I mean, female sports teams are always
competing for airtime. So how does that aspect, that representation
factor impact young girls interest in sports?
Speaker 4 (24:32):
Yeah, it makes a huge difference. I Mean, it's so
cheesy to say that representation matters, but it really does
when you're able to see people who look like you
doing things that you kind of dream of doing. But
more importantly, too, I think, especially for women's sports, is
seeing a trajectory right that you can go from your
(24:53):
rec team to your high school team to be able
to play in college, to be able to play professionally
and sure not ever everyones can do it, but it
creates this path where you see it is possible. You
know other people have done it and maybe I can too.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Christine, we're going to take a quick break, but when
we come back, we are going to talk more about
the benefits of sports and some solutions for how we
can support our female athletes. Christine, I also want to
talk about this stat. So eighty percent of Fortune five
(25:30):
hundred female executives played sports in their earlier years.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Eighty percent. That's astounding to me.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
There's such a clear line between team sports and leadership
ability here. What do you think sports teaches us as kids?
Speaker 4 (25:44):
It is really fascinating to see that direct line, like
you said, between sports and these executive positions and companies.
And I think that you know, sure, it's sports teaches
you teamwork, encouraging grit and all these things that we've
talked about for sure, but I think again for girls
and women in particular, there is something that's really different,
(26:05):
and it is this sense of community that's amongst the players.
Like you could be out there and you can want to,
you know, be your opponent by like huge margins. You
want to win this thing so badly. But off that court, right,
there is such an admiration and a community amongst these
players that I think is really different than you know,
(26:26):
we might see in men's sports. And I think it
really is that that community piece that's really unique.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Here's the big question that I have.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
We just talked about what girls gain when they play
team sports. What do they lose out on when they
drop out of a team sport?
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Yeah, there's so much. I think. On the one hand,
there's what we've talked about in terms of feeling the
shame around your body and how lasting those feelings can
be when you feel like your body's not right, and
how that can lead to things like eating disorders and
body image issues. Are potentially losing out on all the
(27:03):
health benefits of moving your body as well. Right, We've
seen so much of the research around the effects of
sedentary behavior and how that's connected to chronic disease and
all of that. But it's creating this negative relationship between
women and their bodies and thinking about what their bodies
can and cannot do.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Christine, you go to high schools to educate administrators and
students about this very issue. What are you seeing when
you're on the ground there, are you seeing anything encouraging
or positive strides that are being made?
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Yeah? I mean, well, one these girls growing up today,
I mean they continue to blow me away because a
lot of times I will do talks at schools and
I will be interviewed by as student athlete typically and
not only they're poise, but just the questions that they
(27:55):
ask right about how we can improve the systems, what's wrong?
Like what can we do, and really wanting to take
a role in changing the systems right because they see
what's wrong. So they are just amazing and incredible. So
when I went to school, right, it used to be
just the coaches, the athletic director, and like the athletic
(28:15):
trainer essentially right kind of working with you. But now
seeing kind of an expansion of staff to include wellness counselors,
you know, mental health professionals, to include sports dieticians and
nutritionists being able to come in to provide better information
for how to nourish your body and make sure you're
getting the energy that you need. Those are big things.
But again, you know this emphasis, I'm really wanting to
(28:39):
educate girls on their whole body and to talk about
these critical issues that they're going through during adolescents, to
talk about their boobs, to talk about their periods, to
talk about the fact that their uniforms suck, to talk
about the fact that you know, they're not getting equal
practice times on the fields versus the boys. Like all
of those things. They're attuned to it. They know what's
(29:00):
going on, and they want to talk about it and
change it.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
We grow up on the playground and boys will tease
us and say we're not as great of athletes as
they are. We all know that's not true, but I
want some research to back it up. And you are
the queen of research. So what have you found makes
women naturally incredible athletes?
Speaker 3 (29:21):
What allows us to excel?
Speaker 4 (29:23):
For so long sports has been developed by men for men,
And I think what's really amazing about seeing all these
incredible athletes coming up now is the fact that you know,
not only is it just the physical and like feats
that they're able to do. And I think, you know,
there's some research around physiology and what makes women's bodies
(29:47):
potentially better at things like these ultra distance events and
stuff like that, but again, I think it's it's more
of this kind of intangible piece around the community, around
the psychology, around the fact that, like a lot of
us have been through a lot of crap, and we've
put up with a lot of crap, and yet we've
been able to accomplish so much already. Like, imagine what
(30:10):
we could do without these barriers in place. Imagine what
we could do if we actually had research and training
guidelines and nutrition guidelines and injury prevention protocols that were
tailored to us and actually took into account our lived experiences.
