Somehow, the little push up is being debated as “sexist.” Seriously.

It all started with a New York Times article. The article suggested that push ups are a good measure of overall fitness because they’re an easy body-weight exercise to measure upper body strength. The article also says that push ups are important for older people to do because they’ll be able catch themselves more easily when they fall. All well and good.

(The video with the article is amusing–and sad. They show women doing either “girlie pushups” from their knees or just barely dipping their shoulders + dropping their hips (cheating and not a push up). In other words, those girls were not even doing push ups. Just to make sure I wasn’t despising them for something I couldn’t do, I dropped down beside my desk and did 20. Knuckles. No problem.)

I didn’t follow the story any more than that, but apparently there were “feminist bloggers” who took issue with the story. They claimed that the push up was unfair and “sexist” because women generally have less muscle in their upper bodies. (Hint: That makes it an even better test of fitness for women.) Since the push up was invented by males, they argue, we should get rid of it as a test of fitness.

Why is it “sexist” when women aren’t allowed to do something, but then once they are but can’t do it as well as men, it’s supposedly now an inherently sexist whatever-it-is that should be eliminated? We should eliminate push ups and pull ups because some women can’t do them? (Is that what “feminism” means? Only let everyone do what women can do? Gag.)

I can do push ups. (I’ve nearly got pull ups, too.) So can the girls in the TKD classes I teach. And guess what? They can do them better than most of the guys. Oh, yeah: and we do them on our knuckles. For each test, there is a push up requirement. One number. Not a separate number for girls and a different one for guys–because that would be sexist. (Equality’s what you want, right?)

Whining wimps. Drop and give me 20. Quit crying and start practicing. I like the attitude in this article from the San Francisco Chronicle in response to the silly backlash:

But I absolutely agree that push-ups are a symbol of everything we have done wrong in fitness, especially for women.
…
Here’s a newsflash about why women have a hard time with push-ups: We don’t do them. We don’t do other kinds of weight training that would build the necessary strength.
…
Women don’t do push ups because they think of them as a man exercise. Same goes for weightlifting. We teach women to strive for thin and toned, but not strong and powerful. I mean, be athletic, but not so athletic that you can kick a guy’s rear end at strength endeavors.

How many push ups can you do?

More article love:

• Mistressing the Push Up
• Fun with Press Ups (”Press Up” is another name for the push up)
• Handstand Push Ups
• Spiderman Push Ups
• Push Ups FTW

Notice, too, that all those sites above are written by women. Who workout. Who do push ups and pull ups. What was your excuse again?

Update: I can now do pull ups.