"She's a machine!"
Why do people insist on calling Jasmin Paris "a machine"? What is really being said?
[A version of this text was given as a talk at King’s College, London, on 18 April 2024. When the recording is available, I will post a link].
When, in March this year, Jasmin Paris became the first female runner to complete the Barkley Marathons in its nearly-40-year history, sports coverage and social media resounded with one phrase in particular: “She’s a machine!”
The Barkley Marathons’ terrain is notoriously forbidding: 100+ miles across gradients so steep and briars and woods so dense that when, back in 1977, inmate James Earl Ray escaped from the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary - through which the race route passes - he managed to travel only 12 miles in 2 1/4 days. One of the race’s creators, Guy “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell, has been recorded as saying that “the race is too hard for women. They are simply not tough enough” to complete the distance within the 60-hour cut-off.
But in March, British fell- and ultra-runner Jasmin Paris proved Cantrell wrong and became the first woman to finish the race - nail-bitingly, with only 99 seconds to spare. She didn’t blaze onto the ultra-running scene from nowhere; far from it. Five years ago, in 2019, Paris obliterated the course record for the Spine Race; a course over the 268-miles of the Pennine Way, held in early January, when two-thirds of the race is run in darkness. Finishing in 83 hours 12 mins 23 seconds, she beat all male and female competitors and took 12 hours off the course record - and on the back of an exhausting training period, during which Paris was studying for a PhD, working as a small animal vet, gestating and giving birth and recovering. During her record-breaking run, Paris was photographed expressing milk at checkpoints.
Paris’s accomplishments are frequently met with awe and bafflement, distilled into the phrase “she’s a machine!”, and variants: “absolute superhuman”; “unreal”; “very focused, driven, machine-like.” Scott Gilmour, one of the Spine Race’s directors, praised Paris for being “a machine…[because] she never got upset and was swan-like all the way to the end.”
Similar phrases are bestowed onto male runners too: mountain-runner Kilian Jornet is frequently acclaimed for being “a machine”. But I think that that metaphor expresses different attitudes when it’s applied to women. I can’t think of a single male runner who has been commended for being “swan-like”.
So what is really being said when we describe women like Jasmin Paris as “machines”?
Firstly, I think it’s important to say that the metaphor isn’t a particularly accurate representation, either of the qualities that characterise ultra-runners, or of Paris herself.
The image of a human body as a “machine” connotes emotionlessness; a mechanical physique set in motion by a rational brain; as in this front cover image, in which the ideal runner is envisaged as a geometric, scientific, controlled amalgam of brawn and brain, with no hint of the less rational, more emotional and creative aspects of human personality. (The ideal runner is also, of course, pictured here as a man - I’ll return to this in a minute).
But, contrary to these mechanistic connotations, for me, ultra-running in no way relies upon the obliteration of emotion. Instead, it relies upon being acutely attuned to my emotions; listening to them and working in harmony with them. I’ve learned that hunger, dehydration and electrolyte imbalances are likely to express themselves in my mood, in irritability and downright grumpiness. I’ve learned that a sudden onset of fear can usefully indicate that I’m too tired to adequately control my gait over technical terrain, and that I need to slow down and pay more attention. Emotions are also a crucial incentive for running: I run, in large part, to chase joy.
So I don’t think it’s accurate to say that mechanistic emotionlessness is a quality that is particularly beneficial for ultra-running - and neither do I think that it is an accurate representation of Jasmin Paris.
As Sarah Smith describes in her Substack analysis of Howie Stern’s photo of Paris’s finish, that iconic image is entirely about feeling: it shows exhaustion, pain, grittiness, support, pride, relief, shock, joy, concern. Nobody in that photograph resembles a machine. And nor does Paris come across as emotionless in interviews. She speaks about the “exciting” nature of ultra-running, the “thrill”, the “really intense” and “immense” feelings. She also refers to the “traumatic” moments, in which “I was in a bit of a state”; moments that she “still shudder[s] to think” about. She describes having “a hot, internal fire [as her] primary driver”, and the way in which running long races relies on knowing, inhabiting and enduring a range of emotions and sensations: “you know that you’re going to spend time thinking, why I am doing this? you know that you’re going to feel lonely. You just have to get through it.”