I mean, just thinking about that and how that could
lift up girls and women, I mean, I think, you know,
(30:31):
it really is like endless what we could accomplish.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
That part that you mentioned about the lack of research
on women's bodies, that is so crucial. But we always
like to leave our audience with some practical, solution oriented
tips here on the bright side. So for parents of
young girls, how can we make sure that our daughters
feel supported as athletes?
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (30:54):
My thing that I always say first to parents and
coaches is it has to be health first, especially during
this period of adolescence. Like, even if your kid is
like the next great thing, your priority is on your
child's health and wellness. Overall as a human being, not
as a sports star, right, so that always has to
(31:15):
be first, and I think again, really helping the girls
understand that, yeah, puberty stinks, adolescence stinks, but it is
just a phase, and so it's really important for parents
to be that soft landing place for your kids. And
then just lastly, I just wanted to add like, there
are also really simple things that schools can do too,
providing free period products in the locker rooms. Like adolest
(31:39):
and girls, periods are very irregular and can be you know,
all over the place and not always at the same
time of the month, but having period products available makes
it so that they don't have to go to their coach,
who most often will probably be a man, and say, hey, coach,
I can't practice today because I got my period and
then feeling ashamed about it. Just make it available, Like,
(31:59):
are there things we can do to make the uniforms
not so exposed again because your bodies are changing so much,
Like no one wants to feel super exposed when they're
playing a game.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
It's already traumatic enough wondering when your period will come
as an adolescent and wondering if it will strike when
you least expect it.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
And I think the biggest thing that I would say,
you know, to girls, to parents, to coaches, really anyone
who interacts with girls, is keep it fun. Sports is
supposed to be fun. Sports is this incredible tool for development.
But when we like professionalize it and like make it
super serious and competitive, we lose a lot of that
(32:42):
joy and that fun. And that's really what it needs
to be if we're thinking about kind of the long
term trajectory of girls being active, because that's what I
think what we want. We want girls to be active
throughout their entire life, in whatever shape or form that
might take. So yeah, remembering to keep the joy in.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
It that is so real. And that applies to fitness too.
If I'm not doing workouts that bring me joy or
make me feel good, then I'm just not going to
work out. So you've got to be able to find
the joy in it one percent. Christine, thank you so
much for talking with us.
Speaker 4 (33:16):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Thanks Christine.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Christine you is the author of Up to Speed, The
Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes. You can follow her writing
on her substack. Reading between the lines.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
That interview was really eye opening for me, Danielle. I
liked how she talked about the need to arm girls
with more information about their bodies and help them understand
what puberty really looks like and what to expect, because
I am very passionate about making sure all women learn
about how our bodies work, because knowledge is everything.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
I feel that Simone.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
I really loved when she talked about community that's developed
through sports. It's honestly another one of those things that
I love seeing during March Madness. You would see the
players just jump off the bench for their teammates shooting
a three, And I feel like, because you and I
didn't get to play team sports, one of the things
that we should garner from this is leaving today with
(34:20):
the goal of celebrating another female journalist or reporter, because
this job really is a team sport. It takes producers
and writers and you know, like our fates are all
tied together, and that's what I love about sports.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, let's bring that team sport ethos into everything that
we do.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Mm hmm, all right, tomorrow, we're swapping out our sneakers
for some high heels, even if it's just for the day.
Here to talk about fashion is the stylist, reality TV
star and CEO Rachel Zoe.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
And that's it for today's show. Listen and follow the
bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. You can find me simone Voice
on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
I'm Danielle Robe at Danielle robe on Instagram and TikTok.
That's r O B A Y.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
See you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
See you later.
Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright side, women's
sports is exploding, and yet at middle schools around the country,
teen girls drop out of sport at twice the rate
of boys. Author and award winning journalist Christine You is here.
She'll share how we can empower future MVPs now and
connect the dots between young female athletes and C suites.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
It's Monday, April fifteenth. I'm Danielle Robe.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
And I'm Simone. Boys. This is the bright side from
Hello Sunshine. What did you do this weekend? Did you
get some rests? Did you binge anything good?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I actually saw one of the best movies I've seen
in a long time. I went to go see Monkey Man,
and I was totally blown away. It was one of
the best shot movies I have ever seen. And I
actually thought about one of our interviews from last week
because color Me Courtney talked about how she wasn't invited
(00:57):
to parties and so she just started her own party.
