The following is an excerpt from a larger piece entitled, “Afterlife.”  Chrissy is a guest columnist for “Feminist Wear Skirts.”

The light pink scar-like line ran just above my belly-button downward. I noticed it and spent a long time looking at it, tracing it. It was softer, somehow. It felt thinner beneath my fingertips. I didn’t know what it was.

I got out of bed, and went into the kitchen, keen on getting some ice cream. My dad was still up, and sitting at the kitchen table, trying to get some work done. I retrieved a bowl and spoon, put the mint chip ice cream in the microwave for ten seconds. I scooped, and sat down across from my dad at the table. He looked up at me, then at my ice cream, and went back to his work. I ate in silence, stood, rinsed my dish, paused at the stairs.

“Dad,” I asked, hesitantly, “I have this mark. What is it?” I lifted my shirt slightly and showed him the stretch mark against my pale stomach.

He stood, came closer, looked at it for a long time. He was thinking. He always had to think a lot before he spoke, seemed to consider his words. He looked me in the eye.

“That’s something that women get when they’re pregnant.”

This was his only explanation. I returned to my bed, and lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling. This was it. I had really done it now. I had somehow managed to get pregnant by immaculate conception. That was the only answer. Terrified, I waited for the Angels to come. I prayed for Mary’s guidance. I cried myself to sleep.

The next morning, my period blood stained the sheets. The pink mark was still there.

Over a few dollar-beers at our usual Wednesday night Karaoke outing, my male coworker and I discussed the plethora of heart-shaped lights and cardboard silhouettes of Cupid that hung from the ceiling of ourI heart steak too. typical Chicago dive of a bar.

“A little obnoxious isn’t it?” I said, “I am not looking forward to Valentine’s Day this year at all.”
My coworker, who is also currently single, agreed.

“Yah, me neither,” he said, taking another pull of his Schlitz. “Valentine’s Day is meant for women anyway. Why do you think it starts with a “V”?”

A bit taken back by his logic of equating the letter “V” with vagina, I disagreed.

“I have always put a lot of thought into my Valentine’s Day gifts for boyfriends. It is just as much their day as it is mine. It?s a celebration of love.”

“Exactly,” said my coworker. “That’s why it is for women.”

Buzzed, I shrugged my shoulders and took a long gulp of beer hoping to avoid the battle-of-the-sexes conversation I never seem to win (or think should exist at all.) And then it struck me.

“Whatever, you have Steak and Blow Job Day.”

I explained to my male coworker that for Valentine’s Day, I would be completely satisfied with a T-Bone, a little A1 and some oral sex (of course, not all at once.)

Steak and Blow Job Day is the unofficial holiday created as the male response to Valentine’s Day. It started in 2002 on Tom Birdsey’s radio show out in Boston (although, you will run into many others who claim to be the mastermind behind the idea.)

Urbandictionary.com describes Steak and Blow Job Day as follows: ?Celebrated on March 14th, Steak and Blow Job Day is a holiday for men, celebrated the month after Valentine’s Day — a holiday for women. The idea is simple: no cards, flowers, candy or other whimsical gifts. Ladies (and gay men), you simply bestow your partner with a steak and a blowjob. Not necessarily in that order.

There is even a handy website (www.steakandbjday.com) for the more clueless women to help with not only special steak recipes, but pointers on giving our men head. Hell, you could even order the classy “I heart Steak and BJ Day” t-shirt for the occasion.

Since my inclination is to find the equality in such gender-driven situations, I tried to find a Valentine’s Day website. Sure enough, it exists, www.valentinesday.com, complete with creative gift ideas, romantic poems, and, duh, teddy bears.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but the social structures surrounding each of these holidays sounds a lot like the same logic behind the separate but equal doctrine; let?s give the women a day to celebrate love the way that women celebrate love, and let’s give men a day to celebrate love the way that men celebrate love. But who is defining these differences? And how different are they really?
Not only do these definitions, which are submitted by average people like you and me, reduce men to only caring about their appetites being satisfied (both for food and sex), but it reduces women to only caring about romance. I for one, a self-proclaimed feminist, would LOVE to have someone else prepare a steak for me and follow it up with a little cunnilingus any day of the year.

For me, what is the most frustrating about the evolution of Steak and Blow Job Day, is its uncanny resemblance to men’s general reaction (I repeat, general) to feminism on the whole. Much like the letter “V,” the letter “F” scares men off. They see women’s rights incorporated with the feminist movement as they see romance incorporated with Valentine’s Day and struggle to find a way to relate. Therefore, they reject it all together and create something of their own, or bad mouth the already existing group or event from which they feel unattached.

