Goodbye, 'Jogbra'...

May 2015: First up, though I still try to put up blog content whenever I can, it has been easier to more regularly visit the the Twitterverse. Follow me at @barethomas10 and let's keep the shirtless running flag flying. Of course, the blog still attracts very interesting comments, and good discussion. Keep it up.

Second, in the years since this venture launched, and as shirtless running among women has gone increasingly mainstream, the term "jogbra" has clearly declined in use. I will thus prefer "sportsbra" henceforth - as has already been the case on Twitter, and in recent posts here.

I continue to welcome guest posts (sent to barethomas@gmail.com) on any related topic, including from those who would discourage stripping to the waist. I am myself of course a fervent convert to the joys of running bare. But let all voices be heard!

Friday, July 16, 2010

From the Net: The naked run

In this perky blog post (click here for the original), Rachel Wilkerson finds herself stripping off for a jogbraed run and revelling in it. She doesn't seem to be really a full convert like emiliab9291 (From the Net: A convert to Jogbraed Running). But as she says below, "you don’t want to have all those clothes on your skin…take them off!"

Lemme work it: The Naked Run
by Rachel @ The Life and Lessons of Rachel Wilkerson


I’ve written before about getting buff in the buff and stripping down to minimal clothing for a home workout…but I’ve never been that girl, the one who could hit the gym or the 5K in just a sports bra and shorts. That girl, I always believed, had to have abs like Britney circa the “Slave 4U” VMAs. My abs are more like Britney’s circa the head-shaving incident. But last Saturday, I had spent a long day by the pool and then needed to get my run in for my July goal. I was so hot, so brown, so sweaty, that I just couldn’t bear the thought of putting on clothes. So I decided to just…not. I mean, it’s just a body right? It’s not perfect, but it’s just a body. Being naked is natural for bodies. It was the kind of hot day in which most men would just go shirtless…no matter what their bodies looked like.

I decided I’d just bare all.

I figured that if I felt totally self-conscious, then, at the very least, it would make me run faster!

So out I went, wearing nothing but my ipod, my bra and shorts, my bomb kicks, and my sunscreen. And after a few minutes I realized…this isn’t so bad. At all actually! I was actually really quite unaware of my partial nakedness. I mean, I was aware of the fact that I wasn’t wearing a tank top because I was infinitely cooler…and I was aware of keeping my abs in, which is a good thing when you run…but I was also just not hyper-aware of myself, feeling that naked.

By the end of the run, I was actually covered… in more sweat than I even knew was possible. But even though I couldn’t have been more dirty and in need of a shower, I actually felt really cleansed and really sexy
 [Note from BareThomas: Sounds like the famed 'shirtless charge' kicking in]. It takes a team of stylists to make Megan Fox look that gritty and wet on a photo shoot, and look — I had Ijust done it all on my own!

I’m sure you, like me, read fitness magazines and stare at the beautiful, happy models who are always exercising in gorgeous locales in something with more no coverage than a bathing suit and thinking, “Pshhh…yeah right!” Well, hey, now I have to say… maybe they just got too hot!

Although I can’t say that I would ever rock that outfit at the gym — I don’t want to be That Girl — I feel like now I wouldn’t hesitate to strip down to my sports bra in an overheated spin class. It’s just a body. It goes running! It gets tan! Sometimes…it gets hot so then it gets kinda naked!

If you’re the sort of girl who stares at her “flaws” in a magnifying mirror for hours on end or the girl who has sex with the lights off, I highly encourage you to give into the heat. God knows men use warm weather as an excuse to take their shirts off — why shouldn’t you? It’s hot. You don’t want to have all those clothes on your skin…take them off!

Don’t worry about what people will see. They’ll just see a body. And a body is just a body. We all have them. None of them are perfect but all of them are kind of amazing.

3 comments:

serious questio said...

Why do you use "girls" to refer to females and "men" to refer to males? Seems rather insulting, shouldn't you be using "women"?

barethomas said...

Dear Serious,

I believe it's usually considered okay for a woman to refer to those of her own gender as 'girl' in certain colloquial contexts ('You go, girl!', 'Gurl friend!' etc).

If you'd like to take it up with Rachel, who wrote this piece, you could click the link at the beginning of the story. And let us know what transpires!

Mrs Hoover said...

I much prefer using "girl" rather than "woman", after all womens night out's would sound rather odd! I always use "girls" when refering to my female friends...