And that's exactly what dev Patel did. He wanted to
be seen as a superhero like Marvel film type characters,
and people were not hiring him, and so he said, Okay,
I'm going to write produce, direct, and star in this film,
and it blew my mind. Everybody has to go see it.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
I can't wait to see it. It has been on
my list for a date night. Husband and I are
going to try and go see it together. But I'm
so glad to hear that it was amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I actually want to hear what your husband thinks as
a director.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I want his feedback.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
But other than that, I just went for a sunset
hike with one of my girlfriends and rested a little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It was a really good weekend. How about you.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I have been binging Ripley on Netflix. I don't know
what that is. So it's based on the story of
Thomas Ripley. It was a novel that got turned into
a film starring Jude Log, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Matt Damon
and so now this is a series version of it.
And it also is shot incredibly beautifully. I mean, it's
(02:04):
just breathtaking scenes. It's all in black and white, so
it's kind of a noir, has a noir feel to it.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I can't watch anything in black and white. It drives
me nuts missing out.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
It's really good. It's the first show that I've actually
been addicted to in a really long time, because I've
noticed that my fiction books, for the most part, are
more entertaining than a lot of what is on TV
right now.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, there's the phrase the book is better, and I
think Harry Potter defied that for a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
But other than that, usually the book is better.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
You're so right, Danielle. The book is almost always better.
And I'm trying to read more as a night time
routine as opposed to using screens or whatnot. But I
have to ask you about this nighttime routine that I've
been seeing on TikTok. People are putting perfume on before
they go to bed. This is absolutely insane. This is crazy.
(02:54):
I mean, we've all sprayed our sheets with like a
smell good spray or a room refresh before, but putting
on perfume to not even leave the house. You're not
going outside. This is such a waste. I wear on
tall from lay Labo. That stuff is so expensive. I
can't imagine actually wasting it before bed.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
This is so not for me personally.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I don't actually wear perfume at all during the day
because I'm really careful and thoughtful about toxins. Like I
have clean cleaning products. I try and use clean deodorant
and so perfume to me is one of those that
I'm really thoughtful about.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
And I just would not be spraying this at.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
All, let alone at night when you're not around anybody,
Like wash your body, wash your feet, and go to bed.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
See. I would love to be a toxin free, scent free,
clean girly, but I love the smell of a house
that has been freshly cloroxed.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Actually it gives me headaches.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Like I switched over to vinegar and water and it
works so well for me. But I don't quite understand
why people are doing this, because are they doing it
to smell nice for their partner or like what's the point?
Speaker 1 (04:07):
You know what? I will say that sometimes I will
put on perfume before a Zoom meeting and I'm not
going to see anyone, no one is going to smell me.
But there is something about it being a mood booster
or changing your overall demeanor. So I don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
It's interesting.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
This is a funny question, Danielle. What is the last
thing you want to smell before you go to sleep?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
You know, I do have like an essential oil mix
that I have next to my bed that I spray
on my pillows sometimes, so I like a nice scent
on my pillows before I go to bed.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I'd like that.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
How about you.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I actually have a really toxic room spray that I
love to spray on my bed. But that's to see
that's different. I'm not spraying it on my body. It's like,
you know, goes on the bed, goes in the air,
in the room. It's great.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Okay, Well, goodbye, tough guy, Hello, wellness brow. I read
an article over the weekend in Fortune magazine about how
more men are rejecting the alpha male stereo tip and
they're going on these retreats to learn empathy. It kind
of made me giggle, because like, I don't know how
you need to learn empathy, but I'm glad that they're
learning it. But in the article, they describe these support
(05:11):
groups almost as like group therapy for men, and they're
going into the wilderness as strangers, and then they're going
to backpack, they meditate, they do cold plunges, and throughout
it all they're having these guided conversations to learn how
to talk about their feelings.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
I love this. I am in full support of this. Actually,
one of my really good friends you and her husband
run a company and this is what they do. They
create these really lavish, elaborate wilderness retreats for men. They
do like mountain biking, camping out, but like with like
luxury meals and everything, and it's really really popular. They
(05:48):
get a lot of celebrities wanting to go on these trips,
so there's a huge demand for this.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Well. Research shows that just twenty two percent of men
said they'd turned to a friend in a time of need,
which is very, very low. And another survey found that
forty percent of men never talk about their mental health
out of embarrassment. And I think it was worth sharing
those statistics because there's clearly a huge need for this.
(06:14):
We always joke on the internet like are men okay?