I understand why Steak and Blow Job Day exists. Just like Virginia Woolf needed a room of one’s own, men needed their own day to explore their needs and wants when it comes to loving relationships. However, like many things that divide gender, Steak and Blow Job Day should be addressed as a step in the progression towards gender equality and harmonious coexistence, not as the be all and end all solution to the problem. Eventually, both men and women should be able to level on February 14th(or any day, for that matter) recognize and fulfill the need for romance, sex and food in one another, whatever the severity of each need might be.

Later on that same night, maybe five beers in, I explained to my male coworker that for Valentine’s Day, I would be completely satisfied with a T-Bone, a little A1 and some oral sex (of course, not all at once.)He shook his head and laughed.

“You are probably the only woman in the world who feels that way.”

I refuse to believe that.

Title IX reads: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

In the city of Marathon, 1896, a woman, now known as Melpomene, stretches her anxious legs away from the crowds to avoid being spotted. When the race official commands that the runners take their marks on the starting bridge, twenty-four men from fourteen different countries approach the line surrounded by spectators. These Olympic athletes strike their take off positions as Melpomene steps up to her own imagined starting line off to the side. With all eyes on the men, the starter gun cracks, catapulting one more runner than planned down the twenty-five mile course. Melpomene follows her own path that runs parallel to the men’s course, unseen. When the crowds diminished and all twenty-four men were out of sight, Melpomene took her place on the Olympic marathon course, adding one more set of prints to the dirt. Her refused request to race that afternoon may have taken her name out of the competition, but it certainly didn’t take her out of the race.

Melpomene, the Greek Muse of singing and Tragedy Melpomene only stopped about half way through the race in Pikermi for a glass of water. She completed the marathon, leaving eight exhausted men behind who quit before making it to the stadium for their final lap. She arrived at the stadium’s gates an hour and a half after Spiridon Louis, the first-place finisher was showered with flowers, jewelry and money as he crossed the finish line in front of bleachers filled with cheering fans. Melpomene approached the stadium to find nothing but empty bleachers and locked gate doors. Determined to get the final lap she deserved, she completed her marathon by running around the outside of the stadium. No one waited for her, no one cheered her on, no one shouted out her time as she crossed the finish line. She was alone for the entire four and a half hours only to be greeted by locked doors for which she had no key. It is because of her, and a handful of women who followed that I run straight through a gaping doorway.

I ran cross-country for St. Clair High School and Kalamazoo College, a total of seven years. While my competitive career has come to an end, I haven’t stopped. It might not be about speed anymore, but it is still about me.

I run because it is the only time I ever feel free. It’s the only time throughout my day that I am alone with my thoughts, my sweat, my body and myself. It might push me, it might remind me how strong I am not from time to time, but it also shows me how strong I can be. The act of running never judges me. It is the best friend a person could have.

There is something so raw about running that makes it accessible to people of all kinds, like a basic human right. You can be slow and run, hell, these days you can be an amputee and run. Speed and ability don’t matter as much as the push.

The Olympic Creed, as posted on every scoreboard of the opening ceremony: “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.” And to look good while you are doing it.

In 2002, when I was a sophomore in high school, Varsity races, which were separated by gender, only called for the top seven runners from each team, amounting to about seventy or so runners. Junior Varsity races were a little different. They brought boys and girls at the number eight spot and below from each team together, often times twice the size of a Varsity race.  I felt a different type of rush when I ran with the JV jersey on, partly because I was competing for a spot on varsity, but it was also a chance to prove something to male runners who, for the most part, thought they could beat me solely based on testosterone. My male competitors in high school served as great motivators—the shock that blanketed their faces beneath streams of sweat when I would pass them was worth the extra flop in my stomach, the extra pound of lead in my legs. I remember being scared of passing out when I pushed myself that hard, but my fear was nothing compared to theirs as I bounded ahead. Horror, absolute horror.

In the July-August 2001 issue of PubMed, Lijec Vjesn writes: “The increasing participation of women in competitive sports has led to significant accumulation of knowledge about potential pathological conditions due to strenuous exercise. Participation in sports that emphasize specific body image, psychological constitution of young female athletes and significantly lower daily calorie intake cause the development of disordered eating, especially anorexia nervosa.” Isn’t it ironic that what keeps us healthy could also kill us?

While running is one of the best friends that I have, it is a friend I have abused—and it abuses me right back. Or maybe it abuses me first. I’m not sure. It’s hard to tell.  I go through stages where running is nothing but numbers to me: miles run, calories expended, minutes, hours, target times, grams of fat burned. Sometimes I can’t get through a run without glancing at my own reflection in a shop window so I know exactly what I look like to those who might see me. I use running as a tool to control my physical shape, to negate food I regret eating. Running is a companion I manipulate into enabling my obsession with looking perfect.

