Unit15 TextⅡ The Feminine Dhysique

TEXT Ⅱ

The Feminine Dhysique

Thomas Boslooper and Marcia Hayes

1 Feminine strength and endurance have always been economic assets for men

—a source of cheap labor for business and industry ,of unpaid labor in the home. For

centuries women have toiled on farms and in factories. Crawling on their hands and

knees, stripped to the waist, they have pulled loads through coal mine tunnels too

narrow to accommodate a horse. In Russia today, women build roads, lay bricks, and

operate heavy equipment. Back in our own frontier days1, every pioneer woman had

to be able to do “a man’s work.”

2

Today, most people ---certainly most men --- quote physical differences

between the sexes as evidence of barriers to athletic equality . Because of these

differences , women are said to be more suited to some sports than others --- and unfit

to compare directly with men in any contact sport2.

3

As for muscle mass, women do indeed, according to some studies, have

roughly half the muscle mass of men. And men are, on the average, a third stronger

than women. Most women are in poor physical condition ,sedentary, and often

overweight. Were they given the opportunities men have to keep fit, the strength gap

would narrow considerably. The petite build of many top women gymnast belies their

extraordinary strength. Muriel Davis Grossfeld , the 1960 U.S. Olympic gymnast3,

was just over five feet tall, yet fitness tests at the University of Illinois revealed that

she was as strong as the average male college athlete.

4

So strength is relative, often misleading and frequently irrelevant in

comparison to skill. But what about bones? It’s true that women’s bones ossify

sooner than men’s . That’s because girls reach puberty4 earlier. But that’s a plus, not a

minus5. Adolescent6 boys stand a greater chance of injury because their bones aren’t

fully ossified until their late teens7. At the 1972 conference on women in sport at Penn

State University, it was reported that girls and women have fewer orthopedic injuries8

than men ---partly because of earlier ossification9, partly because, at maturity,

women’s bones are harder than men’s.

5

Other so-called disadvantages women have to put up with are smaller

hearts ,higher pulse rates, smaller lung capacity, lower aggressive instincts, bad spatial

orientation, and more body fat --- all of which supposedly combine to give them less

endurance.

6

First of all, taking on this impressive list in order, women’s smaller hearts

can work relatively harder than men’s without any ill effects. At the Penn State

Conference, medical researchers reported that a pulse of 200 could be attained

without risk in a fifteen-year-old girl, while adult women athletes can reach 180 easily

during exertion ---about 20 beats faster than a man.

7

Going on to the lungs, we find that average adult male has a 30 per cent

greater “aerobic capacity ”10 or “vital capacity ” (the volume of air that can be exhaled

from the lungs after breathing in deeply )than the average woman.

8

This is partly because men, being bigger , have bigger lungs; partly because

the statistics are arranged to favor men. There have been no large-scale studies done

on female respiration .

9

As for aggression ,men apparently do have a natural edge here11. Studies of

infant male primate and little boys indicate that males play rougher and show a greater

preference for bruising physical contact than do female apes and little girls .On the

other hand ,little boys are encouraged from infancy to be aggressive and little girls are

punished for display of aggressiveness ;so it's hard to know where to draw the line .

10

Our current feminine body ideal is the thin, delicate build characteristic of

most fashion models. In the past ,the feminine body ideal was often

pear-shaped--certainly heavier and more rounder than the ultra-thinness for which

many women now starve. The muscular build typical of most men has never been the

Western world's ideal for women. Muscular women have ,in fact ,been consistently

discriminated against as unfeminine.

11

The burly woman athlete image has persuaded a lot of women that strenuous

athletic activity leads to unattractive muscles. It isn't so "Proper training is the

answer," says Walter Kostric, trainer of Canadian track and field star Debbie Van

Kiekebelt." Some exercises can develop large muscles, but others don't. A good coach

knows the difference."

12

Most women have more body fat than men. And where fat exists, muscle

obviously doesn't. Conditioning12 has a lot to do with this, of course, but even

physically active women do have more fat than men. In some areas of

athletics--endurance swimming, for instance--a little extra fat can be an advantage,

providing warmth and buoyancy. But when a woman is in top form, the extra fat

doesn't affect her performance at all, in any sport.