But clearly they're not, like you have to get your
feelings out, And so if it's they're doing it in
a support group way, I love this. You know, I
don't love that term toxic masculinity because I don't think
masculinity when done right, is toxic, and so it's like
kind of puts men down. But I'm hoping that through
(06:35):
these support groups they find a way to like harness
their masculinity in a way that feels good.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Yeah. I mean those stats that you shared are pretty staggering,
but also not all that surprising. I mean I see
it in small ways. Even in my own home. I
socialize with my girlfriends a lot, and my husband definitely
meets up with his friends less. So I think in general,
I think men are just socialized to have some shame
(07:03):
around opening up to their friends and just being vulnerable.
We know that that's been well established, So this seems
like a really healthy way to reverse that trend.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah, I like it.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I have a brother who's two years younger than me,
and I saw firsthand the pressure that he felt to
live up to a certain idea of masculinity or what
being a man was or is. And there's such a
small box for men. Like for women, you can do
a lot of things and it's accepted. You can play
(07:35):
a variety of sports, or be into art, or be
into theater. I think when you're growing up as a man,
it's like you're supposed to play sports and then you're
supposed to go out into the world and make money,
and there's not a lot of room for anything else.
And so This is not me saying poor men, because
you know there's.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Plenty of stuff that they have an advantage in.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
But I do think it's hard to feel constricted to
that box, and so talking about things must feel really nice.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Yeah, I don't think we talk about that enough. That
we deal with a lot of pressures, a lot of
them external to look a certain way, to dress a
certain way. But men deal with their own pressures in
our society too, and a big one is that burden
to provide if you're in a traditional gender role relationship. So, Danielle,
(08:19):
I told you I'm going on that leadership retreat in
a couple of weeks, and that actually sounds a lot
like these retreats that we were just talking about for men.
I'm actually really nervous about going on this retreat because
there's going to be group therapy in situations where I
have to open up and be vulnerable. So I think
I need to shed some of my tough guy identity.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Yeah, it's time for your wellness bro energy to come out.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
This is my wellness bro era.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Okay, so we talked about the guys, Now it's time
to talk about the girls. There's this micro feminism movement
that is popping up all over.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
My TikTok feed. Is it on yours too?
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yes? I love this so much.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Been are talking about small, intentional gestures that they do
every day to help counteract the microaggressions that are baked
into our everyday lives. I'm going to give you an example.
One of my favorites that I saw was this attorney
who said that she refers to people using she as
the default instead of he. And if that doesn't make sense,
it's like this, Okay, you call and you're trying to
(09:22):
schedule a plumber, and so you say, hey, can he
come out at eight am?
Speaker 3 (09:27):
We default he.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
So in every situation she can, she defaults she, And
it's like this small little thing you can do to
flip the script. And so my favorite one is addressing
the women in the room first and asking for their
ideas before the men.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
It's so crazy that that's even that we even have
to label that as an act of micro feminism though,
like that should just be something that's customary totally.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
But it's all these defaults, right, like not yielding on
a sidewalk, listing women first on financial documents.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Not yielding on a sidewalk. Can we rewind from second?
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
This happens to me all the time because I'm five
to one. Maybe it doesn't happen to you. But like
people in general that are taller than me, but particularly men,
expect me to be the one to move to the
left or right if we're both walking the same direction,
like towards each other.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
When you work in television or production, it's often assumed
that the audio engineer is going to be an audio guy.
You call him like the audio guy. So I've started
to just refer to it as an audio engineer so
that it's not a gendered term. Yeah, let's see. I
like to confront cat callers and be like, what did
you just say to me? How about you? Have you
thought about anyways that you're acting out micro feminism?
Speaker 3 (10:39):
I try to hold doors for men all the time.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I'm from the Midwest, so I hold doors for everybody,
like I'm the one at the mall. That's like holding
the door for eleven people to walk through. But I
go out of my way to hold a door for men.
Or when I was in college, I was a waitress,
and a lot of the waiters that I worked with
were like career waiters, and so they had all these
sort of like tips, tricks, notions that I didn't know
(11:08):
anything about. And nobody wanted to wait on a table
of two women because they said that they tipped less,
and so one, I don't think that's true, but that
was a thing that they told me, And so I
always go out of my way to tip really well
because I'm like, I want people to know that women
tip well too.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, I don't. That's definitely not true. That's crazy. Another
one that people are saying is an act of microfeminism
is addressing women first on emails, like putting their name
at the front of the list of all the emails included.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Oh yeah, that actually is interesting to think about in
terms of like wedding invitations like missus and mister or something.
I actually hate missus in general. I like there is
no compliment for that. For men, everybody's a mister, regardless
of if you're married or not, and so I just
think everybody should be ms.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
That actually gets me thinking about the fact that probably
my greatest act of micro feminism is not changing my name.
