1. Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986), p. 285.
2. Gloria Steinem, “Coming Up: The Unprecedented Woman,” Ms., July 1985, pp. 85–86, 106–8.
3. For some typical male/female experiences in the Achilles Track Club, a group of runners who challenge the restrictions of artificial limbs, wheelchairs, and cancer and other life-threatening diseases, see Dick Traum and Mike Celizic, A Victory for Humanity (Waco, Tex.: WRS Publishing, 1993).
4. On foot binding, see Andrea Dworkin, “Gynocide: Chinese Footbinding,” in Woman Hating (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1974), pp. 95–117. On clitoridectomy (the surgical excision of all or a major part of the clitoris) and infibulation (the excision of the clitoris plus cutting off the labia minora and labia majora, then sewing together the scraped sides of the vulva so they grow into a chastity belt of flesh that must be torn open and resewn for every insemination and birth), see Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem, “The International Crime of Genital Mutilation,” in Robin Morgan, The Word of a Woman (1979; updated, New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), pp. 90–101. Also Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar, Warrior Marks: Female Genital Mutilation and the Sexual Blinding of Women (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993). On self-starvation, plastic surgery, and other Western limits on female strength, see Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (New York: William Morrow, 1991); and Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The Emergence of Anorexia Nervosa as a Modern Disease (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).
5. Deborah Pike, “Redefining the Body,” Vogue, January 1994, pp. 105, 166–167.
6. Charles Gaines and George Butler, Pumping Iron II: The Unprecedented Woman (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984).
7. Peter McGough, “A Career in Focus,” Flex, August 1993, pp. 65–66, 150–56.