In relation to our readings every week in class, this week we covered the "body". These readings not only covered the extremes that women go to to reach these unattainable goals, such as a women's body with relatively no fat, no hips, and "very well set" on the top but also this category in the form of elite athletes and what they put themselves through in order to win and to be the best. In the reading, "Anabolic Steroids" we get a candid, inside view of a female body builder athlete and her experience with steroids. Tam Thompson originally began to experiment with ssteroids because she believed it would give her a "competitive edge". She also felt as though she wasn't showcasing her real strength; after one of her competitions she finished sixth out of nine women and stated that she knew she was stronger than these other women and then instead of training harder she turned to steroids. Just like men, women put themselves through many things in order to achieve the athletic status that they so desperately seek for. An example of this realtes to another reading this week, "Understanding the Female Athlete Triad", Christy Henrich, a young Olympic set gymnast, got some unsettling advice one day at a meet. Although Christy weighed a tiny 95 lbs one of the judges gave her advice, saying if she expected to win Olympic gold, she would have to lose weight! This seems somewhat obsurd to others mainly because Christy is small to begin with, 95 lbs to be exact. There is no reason why Christy should have to lose even more weight in order to achieve her goal of winning goal. Christy eventually died from developing severe eating disorders and weighed only 47 lbs when she passed away. In relation to sport, women and men are very alike. They both are attempting to achieve the impossible, striving to reach these unattainable goals that so many other athletes have been successful in doing. Unfortunately, as the years have passed on, more and more information is coming out about athletes and their participation with performance enhancing drugs along with other forms of things that will help these athlete(s) become the best. This is where these athletes are overconforming to the sport; it has become normalized now in athletics to use these substances to attain a higher athletic status. It is not uncommon at all these days to find out about an athlete who failed on their drug test, Ramirez as an example, he failed his second drug test and who have to sit out almost half the season, but instead decided to retire in order to avoid the consequences from his positive test. Even though men and women athletes have this drive in common, there is still a very wide gap in understanding of men and women's sports. The main ideology in our sport world today, is that men are better, stronger, faster; men's sports are better than women's aka more entertaining and less boring. That women can participate in sport, but are more likely to injure themselves and simply will never be as good as men. This reminded me of the NCAA games we watched just last week; we sat and watched not only the men's semi-final/final but as well as the women's. In the twitter blog, "men's basketball compared to the women's game", the narrator makes various statements about comparing the games of the men and the women's on television. Spectators of the games were not impressed by the men's abilities and lacking so much to compare it to a women's game; this was due to the terrible shooting percentages by both teams and the low scoring number of points. This is appalling to both men and women athletes. This is where the gap can still be seen in sports today, men's sports are seen as the top with women the latter. There is no reason why men's sport should still be considered to be above women's. Women are participating in sports more than ever now in the 21st century, and this number doesn't seem to be going any where in the other direction. The athletes who are active today need to remember that they are capable of acheieving their goals and making it to national competitions but these need to be reached in healthy and legal ways. Both men and women have the ability to push their bodies to the ultimate extreme but this does not always end well, as I stated earlier with Christ's example. We need to continue to make sure there is a clear distinction between what is acceptable and what is not.