All right, This next story is a perfect segue to
our next guest Iowa's women's basketball team announced that they're
retiring Kaitlyn Clark's number twenty two jersey for good.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Woooo. This is exciting.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
We don't have a lot of women's jerseys retired yet.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Very big news. So in a post on X the
team said, quote, there will never be another Kaitlyn Clark
and there will never be another twenty two TBD. I
should be able to keep that number whenever she moves
to the WNBA, and that draft is actually happening tonight.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Says Major.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Caitlyn Clark has been breaking records for the last few
years and she's continuing to do so we're going to
take a quick break, but when we come back, we're
staying in the sports world with journalist and researcher Christine You.
She's talking about sports science for women, sports culture in
the US and how we can help more girls stay
(12:58):
in the game. So we just talked about Kaitlyn Clark's
number twenty two jersey being retired, and I'm so excited
to see women's college basketball getting its shine.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Me too, Danielle. I mean, it really does feel like
a turning point in women's athletics. But the question now
is how do we keep this momentum up and also,
how do we support female athletes from the jump, not
just when they've reached Kitlyn Clark's status. Christine You is
an award winning journalist who's dedicated her career to answering
these questions. Her book Up to Speed takes a closer
(13:37):
look at girls in sports, and she reported that by
the time they're fourteen years old, girls are twice as
likely as boys to leave sports.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
She's here today to help us break down the research
and find out what we can do to teach ourselves
and the girls in our lives that a good body
is a strong body.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Welcome Christine, Welcome to the right side.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Thanks so much for having me so excited to be here.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Danielle, should we start by telling her a little bit
about our relationship with sports?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Yes, we have to.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Okay, so both Danielle and I are athletes, but with
a little bit of an asterisk because I like to
say I've experienced adult onset athleticism. I love working out,
I love staying active, I love fitness, but I sucked
at team sports as a kid.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I was totally in the same boat.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
I actually my parents joked I was an individual sports enthusiast.
I did everything that didn't have to do with a team.
I was an ice skater. I did like solo dance.
Only later in high school did I do more team stuff.
I did dance team. But Simone and I are self
proclaimed athletes. Nobody has given us that title. No one,
(14:45):
and we were curious about your relationship to sport. Did
you have an experience or a personal tie that drew
you to this research topic.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
I will also preface this by saying I was, by
no means a very good athlete at all, but I
just loved it, like I loved playing sports. But I
didn't really start playing organized sports until fourth grade. And
it was almost like an accident because I had switched
schools at that time and my new school required us
to play sports. So I almost feel like if that
wasn't the case, I'm not quite sure I would have
(15:18):
found sports in the same way. Because my parents, being
very good, you know, Chinese immigrant parents, really wanted me
to stay, you know, pay attention to school. But like
I said, it really opened the door to like moving
my body and knowing myself in a much deeper way.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Christine, I want to get to the heart of your
reporting and this staggering statistic. So, by the age of fourteen,
girls quit sports at twice the rate of boys. Why
is that?
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Yeah, when I came across that statistic, like, I had
to read it multiple times because it is it is,
like you said, it's staggering. It's just a huge number.
And so we see between the ages of like around
six and twelve, participation, right, betfre boys and girls are
roughly the same. You know, by seventeen, fifty one percent
of girls have dropped out of sport by that time.
(16:06):
And it's again, it's this Banana's number that I think about,
and I think about the all of the good things
that can come from playing sports and being physically active,
and how that impacts your health, how that impacts like
just your person in general, and how we're creating this
environment that really makes it really difficult for girls to
(16:27):
be able to do that.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
But there are multiple factors that contribute to this situation, right,
So can you walk us through those factors?
Speaker 4 (16:35):
Yeah, there are definitely a number of factors. One is cost.
So when I was growing up, you had your team
sport at school, or you had pe at school, and
a lot of schools are cutting sports teams. At the
same time, we've seen this rise of travel and club
sports and this like specialization and professionalization of youth sports,
(16:56):
and it costs a lot of money to play in
those leagues. It's because this pay to play situation. And
the research shows that there are disparities in participation by
race and ethnicity and by socioeconomic status. So white girls
and girls from higher income families have significantly higher participation
rates than black and Hispanic girls and those from lower
(17:18):
socioeconomic backgrounds. These white and higher income girls also tend
to participate in like two or more sports as well.
And I think it goes back to you know, what
we were talking about in terms of cost, right, A
lot of times it costs money to be able to participate.
