Maria Sharapova's Photo Shoot For Cole Han

Maria Sharapova's

Photo Shoot

For Cole Han

New LooK Of Shahid Kapoor

My, oh my, Shahid Kapoor has grown from a boy to a man! No, we are not talking about some type of right-of-passage ceremony that the actor has gone through, instead we are referring to his brand new hard hitting look. Besides helping his career, Shahid Kapoor's film, "Kaminey," gave the actor a whole new image. The cutie who is known for his boyish appeal, has a sexy mature look for the film that he has surprised all of us with.

Who would have thought that with his baby face Shahid could ever be seen as a man's man. Well, he proves to us that he can and his new image is appreciated by the public. Critiques and fans like it so much that India's "Hi Blitz," magazine has featured the actor in his new look on the front cover.

On the cover, the actor stares into the camera as he shows off his biceps while in a sleeveless vest. His spiked up hair gives him a much trendier look. In the magazine's exclusive cover story, Kapoor discusses the challenges in obtaining his new look for the film.

The entire photo shoot showcases Shahid Kapoor in a way he has never been seen before. His new image marks a new beginning for the actor who has several upcoming films lined up. As Shahid Kapoor continues to gain popularity, who knows what's next for him. What we do know is that his career is on the rise and he could very well be the next big actor in Bollywood.

Making Preparations For Flight & A Challenge!

I could tell you that I have been resting and pondering since the last post (I have 'pondered'). And decided that I need to set strong boundaries which include resting and accepting limitations, like maybe not doing everything all the time. But that would be a lie.

I took a shower and wheeled up to the Y to rejoin. Yes, in the manual. And was told they had ‘changed policy’ and I needed to come back the next day. And that they did not accommodate ‘power chairs’ (the next day power that be wanted to know who said that, but didn’t say one way or another). BUT, I am NOW a member of the YMCA-YWCA and have my Recreation Integration Card and am getting ready to take flight.

The shower and going up to the Y in the heat turned out not so great as I wasn’t good on the breathing by bedtime and at one point breathed unassisted between 5-7 times over 25-35 minutes. I don’t think Linda was amused, since she was the one with the ambi-bag. The next day, after waiting for the person to get my membership for an hour in a hot, unventilated room, and then on the way home, I passed out and had to be brought inside and hooked up to oxygen by the people I was talking to. Then did the, “Look MA! I don't breathe!” trick again that night too. BUT I did accomplish what I set out to. I am however firmly grounded for now, and will be sitting still for a little while. But just you wait; I am going to fly. Not anymore because I think people won’t like me if I don’t or demand it but because I can. Because I want to, and because I want to show anyone, and everyone that what is possible is only limited to what can be dreamt, desired and the willingness to try even if you fail.

This is where you come in. Oh, like you thought you were getting out of this? Cheryl, three weeks ago, after the Moss Street Artist Display complained that she was so sore from the going up and down the hill and the distance. I said, “well, better keep doing a couple kilometers or miles a week so you are ready for the five kilometer events we enter into. Having a pit crew is nice, but having a fellow PARTICIPANT would be better!” She must have thought I was serious as she HAS been doing training. Which is good as the first 5K is in 3 weeks, and the next two weeks after that. Hee hee.

Most of us in our lives, are in some ways like me, limited, but not by heat and walls but by the limits we have put on ourselves. We live a good life, we live a crappy life, we all get by, but..... And that is it, what is it that makes you secretly look out when no one is looking, and what is it you dream, that you want to do?
September is coming they say and if you want to take a class, take it! So what if you are older than other students. SO WHAT?! Or if you are like me and indoors, then is there not somewhere you want to go, whether 1 block away or 10 miles? Is there no way, with planning, with time, that you can make a dream, a goal come true? Something that will only matter to you (and me). A picnic, looking at the stars, starting a new language, starting an instrument, starting a new project, restarting an old project, reading a book you have been putting off, getting outside to a place that is special to you, or just simply going someplace and remembering, honoring. Whatever it is, it is you flying. Like I said, I would rather have fellow PARTICIPANTS.

To fly requires two parts: to dream and to try. Dreaming is something some have let grow rusty, or hidden behind shields. Because to dream is to expose yourself to hurt, to have dreams, to lose them, there is pain there but there is also joy. And to dream you must believe that you can become more than you are, that you ARE a person worth taking risks. That you matter.

We all matter, but only some will choose to dream. And fewer still will risk trying to fly. For years, I have tried in all ways, in tactile ways, in words, in everything that you are unique, and hold unique dreams and desires. And that nothing is impossible, or few things. Many are scary, some are dangerous but the greatest limit is ourselves. It is time to dream what can be.
I am not asking that achieve it tomorrow, I am asking that you start TODAY! Not that you go out and run a marathon but if you want to run a marathon, or wheel one, then you dream it, and you write up a realistic plan on how that can happen. The hardest twenty meters to run during training are the twenty meters out your own door. To do it is to try and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes I try two, three, six, seven times before I simply can get out ANYWHERE with Linda besides here. If you don’t try, if I don’t try, I already know our chance of success and then a dream is just that, something we build a shell over. And something we get resentful about when we see others struggling to achieve the same. Because there will be difficulties. But then, even I am not so sure on how to fly anymore, so there might be some bumpy moments. But as Amelia Earhart said (via Life and Times of Emma), “Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.”

