plushies as psychological warfare
Apr. 3rd, 2019 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
allekhaStill having arch pain in my skates, but new insoles + tying them very, very loosely (even for Edeas) helps a lot. I got them poked at again by my fitter, and the right one was also supposed to have something done to it to help me balance better, but we're not sure if that actually happened. Need to ask her about it again. At least I can balance on my right foot on a straight line again! On a flat. Or an outside edge. Let's not talk about the inside edge. And I can (sort of) spin again.
My skating friend, R, and I started taking ice dance lessons together with our coach. So far, we've had two of them. It's a lot of fun, though even trying to skate down the ice together with basic strokes makes you appreciate how difficult it is!
It also bummed me out some from just how much sexism and gender roles are embedded in it. Especially when we're doing our very basic dance, and the 'woman' role there is basically 'try to skate well and at a tempo' and meanwhile, poor R has to figure out how to get around me on curves and swing rolls without slingshotting around me or running into me. Makes me feel like I'm not doing much to help. (And being even less helpful when I wobbled on my skates a few times.) R didn't like the emphasis on man/woman, either. I think our coach noticed our discomfort with it, because last time he explicitly said 'male role' and 'female role' a couple of times and noted that 'it's 2019, we can't say it's just a man and a woman anymore'.
It's not just ice dance, but as much as I enjoy doing and watching skating, all the sexism and gender policing and the 'look how heterosexual everyone is' is depressing. Like people arguing that women just look bad in black skates for some magical reason - my fitter did make me uncomfortable with how much she was going on about how I'd be the first 'girl' in the area to have black skates (I'm not really out to the skating people here). Or that same-sex ice dancing just couldn't possibly be a thing because the lifts would be impossible (Mao Asada might disagree, along with the ice dance women who have lifted their male partners before). Or how they finally are letting ice dance women wear pants.... in the short dance only. And so on.
(R and I also joked that if we were ever on NBC, the commentators would rip into us for being too close in height and looking bad because of it. I think I'm actually a little taller than him.)
Anyway, the ice dance lesson itself was enjoyable. Especially when we managed to stay in synch and not move at two different speeds, last time. You can feel the force your partner is putting on you and the force you are putting on them (I still had to work to help keep us in position), and it's a different skill set to try and predict what the other is going to do and not overshoot when you start moving out of synch. Our coach said our similar way of doing the strokes makes it look nice, too :) We have another lesson on Friday and I'm looking forward to it.
My skating friend, R, and I started taking ice dance lessons together with our coach. So far, we've had two of them. It's a lot of fun, though even trying to skate down the ice together with basic strokes makes you appreciate how difficult it is!
It also bummed me out some from just how much sexism and gender roles are embedded in it. Especially when we're doing our very basic dance, and the 'woman' role there is basically 'try to skate well and at a tempo' and meanwhile, poor R has to figure out how to get around me on curves and swing rolls without slingshotting around me or running into me. Makes me feel like I'm not doing much to help. (And being even less helpful when I wobbled on my skates a few times.) R didn't like the emphasis on man/woman, either. I think our coach noticed our discomfort with it, because last time he explicitly said 'male role' and 'female role' a couple of times and noted that 'it's 2019, we can't say it's just a man and a woman anymore'.
It's not just ice dance, but as much as I enjoy doing and watching skating, all the sexism and gender policing and the 'look how heterosexual everyone is' is depressing. Like people arguing that women just look bad in black skates for some magical reason - my fitter did make me uncomfortable with how much she was going on about how I'd be the first 'girl' in the area to have black skates (I'm not really out to the skating people here). Or that same-sex ice dancing just couldn't possibly be a thing because the lifts would be impossible (Mao Asada might disagree, along with the ice dance women who have lifted their male partners before). Or how they finally are letting ice dance women wear pants.... in the short dance only. And so on.
(R and I also joked that if we were ever on NBC, the commentators would rip into us for being too close in height and looking bad because of it. I think I'm actually a little taller than him.)
Anyway, the ice dance lesson itself was enjoyable. Especially when we managed to stay in synch and not move at two different speeds, last time. You can feel the force your partner is putting on you and the force you are putting on them (I still had to work to help keep us in position), and it's a different skill set to try and predict what the other is going to do and not overshoot when you start moving out of synch. Our coach said our similar way of doing the strokes makes it look nice, too :) We have another lesson on Friday and I'm looking forward to it.