So when Jasmin Paris is approvingly described as “a machine”, the metaphor isn’t providing an accurate representation of the qualities required in ultra-running, nor of Paris herself. So what is the machine metaphor doing?
Let’s return to the front cover image I pasted above, in which an ideal runner is envisaged as a taut, toned, geometric machine, propelled by a cool, calm, emotionless brain - and as a man. This sort of image is a stalwart of front covers of running books.
In these images of the archetypal runner’s body, everything is about mathematical reason and control. There is no space for anything - such as fat, or pain, or distress, or ecstasy - that might be associated with ideas other than control and self-discipline. Indeed, running is often represented as a way take control of unruly body fat.
Women are often shown on the front covers of running books in exactly the same way. So much so, that there’s actually very little in the silhouettes below (which I’ve cropped from cover designs) to distinguish female bodies from male bodies. There are no obvious breasts or hips, no space for women’s higher percentage of body fat, no pregnant outlines. Instead, one gets the impression that, in order to draw female runners, designers have simply taken the male default outline and added ponytails, or flowers, or turned them pink.
Traditionally, in Christian (and other) cultures, the qualities that are embodied and celebrated in these mechanistic images of the human body - mind, reason, self-discipline, power, control, tautness - are positively associated with men, and with masculinity. The traits that are eliminated and disparaged - emotion, sensation, irrationality, fatness, chaos - are traditionally and negatively associated with women, and femininity. As Wollstonecraft critiqued, there is an abiding idea that “man was made to reason, woman to feel”, and, within such cultures, women consistently receive praise insofar as we have shrugged off our apparently innate, flawed feminine natures and made efforts to emulate masculine characteristics.
As I describe in my book, In Her Nature (out now in paperback, as well as ebook and audiobook!), running has often been seen as an effective way for women to do this. Three hundred years ago, in A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729), the British priest William Law called on his female reader to impose “order and regularity” onto her unruly soul, and to make her “body fitter” by committing herself to “run a race for her life’” For Law, running races (both actual ones and spiritual ones) ensure that a woman “will never have her eyes swell with fatness, or pant under a heavy load of flesh.”
So when female runners are approvingly designated as “machines”, they’re being praised for being like men - or like men are supposed to be.
This is made clear in this comment on Reddit, in which the writer claims that a scientific mindset is essential for ultra-running, and that more women are able to participate in the sport because more women are training in STEM subjects:
Now, let’s go back to Scott Gilmour’s comment that Paris is “like a machine” because she “never got upset”. I started wondering why. I mean, why would someone like Gilmour care if Paris got upset, and had a bit of a solitary cry in the Cheviots in the middle of the night?
And I wonder if, when men worry about women revealing their apparently innate emotional, chaotic natures, what those men are partly expressing is a worry that women will ask something of them.
This is something that the mid-nineteenth-century mountaineer Eliza Cole noticed. In her 1859 A Lady’s Tour Around Monte Rosa, Cole described how her male mountain guide worried that she was physically and emotionally incapable of completing a certain route, and that therefore she would get upset and become an “incumbrance” on the men. He was relieved when she showed herself to be capable and self-sufficient. As in the “like a machine” metaphor, Cole was praised for transcending her flawed femaleness and exhibiting qualities that are culturally associated with men and manliness, such as self-reliance.
The originator of the boy scouting movement, Robert Baden-Powell, saw “a manly spirit of self-reliance” as essential to outdoor sport, and his statement cast women - who are supposedly innately dependent - as not cut out for such activities. But are men really that self-sufficient? I think that the stereotypical image of the ultra-runner as a man, striking out completely alone over moors and mountains, with everything he needs in his backpack, is as much as a misconception as the “like a machine” metaphor - and it’s a misconception that renders invisible much of the care work that women put in to support male runners.
