The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching Physical Equality [Hardcover]

Colette Dowling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2000

Can women be equal to men as long as men are physically stronger? And are men, in fact, stronger?
      
These are key questions that Colette Dowling, author of the bestselling The Cinderella Complex, raises in her provocative new book. The myth of    female frailty, with its roots in nineteenth-century medicine and misogyny, has had a damaging effect on women's health, social status, and physical safety. It is Dowling's controversial thesis that women succumb to societal pressures to appear weak in order to seem more "feminine."
    
The Frailty Myth presents new evidence that girls are weaned from the use of their bodies even before they begin school. By adolescence, their strength and aerobic powers have started to decline unless the girls are exercising vigorously--and most aren't. By sixteen, they have already lost bone density and turned themselves into prime candidates for osteoporosis. They have also been deprived of motor stimulation that is essential for brain growth.  

Yet as breakthroughs among elite women athletes grow more and more astounding, it begins to appear that strength and physical skill--for all women--is only a matter of learning and training. Men don't have a monopoly on physical prowess; when women and men are matched in size and level of training, the strength gap closes. In some areas, women are actually equipped to outperform men, due partly to differences in body structure, and partly to the newly discovered strengthening benefits of estrogen.
  
Drawing on extensive research in motor development, performance assessment, sports physi-ology, and endocrinology, Dowling presents an astonishing picture of the new physical woman. And she creates a powerful argument that true equality isn't possible until women learn how to stand up for themselves--physically.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The 2000 Games in Sydney mark a centenary of women competing in the Olympics. There are more female competitors than in any previous Games, competing in 25 of the 28 events. Twenty-four-year-old Ila Borders, the first woman to play men's pro baseball, already has her jersey hanging in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York, and dreams of making the majors. Title IX has revolutionized access for women to sports, and we have plenty of sports heroines to look up to. Despite all this, gender biases and stereotypes still persist. Though the (very visible) athletic physiques of Brandi Chastain and Gabrielle Reece may have diversified the repertoire of desirable bodies, one study claims that 80 percent of 11-year-old girls have tried dieting.

In her latest book, The Frailty Myth, Colette Dowling, author of the bestseller The Cinderella Complex, discusses these issues and takes on the idea that women are physically weaker than men. Physical activity is good for women's self-esteem, she argues. In purely biological terms, activity in girls has been shown to protect against the onset of osteoporosis later in life. Physical exertion increases levels of endorphins, which enhance mood. A strong and fit woman is, at a most fundamental sense, able to outrun or fend off an attacker; Dowling cites hair-raising statistics on the number of assaults--large and small--on the female body. And perhaps most important is the psychological edge--exercise gives women and girls a broader sense of competence and confidence that affects the way they relate to the world.

This is a popular history, peppered with anecdotes and rhetorical questions to the reader. It is at times an inspiring read, at other times shocking and depressing. Women have come a long way since the dark days of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the rest cure, and warnings to parents that educating their daughters could be a threat to reproductive well-being. For Dowling, physical equality is nothing less than "the final stage of women's liberation." --J. Riches

From Publishers Weekly

In analyzing the differences in physical performance and strength between the sexes, Dowling (The Cinderella Complex) asks not only what the effects of men's superior strength and access to physical activity have been, but whether men are, in fact, naturally physically superior in the first place. In her exploration of the still radical idea that the differences between the sexes have more to do with training, encouragement and cultural beliefs than inherent biological difference, Dowling argues further that the historical straitjacketing of women's physicalityAwhat Dowling calls "learned weakness"Ahas elicited contempt from men, made women vulnerable to sexual humiliation and short-circuited women's willingness to take risks. Citing a mountain of contemporary research regarding women's athletic performance and its political and psychological ramifications, she defends her position with passion. But Dowling's argument that boys' performance advantages before adolescence are culturally induced is much stronger than her case that the same is true for men. She calls for a reevaluation of athletic contests on a pound-for-pound basisAsuggesting that size, not sex, is the determining factor in athletic successAand cites women's advantages in endurance and flexibility, but doesn't offer much more proof of men's and women's physical equality beyond that. Though Dowling builds a solid case for her view that the unnatural weakness of women is a public health crisis, and though she offers a heartening evaluation of how quickly the strength gap is narrowing in an era when women's sports are exploding, some readers may be left to wonder whether comparing men's and women's physical performance is, in itself, a trap. Agent, Ellen Levine. 6-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375502351
• ISBN-13: 978-0375502354
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,375,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspirational fare for women athletes, June 11, 2001

By 

Cathy A Belben - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching Physical Equality (Hardcover)

Other reviewers on this site have chosen to look at this book from a fairly limited perspective--focusing, for example, on the information about Uta Pippig--rather than on the work as a whole and its implications for women and for everyone; another reviewer has mistakenly suggested that Dowling's intention is to disparage men by suggesting that women are gaining physical strength.

Both of these readers/reviewers are mistaken, and have failed to consider The Frailty Myth completely and objectively, which leads to the false suggestion that her work is biased, untrue, and unimportant--this is simply not true. People appear to be threatened by her assertion that women's bodies can--and are--changing through the years, and that women are capable of far greater physical accomplishments than they were in the past, and will, in all likelihood, make ever more gains in the future.

Dowling cites research that demonstrates how our society (and other world societies) teaches girls to limit their physical prowess, to question their physical abilities and prowess, and then to fulfill the messages we send them about their supposed "frailty" and "weakness." Our culture sends the message, Dowling says, that women OUGHT to be petite, thin, and passive--and that the purpose for this is to be attractive to men. Bulkier women, and women who aggressively pursue physical challenges, are less appealing, we tell our young women.

The author is asserting that these messages CAN be changed, and that girls' ideas about what they can accomplish as athletes can have an enormous impact on what they actually accomplish. We can alter the messages we send and the opportunities we provide, and this may enable our young women to develop stronger muscles, more agility, better self-confidence, and the numerous other strengths that accompany physically fit individuals.

Dowling is not suggesting that either sex is, or will ever be, superior to the other--simply that we owe it to our young women to provide them with the same opportunities and beliefs about physical fitness that we give our boys--and make available the benefits that accompany that fitness.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Loved It, January 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching Physical Equality (Hardcover)

I usually don't read non-fiction unless I have to, but I picked this up and then couldn't put it down. A fast read and well-written. Dowling provides a history of all the methods used to keep women frail that could imply a conspiracy if you were inclined to see one. She also provides convincing arguments for getting and staying strong. I have a four-year-old daughter, and this book will definitely influence my decisions regarding her athletic opportunities, let alone my own state of fitness.

Time for women to stop accepting the limitations placed on them in the interest of keeping them "safe."

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Makes you get excited about going to the gym!, October 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching Physical Equality (Hardcover)

I picked this book up because of its great cover, not really knowing what it was about. And when I started reading it in the bookstore, I just couldn't put it down. It's about what it has meant and still means for women to be treated as frail, as weaker, as needing to be helped, as in "Women and children first!" At first you think this is a nice thing, a gallant gesture on men's part, but I'd never thought about how it is for a woman to be treated on a par with children, physically, throughout all of her life! Who wants to be "taken care of" all their life? It's a lot like grown up women being called "girls." Anyway, the author is not haranging, she tells great stories, including wonderful ones about her daughters and friends. It's a great read.

I just loved this book and feel more excited when I go to the gym now, I'm not kidding. I see it as part of a bigger picture.

I highly recommend this book. It sounds like a cliche, but it's empowering.

Eleanor Reynolds