Jul 9

Jul 9 Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man's World

Author: Lauren Fleshman
Publisher: Penguin Press
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

Fueled by her years as an elite runner and advocate for women in sports, Lauren Fleshman offers her inspiring personal story and a rallying cry for reform of a sports landscape that is failing young female athletes

Lauren Fleshman has grown up in the world of running. One of the most decorated collegiate athletes of all time and a national champion as a pro, she was a major face of women's running for Nike before leaving to shake up the industry with feminist running brand Oiselle and now coaches elite young female runners. Every step of the way, she has seen the way that our sports systems--originally designed by men, for men and boys--fail young women and girls as much as empower them. Girls drop out of sports at alarming rates once they hit puberty, and female collegiate athletes routinely fall victim to injury, eating disorders, or mental health struggles as they try to force their way past a natural dip in performance for women of their age.

Part memoir, part manifesto, Good for a Girl is Fleshman's story of falling in love with running as a girl, being pushed to her limits and succumbing to devastating injuries, and daring to fight for a better way for female athletes. Long gone are the days when women and girls felt lucky just to participate; Fleshman and women everywhere are waking up to the reality that they're running, playing, and competing in a world that wasn't made for them. Drawing on not only her own story but also emerging research on the physiology and psychology of young athletes, of any gender, Fleshman gives voice to the often-silent experience of the female athlete and argues that the time has come to rebuild our systems of competitive sport with women at their center.

Written with heart and verve, Good for a Girl is a joyful love letter to the running life, a raw personal narrative of growth and change, and a vital call to reimagine sports for young women.

TL;DR Review

Part memoir, part manifesto, Good for a Girl is perspective-shifting and deeply important, all while deftly carrying the narrative of Fleshman’s memoir. I loved it.

For you if: You care at all about girls and women in sports.

Full Review

This is my fourth or fifth book by a women runner so far this year — a niche subgenre currently exploding with incredible books — and it was my favorite one so far. What. a. book. An absolute must-read for anyone who cares about girls and women in sports.

The jacket says it best: "Written with heart and verve, Good for a Girl is a joyful love letter to the running life, a raw personal narrative of growth and change, and a vital call to reimagine sports for young women."

Part memoir, part manifesto, Good for a Girl covers not just Lauren Fleshman’s high school, collegiate, and professional careers, but also everything she’s learned since then about the harm that bias and a lack of scientific research does to women and girls who play sports. All without making the memoir portion ever feel bogged down (super impressive.)

What made the book for me was not just the look at how girls and women are treated differently, but also a look at how they are assumed to be the same and why that becomes so physically harmful. Women’s bodies change and cause a (normal) performance dip right when men’s bodies are peaking — during college. But nobody realizes or talks about this, and girls resist it, and that leads to frustration and injury and way, way too many eating disorders. Fleshman’s call for the NCAA to implement better preventative requirements, like they have no problem doing for concussions in football programs, is powerful.

Truly, this one was perspective-shifting and taught me so much that feels important that I didn’t know before. You should read it.