13

Another difference between the sexes is spatial orientation. Men are supposed

better at orienting themselves in space--at "keeping their eye on the ball", using their

own physical positions as a reference point to activity around them.

14

Women tend to use peripheral objects as points of reference and are easily

distracted by visual stimuli. Men, for instance, can pick a figure out of a complex

pattern more readily than women. Perhaps, it has been suggested, this is like

prehistoric times when life depended on a man's ability to keep his eye on a deer

running in the bushes. More likely, it's a psychological difference, resulting from

greater self-confidence on the part of men.

15

When it comes to endurance, men, because of their greater strength and lung

capacity, supposedly become exhausted less quickly than women." Look at all the

male long-distance runners that women haven't begun to catch up to," we're often told.

But there are many more men than women running marathons and in the Olympics

women aren't allowed to run more than 1,500 meters, so this evidence is only relative.

Furthermore, women have greater tolerance for fatigue, which tends to even things

out.

16

It seems clear from these examples that differences in reaction time, muscle

mass, bones, hearts, lungs, endurances, strength, spatial orientation, and body

fat--when they exist --don't necessarily make much of a difference where relative

performance is concerned.

1,009 words

1. frontier days (Paragraph 1) It refers to Western frontier life in America . The

settlement of the West represented the dreams of gold-hungry prospects , and of

homesteaders whose backbreaking labor transformed barren plains into fields of

grain.

2. contact sport (Paragraph 2) a sport such as boxing or hockey in which physical

contact between players is an integral part of the game .

3. 1960 U.S. Olympic gymnast (Paragraph 3) In 1960, more than 7,000 athletes from

85 nations competed at Rome in the seventeenth modern Olympic Games ,

achieving new records of performance in a majority of events .

4. puberty (Paragraph 4) The bodies of boys and girls change noticeably during a

period known as puberty . For most boys, puberty starts between 12 and 14 years

of ages .For most girls , it begins a little earlier .Both boys and girls grow taller

and heavier during puberty .

5. But that’s a plus , not a minus (Paragraph 4) But that’s an advantage, not a

disadvantage .There are both pluses and minuses to living in a big city.

6. adolescence (Paragraph 4) Whereas the term puberty refers to the period of

physical maturation , the term adolescence typically refers to the socially defined

period during which a person adjusts to the physical , emotional ,and social

changes associated with the transition from childhood to adulthood. Adolescence

occurs from about the age of 12 to the age of 17 or older.

7. teens(Paragraph4) teenagers, A very young child is a baby or more formally an

infant :A child who was just learned to walk is a toddler. Young people aged 13 to

19 are teenagers and a younger teenager may also be called an adolescent , but this

word is rather formal . The word youth is often used for an older male teenager

(15+). Often the phrase young people is used for this age group in everyday

English .Kid is informal and used both for child (up to around 14) and for young

people.

8. orthopedic injuries (Paragraph 4) medical problems affecting one’s bones ,

muscles , etc. Orthopedics is a branch of medicine that deals with disorders of the

bones and muscles and their associated tissues .

9. ossification (Paragraph 4) In humans, the process of bone hardening ,or

ossification , is completed at about the age of 25 .The last bone to ossify is the

breastbone.

10. aerobic capacity (Paragraph 7) vital capacity

Assessment of a person’s physical fitness often includes measurement of aerobic

capacity in the form of maximum oxygen consumption during aerobic exercise .

11. men apparently do have a natural edge here (Paragraph 9) As for aggression ,

men are slightly better than women because they have an inborn ability that

women do not have.

12. Conditioning (Paragraph 12) a method of controlling or influencing the way

people or animals behave or think by using a gradual training process.

Questions for discussion

1. What does the author conclude about women in the old days?

2. What is implied about women’s role expectations in modern societies ?

3. What facts does the author give to counter the argument that women are

physically inferior to men?

4. According to the passage , what is fundamentally proper in the differentiation

between the roles of the two sexes?

5. What is the authors’ purpose in this writing?