Social Workout

Workout

In Helen Gurley Brown We Trust

After a long day of corporate conference food (when the chicken and the cheesecake basically taste the same) and executives droning on about "trust" and "transparency", making absurd comments like "what does transparency even mean?" (tip: it means that your investors understand how you make money, you don't lie, and when there are problems you come clean...) it was good to eat my brown bag dinner and head for a friggin awesome lecture on Helen Gurley Brown.

It's hard to imagine now that Cosmopolitan could be considered a revolutionary magazine. But HGB wanted it to be equal parts a guide to fashion, sex, and financial independence for women, not just another fashion title. And this was back in the early 60s, Mad Men era 60s, when women were the secretaries and the moms and the mistresses.

The ultimate pragmatist, she preached that courting the admiration of men was useful for going out and having fun (they did, afterall, in the early 60s have the wallets), but that marriage was not something that necessarily made life complete and that it was possible to be a driven, childless woman who had a career and be okay.She fought to run stories on the lives of lesbian women in the 60s, and she advocated in the pages of Cosmo for the Equal Rights Amendment and for the legalization of abortion.

Her magazine's original mission and Sex and the Single Girl feminism has been warped and corrupted through the years... we have too skinny models, out of control materialism, eating disorders galore, and dubious pop culture icons like Samantha from Sex and the City.

But we can also be women who do work that was once for men only and be the boss, but also get to play out all different types of femaleness. We don't have to hide the fact that we're women to be successful. We can wear hot red dresses with leather and zippers to securities industries conferences and report on how Washington D.C is taking aim at an era of crappy regulation. We can be happy about the fact that we like sex, but also demand that people respect us for doing great work. It's a balancing act that the second wave feminists didn't quite know how to navigate, but that HGB always took head on (with varying degrees of success).

She's not Gloria Steinem, but she believed that above all else, women needed to be independent. Sure, you might hope that men took you out to lunch or dinner or bought you things, but you also saved all that you could, bought clothing wisely, felt good about the work you did, and created a cushion so that when the dinner and the dates stopped rolling in, you had money and security. She was not an idealist. She did not believe that women would ever live in a world where they wouldn't be judged for their looks. She just believed that despite a world where the deck seemed stacked against women, they could turn things around and succeed.

So I think I worked out my ears. And i ate cauliflower crudite (just one piece. I could not handle the squeakiness). That's my SWeAT. And I walked my mile to work, my half mile to the lecture, and my 2 miles home. All in the damn rain.

Soda free: 27 days out of 31

Caffeine free: DONE! 7 day out of 7

Lo-gloo: 5 out of 7

Brown bagger: 7 days out of 10

SWeAT: DONE! 10 days out of 10 (oatmeal/abs, broccoli/quads, quinoa/feet, traps/edamame, adductors/green tea, delts/organic raisins, pecs/black beans, hands/bok choy, ankles/artichokes, ears/cauliflower)

Raw food day: not yet
Food serving: not yet

Brightly colored: DONE

Unsweetened: DONE
No moo: DONE
Flog: DONE