Numbers of female participants in running events (including ultra-running events) are steadily rising worldwide, but it seems to me that there’s still an enormous and obvious gendered disparity in those who provide support. Ultra-runners are often allowed support crews during long races. These crews (which might consist of just 1 person) drive around the countryside, day and night, meeting their runner at various agreed locations and plying them with food, drink and changes of clothes, and sometimes accompanying their runner on sections of the route. I don’t know of any official studies into the make-up of support crews (and, if you know of any, please do message me here), but - from my own experience, and from experiences described by other female runners in online communities - support is overwhelming provided by women. It seems to be wives, girlfriends and mothers who are the near-invisible facilitators of men’s running. I know of women who pack the drop-bags full of snacks, drinks and spare clothes that male runners take to races (which are then taken on to various checkpoints along the route). In my experience, it’s overwhelmingly women who bring the kids along to wave encouraging banners at their father; thereby managing women’s domestic and crewing duties simultaneously. When I’ve done long training runs on my own, I’ve seen male runners out for the day, being met by their wives at various points with hot cups of tea. I was the one who drew up a training schedule and packing list for my late husband when he took up long-distance running. It seems to be women who join Facebook running groups, not for advice about their own running - they’re often non-runners - but to pick up tips about how best to support and crew for their male partners.
Men just don’t seem to provide support for female runners in the same way. Or, if they do - by having the kids for the day, while their mother runs a race - it’s often a more limited and grudging form of support than they themselves receive. A race marshal told me about her experience that, at the end of races, female runners often don’t hang around for long, citing the need to return home and relieve their male partners of childcare duties. I’ve spoken to other women about this, in person and online, and many of them reported experiences of husbands staying in hotel rooms watching TV while they raced; of men showing no interest whatsoever in their female partners’ running and complaining that it took them away from their families for too long; of women being in tears when husbands reneged on their promises to cheer them across the finish line. Many women described how they’ve had to inure themselves to their husbands’ disinterest and lack of involvement, and look for support from other women instead or run races without support crews. Many women described how they’ve had to develop an emotional resilience to the hurtful nature of their husbands’ behaviour, and learn “not to get upset”, in one woman’s words.
This is all part of a wider cultural pattern in which women’s role is considered to be the provision of support and care to men - and certainly not vice versa. This occurs both within and beyond sport. Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic games, conceived of women’s place in sport as, not active participants - he thought that women’s sport was “against the laws of nature” - but as supporters to men, by providers of applause: women’s “primary role”, he said, was the “crowning of the victors with laurels”.
So when men praise female runners for being machines, for not getting upset or becoming encumbrances, I think that this can be an expression of praise for those who do not disrupt the expectation that women provide support for men - and don’t expect to receive support themselves.
The potency of this social pattern can be seen in the force of criticism that is levelled at women who complain - who do get upset, and who do require something from men: namely, change.
It has to be said that there is quite a lot for women to complain about in ultra-running, and in the wider sporting world. This includes unequal prize money and sponsorship, in which 71% of sponsored female athletes in the US earn less than $10,000 per year (whereas 71% of sponsored male athletes earn more than that sum). Women might also justifiably complain about unequal media coverage, in which only 5% of US sports coverage is given over to female sport - and about the lack of attention to female bodies in sports science research (a 2019 survey of sports science research found that only 6% was dedicated to female subjects). Women have grounds for complaint, I think, about the enormous and widening leisure gap between men and women, in which men in the UK currently enjoy over five more hours of leisure time than women per week - valuable time for runners to train and/or rest and recover - and about the rise in violence towards women in sport over the last 8 years, in which time men’s harassment and assault of female spectators at football matches has nearly trebled, and in which more women have been murdered while running than in the 30 years before that.
But women who defy the injunctions upon us to be like serene emotionless machines, and who do dare to get upset and complain about sexism in sport, are widely vilified. Boxer Jane Couch - who won a landmark case against British boxing’s governing body in 1998, combatting their refusal to grant licenses to women on the basis that women “are too fragile to box” – described the abuse she’d received and how it had left her “damaged”. Men online frequently complain about sportswomen “whinging” about inequality, and wish they would “shut up”, and stop “whining”. Women who report the statistical realities of men’s violence towards women outdoors are told that they are “talking bollocks” and “fear-mongering”. When some female runners criticised Lazarus Lake’s comment that “women are simply not tough enough”, those women were told by men online that “no one should be offended” and that they were simply “uneducated” and to stop “whinging”.