It's hard to get to these two sports practices and
games all the time too.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
But that's across genders.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Now, that's across genders for sure, but it definitely shows
up for girls, and you know, kind of part and
parsonl with that, you could also say that there are
some gender beliefs around that too, Right, some families might
think that it's more okay or acceptable or to invest
in sports for their boys, because that's an accept did
(18:00):
thing for the boys to do versus girls. Right, girls
are supposed to be like feminine and you know, well
mannered and not resolved exactly. So those are definitely two
big issues around there. But for me, I think one
of the biggest challenges is really just adolescents itself. Right,
It's this period of time when girls' bodies are changing
(18:23):
so dramatically and drastically, and it's not just growing at height, right,
Your hips are widening, your developing breasts, your relationship with
your body is shifting in such a way that you know,
can be really uncomfortable in trying to understand how to
then navigate spaces like sports and athletics where your body
is really on display. And I've heard stories from so
(18:46):
many women who have been made to feel like it's
there there's something wrong with their developing body, with their
maturing body that makes it unfit for sports. So, for example,
you know, I heard from this woman Alex Reese, who
was a ballerina from the time she was little through
her teens and once she started developing breasts. She said
(19:08):
her dance teachers were horrible to her. They made her
feel really badly saying she needed to do a better
job raining in her boobs right, or then would criticize
her because the sports bra she would wear would show through,
like they could see it right under her uniformer, under
her leotard, without really, you know, understanding the fact that
leotards really don't provide any sort of breast sport at all. Right,
(19:30):
There's another woman, Maria Napolitano, who also was a super
active kid, but then ended up giving up high impact
sports like running in softball because she felt like her
boobs were too big. She ended up transitioning to a
sport like fencing, where you know, you wear a chest
protector and you wear this big jacket so it could
almost like smush down her boobs and cover it up
(19:50):
so it was less embarrassing, it was more contained. But again,
these stories over and over and over again from women
who felt like they lost years of their athletic lives
because they couldn't find sports for us. They were made
to feel like their body was wrong or something was
not right, and that it was just a misfit with
being active.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
I actually really identify with that.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I remember around eighth grade I started developing a chest
and I felt shamed by teachers, by coaches, both in
and out of sports. To be honest, what role does
the shaming of girls developing bodies play all of this?
Speaker 4 (20:27):
Yeah, I feel like a big part of this is
the fact that when we think about developing girls' bodies,
it's often sexualized.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Right.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
We think about it in terms of reproduction, we think
about it in terms of fertility, all of these things,
but we just don't recognize it for what it is.
It's just your maturing body. It's just your physiology, it's
just your anatomy. It's just the way that your body
is developing as you are maturing into an adult.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Christine, I kind of feel like you wrote this book
for me, because I definitely have some regret about not
being part of sports and not sticking with a sport.
But for me it was a different reason. Like for
Danielle it was body image, for me, it was confidence.
I just really had this pervasive lack of confidence and
I felt so terrified whenever I was playing team sports
(21:15):
that I was going to let everyone down, that I
was going to fail. And I'm curious if through your
research have you learned anything about whether women are conditioned
to have a lower tolerance for failure.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
That's a really interesting question. What I have come across
is some research looking at there are all these ultra
distance events, right these like super long running two hundred miles,
swimming across the English Channel, those types of things, and
there's been research done on ultra distance athletes that really
look at their motivation, and it seems women tend to
(21:47):
be more motivated by the journey, if you will, by
this sense of like really trying to see how they
can improve themselves, see like what they can do better
versus the outcome, versus I want to win this race,
I want a podium. So that's the piece of it
that I think is really interesting, in the sense that
(22:08):
women tend to be, or can tend to be more
intrinsically motivated in that way. But to your point about confidence,
I think it's that's a really salient point too, right,
because there are so many spheres outside of sports, just
in life in general, where girls and women aren't given
that space to be confident in what they do, to
(22:28):
show up as their full selves. And what I think
is interesting about sports is that it could potentially be
an arena for girls to do that, right, it's a
pretty self contained place where you can kind of try
on these different roles, where you can experiment. I definitely
felt that pressure of like I don't want to screw
(22:50):
up and mess up for my team, But at the
same time, you know, I think for me part of
it was realizing too, it's also just a game, right,
Like there aren't super real consequences to it. Especially as
someone who's not planning to go play college sports or
anything like that, it was an interesting arena to test
those things.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
I think that's a better way of phrasing. What I
was trying to get at is this idea that like,
maybe as young girls we just put too much pressure
on ourselves in the game, whereas boys don't deal with
that same pressure.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
I feel like for girls, what's unique about sports is that,
you know, for boys, they have so many different places
where they can test that out though, where it's sanctioned,
where it's like accepted. Whereas girls, it feels like sports
can be one of these, like I don't want to
say safe places, because sometimes it's not, but like it
can be this arena where they can kind of test
(23:43):
these roles in different ways and kind of test those
boundaries and it allows them maybe to be aggressive, right
to own their accomplishments. I mean, I don't know if
you watch the women's NCAA game, but like, that was
amazing seeing these women out there on the court just
fully owning their abilities, their competence, their confidence in a
(24:07):
way that when girls and women do that in other spheres,
they're often criticized for it.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I'm so glad that you brought that up, because it
feels like we're really at an inflection point with women's
sports where there's this huge buy in from the audience.
