Coomer - Physical disobedience: an unruly guide to health and stamina for the modern feminist

Its picture time, ladies! Smile pretty! Suck it in. Keep it tight. Arms on hips. Twist your body. Bend those knees. You know how we do. If youre small enough and easy enough on the eyes and ears, youll blend right in.

Nope. Not anymore. Were in the middle of a heavy lift here, and were going to need our legs under us.

There is precisely zero chance we will be able to achieve equal stature while chronically apologizing for our own perfectly healthy, unconventionally beautiful bodies.

Women have made enormous progress over the last two hundred years for gender equality and human rights. The feminist activists who came before us deserve ticker tape parades and a series of provocative documentary films in their honor. Sojourner Truth, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Diane Nash, and countless others were unrepentant revolutionaries, doing the dirtiest work long before our time. They were bold and relentlessand they deserve better than what we are doing to our bodies today. They deserve us at our strongest. Weve come a long way, but after all this time, we remain enshrined in hourglass, whisper-thin ideals perpetuated not only by the media but by our own acquiescence.

We have a mountain of work yet to do on a whole range of issues. You know the ones: equal pay, affordable health care, stronger gun laws, paid family leave, equal representation in government and business, criminal justice, financial reform, support for immigrant and refugee families, environmental conservation, preventing violence against women, minorities, and the disabled, and on and on. Its a hell of a list.

We understand the work that needs to be done to advance human rights on a macro level. Movements are taking shape worldwide. Women of every ethnicity are running for office and standing up for disenfranchised people in all walks of life, but if we arent grounded in our bodies in the first place, none of it will stick. As foot soldiers, we must do the work, on a micro level, to shift the conversations in our own minds and to feed our bodies.

Women are, and will continue to be, at the heart of progressive change throughout the world. We vote in greater numbers than men. We invest tirelessly in our own educations and those of our kids, and we advocate for public health and safety policies that benefit the community as a whole. But before we can make seismic professional, economic, and sociological changes, we have to squeeze out of our Spanx and remember how it feels to breathewith sweat in our eyes, air in our lungs, and music pouring boldly from our speakers.

This book is a manual for how to bring our activism home, into our bodies, by way of pleasurable, purposeful self-care.

Physical Disobedience is any action that feeds, strengthens, or nurtures our bodies as a direct, unapologetic act of defiance. It is fierce appreciation for what our bodies can do, how they feel, and how they look in all of their imperfect glory. Its a concrete, immediately impactful way to push back that benefits each of us as individuals while simultaneously effecting positive, social change. In other words, taking care of our bodies is a form of political action.

Physical Disobedience is about refusing to acquiesce, refusing to allow our bodies to be objectified by others, and taking a hard look at how we objectify them ourselves. It is feminism via fitness. We know how to care for the people we love. We need to make sure our own bodies are cared for as well, and that requires a hefty dose of appreciation and exploration. There is too much at stake. Our bodies make our work possible. Reducing them to decorative trinkets reduces our impact and destroys our experience of being alive.