When women complain, we are told off for not being sufficiently machine-like; for not being serene; for becoming encumbrances. But men’s complaints are not disparaged in the same way. This was made glaringly apparent in debates about trans inclusion in parkrun. Since its conception, parkrun has allowed trans women runners to participate in the female category. When trans athletes (such as Lauren Jeska) have beaten all female runners’ previous times, these records have been celebrated by parkrun as female course records. Many women have complained about the potential for unfairness in allowing self-identifying trans women (most of whom have undergone a male puberty) to compete in the female category, when male physiology results in 10-15% faster performance times over females; and about the problems with rendering female runners invisible (and therefore losing opportunities to celebrate women as record-holders, inspirations and role-models in sport), when biological males are allowed to claim female course records. Those women have been dismissed and shouted down as complaining about a non-issue (as I was, when I wrote to Aberystwyth parkrun and parkrun HQ and the Fell Running Association about this issue back in 2020), or widely vilified on social media as “upsetting people” and “whining”, and being “transphobes”. When the issue gathered momentum earlier this year, parkrun HQ dealt with it by claiming that parkrun was “not a race”, and that they would remove all course records from its websites. But this upset a lot of men, who, as the Telegraph voiced, “find the data and competitive element to be a major incentive for participation.” The men who complained were not subjected to abuse for being transphobes; indeed, many took them seriously, and represented them as quite reasonably “frustrated” individuals.
When Spine Race’s co-director, Scott Gilmour, linked Jasmin Paris’s “machine-like” qualities with her refusal to “get upset”, and her “swan-like” qualities, I think he was talking about her self-possession in the face of extreme tiredness. But I do think that he was celebrating her using language that replicates the expectations that are on women when we participate in the male-dominated sporting world. Women are praised within that world insofar as we live up to men’s ideals. We are not expected to challenge the fact that an archetypal runner is imagined as a default male, nor to refuse to live up to male-generated ideals of “swan-like” feminine beauty. We are allowed into the male-dominated sporting world insofar as we do not get upset or complain or become encumbrances - insofar as we do not expect anything, in terms of support or change, from men.
Calling Paris an emotionless machine neuters many of the things about her that are so extraordinary.
The widely shared photographs of Paris at the Barkley’s finishing line show her to be nothing like an unfeeling machine or swan. They reveal her toughness, her capacity to push herself beyond most other athletes’ limits of endurance, her “hot internal fire”, her self-belief. In interviews, she talks openly about the constraints she’s had to negotiate in training: her timetabling of runs to take place before her children wake up, and her stairmaster sessions before the children require collecting. She talks about her concern about the drop-off in teenage girls’ participation in sport, and about how she was driven to complete the Barkley, not just for herself, but as inspiration “for women worldwide as well - not just runners - but any woman that wants to take on a challenge and maybe doesn't have the confidence.” Jasmin Paris isn’t a machine, miraculously immune to the challenges that face all runners and blithely unaffected by the extra constraints that female athletes have to negotiate. She is not superhuman. Instead, she is profoundly human, cognisant of those challenges and constraints, but possessed of an extraordinary physical ability and drive that enables her to effect such remarkable achievements nevertheless.
I’m lucky enough to be working on a history of the charity Women in Sport. In the archive, there are notes for a lecture that was given in 1999 by one of its founders, Celia Brackenridge. Brackenridge outlines a pathway for feminist activism in sport, and she distinguishes “inclusion” from “transformation”. “Inclusion”, she writes, is merely the first stage in feminist activism. A period of inclusion of women in sport is a period in which “‘women are tolerated but not fully engaged” in an unchanged male-dominated sporting world. The end goal is, instead, transformation: a point when “women have opportunities both to challenge and to change sport in ways that makes it more humane.”
It seems to me that designating female athletes like Jasmin Paris, approvingly, as “machines” is using the language of inclusion: it celebrates women in sport insofar as we do not challenge male ideals or structures. In a sporting world that has been transformed to be truly woman-friendly, neither men nor women would be celebrated for being “machines”, but, instead for being “more humane”. Less like machines; more human and humane.
What a great read on a rainy Friday afternoon!