Everyone is rooting for these athletes. But it hasn't always
been that way. I mean, female sports teams are always
competing for airtime. So how does that aspect, that representation
factor impact young girls interest in sports?
Speaker 4 (24:32):
Yeah, it makes a huge difference. I Mean, it's so
cheesy to say that representation matters, but it really does
when you're able to see people who look like you
doing things that you kind of dream of doing. But
more importantly, too, I think, especially for women's sports, is
seeing a trajectory right that you can go from your
(24:53):
rec team to your high school team to be able
to play in college, to be able to play professionally
and sure not ever everyones can do it, but it
creates this path where you see it is possible. You
know other people have done it and maybe I can too.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Christine, we're going to take a quick break, but when
we come back, we are going to talk more about
the benefits of sports and some solutions for how we
can support our female athletes. Christine, I also want to
talk about this stat. So eighty percent of Fortune five
(25:30):
hundred female executives played sports in their earlier years.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Eighty percent. That's astounding to me.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
There's such a clear line between team sports and leadership
ability here. What do you think sports teaches us as kids?
Speaker 4 (25:44):
It is really fascinating to see that direct line, like
you said, between sports and these executive positions and companies.
And I think that you know, sure, it's sports teaches
you teamwork, encouraging grit and all these things that we've
talked about for sure, but I think again for girls
and women in particular, there is something that's really different,
(26:05):
and it is this sense of community that's amongst the players.
Like you could be out there and you can want to,
you know, be your opponent by like huge margins. You
want to win this thing so badly. But off that court, right,
there is such an admiration and a community amongst these
players that I think is really different than you know,
(26:26):
we might see in men's sports. And I think it
really is that that community piece that's really unique.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
Here's the big question that I have.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
We just talked about what girls gain when they play
team sports. What do they lose out on when they
drop out of a team sport?
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Yeah, there's so much. I think. On the one hand,
there's what we've talked about in terms of feeling the
shame around your body and how lasting those feelings can
be when you feel like your body's not right, and
how that can lead to things like eating disorders and
body image issues. Are potentially losing out on all the
(27:03):
health benefits of moving your body as well. Right, We've
seen so much of the research around the effects of
sedentary behavior and how that's connected to chronic disease and
all of that. But it's creating this negative relationship between
women and their bodies and thinking about what their bodies
can and cannot do.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
Christine, you go to high schools to educate administrators and
students about this very issue. What are you seeing when
you're on the ground there, are you seeing anything encouraging
or positive strides that are being made?
Speaker 4 (27:35):
Yeah? I mean, well, one these girls growing up today,
I mean they continue to blow me away because a
lot of times I will do talks at schools and
I will be interviewed by as student athlete typically and
not only they're poise, but just the questions that they
(27:55):
ask right about how we can improve the systems, what's wrong?
Like what can we do, and really wanting to take
a role in changing the systems right because they see
what's wrong. So they are just amazing and incredible. So
when I went to school, right, it used to be
just the coaches, the athletic director, and like the athletic
(28:15):
trainer essentially right kind of working with you. But now
seeing kind of an expansion of staff to include wellness counselors,
you know, mental health professionals, to include sports dieticians and
nutritionists being able to come in to provide better information
for how to nourish your body and make sure you're
getting the energy that you need. Those are big things.
But again, you know this emphasis, I'm really wanting to
(28:39):
educate girls on their whole body and to talk about
these critical issues that they're going through during adolescents, to
talk about their boobs, to talk about their periods, to
talk about the fact that their uniforms suck, to talk
about the fact that you know, they're not getting equal
practice times on the fields versus the boys. Like all
of those things. They're attuned to it. They know what's
(29:00):
going on, and they want to talk about it and
change it.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
We grow up on the playground and boys will tease
us and say we're not as great of athletes as
they are. We all know that's not true, but I
want some research to back it up. And you are
the queen of research. So what have you found makes
women naturally incredible athletes?