I am not the only one who does this. I have college teammates who use marathon training as a mask for the eating disorder and exercise addiction. To those on the outside, it makes complete sense: Of course Katie needs to go on a twenty mile run today, she has Boston in a month.  Oh, Sarah is just eating healthy to get her body fueled up for the marathon, she said she usually eats a second dinner later on.  Maggie, is losing weight, but you’re bound to shed a few pounds when you run that much.  Dana wouldn’t be able to run that much if she weren’t in shape and healthy.

I wonder what Melpomene would think if she saw us running through that gate — standing tall in Athens — calculating calories burned rather than noticing that the gate is unlocked in the first place. What now seems like a basic human right she had to fight for. Now here we are, the women of my generation, using it as a tool to keep ourselves small rather than as a way to make a larger presence in what started off as a man’s realm.

In high school, I started to notice my legs more. I’d look down and see a ball of muscle above my knee inhale and exhale as I walked. My calves peered around my shins from behind as if playing peek-a-boo. My thighs struggled to breathe inside most of my jeans (which I bought according to pant leg width, not my waist). I had this shallow groove that ran up the outside of my leg from my knee to my hip that pressed and released like a piano key. I always thought it looked like something was trying to get out.  One day, after a midseason speed workout a friend told me, “Your legs look like a boys!” Somehow, adjusting my running shorts to cover more leg, I knew that was a bad thing.

From a fellow student in a women’s studies class during my sophomore year of college: “Women who work out all the time are only trying to make their bodies look more like men’s. Every time they step into the weight room it’s to get rid of their femininity.”

I spent a lot of hours on the track designing these quads and glutes. I ran miles upon miles of hills constructing these calves and hamstrings. I built this body. So then, why do men get to claim muscle? Why do my legs make me look “masculine?” Why can’t strength and muscle be attributed to women without being accused of looking or acting like a man?

According to the National Federation of State High School Association, between the 1971-72 school year, when Title XI was passed, and the 2005-06 school year, female high school participation in sports rose from 294,015 girls to 2,953,355 for 904 percent increase. That’s 2,659,340 more uniforms, 5,318,630 more legs swimming, running or jumping, 13,296,700 more fingers wrapped around a ball, slipped in a glove or holding on to a baton. That’s 2,659,340 more girls with improved health, but that’s also 2,659,340 more girls introduced to their bodies in a critical way.

No one actually likes to throw up. In fact, it sucks. The finger you choose to stick down your throat, more than likely the index finger of whatever hand you write with, pulls the energy out of your body starting at the tips of your toes, sweeping it up through your legs, stomach and chest. Your feet turn cold. Your face turns hot. Every pore is exuding moisture, trying to cool you down from the hot rise of half digested food surging up your throat. Snot, that isn’t really just snot drips from your nose, some of it snaking its way back into your mouth. Your hands tighten into fists as you approach that moment where you still have a choice. Where you could swallow it back down, drink some water and be on your way or keep pushing, keep surging till you reach the finish. Neglecting to make this choice results in choking. A thick, chewy, self-inflicted choke. And you cry. You always cry.

The only thing worse than throwing up is throwing up in public. The only thing worse than throwing up in public is throwing up alone, hunched over in the grass in a sports bra and running shorts trying not get any chunks of food soaked in stomach acid on your brand new Asics as familiar cars drive by. “Wow, Nora is really pushing herself today,” they might think. Yah, you bet I am.

I still notice my legs today, except now I don’t have to look down to know what they look like. I feel my muscles flexing, pushing at the surface of my skin like boiling water under a pot lid. When I run past someone on the sidewalk or trail and feel their gaze examining my legs. It doesn’t matter if they are admiring or criticizing; if they glance down at my creations, I am acutely aware.

I feel the best when I run at night. It doesn’t matter what season it is. As long as it is dark and late. No one is out to watch me bound by. No shop windows mirror my reflection back at me. I’m not even looking for these things. It’s just me in my body, not me watching my body. I don’t run a route I know the mileage for, nor do I wear my watch. Nothing judges me in the dark. That’s not the point of night runs. The point is to feel the snow grind between the crevices of your shoe’s tread. The point is to feel summer’s humidity wrap around arms and legs like a loose t-shirt.

When I run at night, I feel like Melpomene, no one out to watch me on the course, no on in the bleachers cheering me on, no one standing by the clock to scream out my time. I’m alone during my final lap and couldn’t feel better.