Good for a Girl

This is an important book for women in sport – especially running.

The subtitle is apt. This is a memoir about the frustrations of a female athlete's career in a world where value in sport was (and largely, still is) determined by the male gaze. For example:
- A complete lack of understanding around puberty and performance, and how women trying to fight it off by starving themselves risk long-term damage to their bodies and their minds (and it's poorly researched, so we don't even know the full extent of that)
- An overwhelmingly high ratio of male head coaches for women's teams, almost always with a female assistant coach there to help exclusively with the “period stuff” that male coaches apparently can't stomach
- How eating disorders are rampant in female endurance athletes, and yet coaches and the NCAA have no protocols or guidelines for prevention or getting individuals help (whereas there are robust guidelines for concussions)
- How pregnancy is treated like a suspension in sports contracts, all but entirely suspending support for pregnant athletes even though those athletes are still contractually required to make appearances and cannot pursue other sponsorships (and how if a woman even so much as mentioned getting pregnant at Nike, they risked slashes to their contracts, hamstrung by right of first refusal) whereas men are never penalized in the same way, for obvious reasons, even if they too have or want a family
- How women are routinely sexualized in sport (think: Sports Illustrated Body Issue, or women's track uniforms being glorified bathing suits) instead of being appreciate for athletic talent and individual preference
-etc.

Again, I think this is an important book because even though there have been societal strides (pun intended?) in recent years following all the Nike/NOP whistleblowing, there are still fundamental gaps in the ways we support girls and women in sport.

My only issue with this book – and it's not really an issue, I really like the book – is that it's trying to be a memoir and a hard-hitting, research-backed non-fiction and I don't know that it does either entirely successfully. Hearing Lauren's life story is great, but I think less memoir and more research would have been better suited to the overall thesis of this one.

But, it's good writing, and again – very much so worth the read.