Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man's World

As part memoir and part manifesto, Fleshman’s work contributes to the genre of sports literature by embedding personal story within broader social critique. She aims to amplify the issue of female exclusion and mistreatment in athleticism by detailing the physical and emotional harm suffered by herself and her athletic peers through her school, collegiate, and professional career as a distance runner. In doing so, Fleshman hopes to create a system that is more inclusive of female experiences of athleticism, rather than female athletes participating in a system that presents male physiology (especially in terms of lean, muscular bodies and linear athletic progression) as the norm, damaging women by holding them to physiologically inappropriate goal posts. Fleshman also calls out blatant sexism embedded in modern sports culture, including female uniforms that are designed to emphasize sexual appeal for cis-male, straight viewers, and athlete sponsorship deals that favor white, thin, attractive women but sideline BIPOC, gender-diverse, and larger-bodied athletes, as well as athletes with disabilities.

This isn’t the first time Fleshman has sought to use the written word to publicize her message. Fleshman received a Shorty Award in 2015, an award that recognizes social media impact, for her piece “A Letter to My Younger Self.” The letter targeted high school female runners, warning them about the pressures they will likely face in a changing body. Framed as a letter to herself as a teenager, she emphasizes the importance of long-term health and self-love in an environment that tends to inculcate disordered eating, low self-esteem, low body image, and perfectionism. She describes the way that many around her would succumb to horrific injuries or eating disorders in an attempt to run longer and harder. In doing so, Fleshman urges young female athletes to pay attention to their own well-being and the well-being of those around them, as well as to prioritize meeting their nutritional needs and maintain menstrual health.

In her memoir, Fleshman explains that her letter to her younger self was akin to “using social media as zinc to stop a cold before it gets too bad” (185). This metaphor conveys Fleshman’s view that the preoccupation with female “race weight” and fat reduction in distance running is actively making young women sick. She hopes that “honest storytelling” can function “as preventative medicine” to safeguard young women in the sport and allow them to maintain a long-term, positive relationship with the sport and with themselves (185).