Speaker 3 (29:21):
What allows us to excel?
Speaker 4 (29:23):
For so long sports has been developed by men for men,
And I think what's really amazing about seeing all these
incredible athletes coming up now is the fact that you know,
not only is it just the physical and like feats
that they're able to do. And I think, you know,
there's some research around physiology and what makes women's bodies
(29:47):
potentially better at things like these ultra distance events and
stuff like that, but again, I think it's it's more
of this kind of intangible piece around the community, around
the psychology, around the fact that, like a lot of
us have been through a lot of crap, and we've
put up with a lot of crap, and yet we've
been able to accomplish so much already. Like, imagine what
(30:10):
we could do without these barriers in place. Imagine what
we could do if we actually had research and training
guidelines and nutrition guidelines and injury prevention protocols that were
tailored to us and actually took into account our lived experiences.
I mean, just thinking about that and how that could
lift up girls and women, I mean, I think, you know,
(30:31):
it really is like endless what we could accomplish.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
That part that you mentioned about the lack of research
on women's bodies, that is so crucial. But we always
like to leave our audience with some practical, solution oriented
tips here on the bright side. So for parents of
young girls, how can we make sure that our daughters
feel supported as athletes?
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (30:54):
My thing that I always say first to parents and
coaches is it has to be health first, especially during
this period of adolescence. Like, even if your kid is
like the next great thing, your priority is on your
child's health and wellness. Overall as a human being, not
as a sports star, right, so that always has to
(31:15):
be first, and I think again, really helping the girls
understand that, yeah, puberty stinks, adolescence stinks, but it is
just a phase, and so it's really important for parents
to be that soft landing place for your kids. And
then just lastly, I just wanted to add like, there
are also really simple things that schools can do too,
providing free period products in the locker rooms. Like adolest
(31:39):
and girls, periods are very irregular and can be you know,
all over the place and not always at the same
time of the month, but having period products available makes
it so that they don't have to go to their coach,
who most often will probably be a man, and say, hey, coach,
I can't practice today because I got my period and
then feeling ashamed about it. Just make it available, Like,
(31:59):
are there things we can do to make the uniforms
not so exposed again because your bodies are changing so much,
Like no one wants to feel super exposed when they're
playing a game.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
It's already traumatic enough wondering when your period will come
as an adolescent and wondering if it will strike when
you least expect it.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
And I think the biggest thing that I would say,
you know, to girls, to parents, to coaches, really anyone
who interacts with girls, is keep it fun. Sports is
supposed to be fun. Sports is this incredible tool for development.
But when we like professionalize it and like make it
super serious and competitive, we lose a lot of that
(32:42):
joy and that fun. And that's really what it needs
to be if we're thinking about kind of the long
term trajectory of girls being active, because that's what I
think what we want. We want girls to be active
throughout their entire life, in whatever shape or form that
might take. So yeah, remembering to keep the joy in.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
It that is so real. And that applies to fitness too.
If I'm not doing workouts that bring me joy or
make me feel good, then I'm just not going to
work out. So you've got to be able to find
the joy in it one percent. Christine, thank you so
much for talking with us.
Speaker 4 (33:16):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Thanks Christine.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Christine you is the author of Up to Speed, The
Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes. You can follow her writing
on her substack. Reading between the lines.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
That interview was really eye opening for me, Danielle. I
liked how she talked about the need to arm girls
with more information about their bodies and help them understand
what puberty really looks like and what to expect, because
I am very passionate about making sure all women learn
about how our bodies work, because knowledge is everything.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
I feel that Simone.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
I really loved when she talked about community that's developed
through sports. It's honestly another one of those things that
I love seeing during March Madness. You would see the
players just jump off the bench for their teammates shooting
a three, And I feel like, because you and I
didn't get to play team sports, one of the things
that we should garner from this is leaving today with
(34:20):
the goal of celebrating another female journalist or reporter, because
this job really is a team sport. It takes producers
and writers and you know, like our fates are all
tied together, and that's what I love about sports.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, let's bring that team sport ethos into everything that
we do.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Mm hmm, all right, tomorrow, we're swapping out our sneakers
for some high heels, even if it's just for the day.
Here to talk about fashion is the stylist, reality TV
star and CEO Rachel Zoe.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
And that's it for today's show. Listen and follow the
bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. You can find me simone Voice
on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
I'm Danielle Robe at Danielle robe on Instagram and TikTok.
That's r O B A Y.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
See you tomorrow, folks. Keep looking on the bright side.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
See you later.
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