I will leave these walls and I will go to the Y with a volunteer, or I will be so ill from trying that I will have to stop, to gather my strength, and to try again. But I will go, I will play badminton and I will box. Yes, that’s right, I am going to box. Because if the pain of muscles ripping is so bad that I can only handle one night of boxing, that is one night more than I have had this year. That is one night that I lived my dream. And nothing will ever take that away.

So I am asking to try flying with me. And yes, there might be a big splat. But there might not….then what? Another dream to try? Lots of reason to not. Truth is that you might have fragile wings, delicate. But if you have wings and never even try to fly...? Yes, scary to try: People can see us, we can see us, we are too old, too young, not experienced enough, not ready, not this month, not this year. There is ALWAYS a reason to not do something. I am asking to please find a reason to get ready to try. I am not the kind that goes, “Don’t ‘try’ but DO!’ as my rock climbing instructor used to yell. Not a well loved person. I, on the other hand, know that the ‘doing’ comes from honest ‘trying’ and that is all we can do, is try, with all our might. And regardless the outcome, I would be interested, if you are willing, to share how things went, or are going.

So, I am going to sleep and hope that I breath independently for the start and when I get up I will start matching postcards. I am resting up, but I didn’t say I was sitting still doing nothing! As for what else, and with me, there is ALWAYS something else, well, you are going to just have to wait and watch this space.

The Idiocy Of Sex Testing

World-class South African athlete Caster Semenya, age 18, won the 800 meters in the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships on August 19. But her victory was all the more remarkable in that she was forced to run amid a controversy that reveals the twisted way international track and field views gender.
The sports world has been buzzing for some time over the rumor that Semenya may be a man, or more specifically, not "entirely female." According to the newspaper The Age, her "physique and powerful style have sparked speculation in recent months that she may not be entirely female." From all accounts an arduous process of "gender testing" on Semenya has already begun. The idea that an 18-year-old who has just experienced the greatest athletic victory of her life is being subjecting to this very public humiliation is shameful to say the least.

Her own coach Michael Seme contributed to the disgrace when he said, "We understand that people will ask questions because she looks like a man. It's a natural reaction and it's only human to be curious. People probably have the right to ask such questions if they are in doubt. But I can give you the telephone numbers of her roommates in Berlin. They have already seen her naked in the showers and she has nothing to hide."

The people with something to hide are the powers that be in track and field, as well as in international sport. As long as there have been womens' sports, the characterization of the best female athletes as "looking like men" or "mannish" has consistently been used to degrade them. When Martina Navratilova dominated women's tennis and proudly exposed her chiseled biceps years before Hollywood gave its imprimatur to gals with "guns," players complained that she "must have a chromosome loose somewhere."

This minefield of sexism and homophobia has long pushed female athletes into magazines like Maxim to prove their "hotness"--and implicitly their heterosexuality. Track and field in particular has always had this preoccupation with gender, particularly when it crosses paths with racism. Fifty years ago, Olympic official Norman Cox proposed that in the case of black women, "the International Olympic Committee should create a special category of competition for them--the unfairly advantaged 'hermaphrodites.'"

For years, women athletes had to parade naked in front of Olympic officials. This has now given way to more "sophisticated" "gender testing" to determine if athletes like Semenya have what officials still perceive as the ultimate advantage--being a man. Let's leave aside that being male is not the be-all, end-all of athletic success. A country's wealth, coaching facilities, nutrition and opportunity determine the creation of a world-class athlete far more than a Y chromosome or a penis ever could.

What these officials still don't understand, or will not confront, is that gender--that is, how we comport and conceive of ourselves--is a remarkably fluid social construction. Even our physical sex is far more ambiguous and fluid than is often imagined or taught. Medical science has long acknowledged the existence of millions of people whose bodies combine anatomical features that are conventionally associated with either men or women and/or have chromosomal variations from the XX or XY of women or men. Many of these "intersex" individuals, estimated at one birth in every 1,666 in the United States alone, are legally operated on by surgeons who force traditional norms of genitalia on newborn infants. In what some doctors consider a psychosocial emergency, thousands of healthy babies are effectively subject to clitorectomies if a clitoris is "too large" or castrations if a penis is "too small" (evidently penises are never considered "too big").

The physical reality of intersex people calls into question the fixed notions we are taught to accept about men and women in general, and men and women athletes in sex-segregated sports like track and field in particular. The heretical bodies of intersex people challenge the traditional understanding of gender as a strict male/female phenomenon. While we are never encouraged to conceive of bodies this way, male and female bodies are more similar than they are distinguishable from each other. When training and nutrition are equal, it is increasingly difficult to tell the difference between some of the best-trained male and female Olympic swimmers wearing state-of-the-art one-piece speed suits. Title IX, the 1972 law imposing equal funding for girls' and boys' sports in schools, has radically altered not only women's fitness and emotional well-being but their bodies as well. Obviously, there are some physical differences between men and women, but it is largely our culture and not biology that gives them their meaning.

In 1986 Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez-Patiño was stripped of her first-place winnings when discovered to have an XY chromosome, instead of the female's XX, which shattered her athletic career and upended her personal life. "I lost friends, my fiancé, hope and energy," said Martínez-Patiño in a 2005 editorial in the journal The Lancet.

Whatever track and field tells us Caster Semenya's gender is--and as of this writing there is zero evidence she is intersex--it's time we all break free from the notion that you are either "one or the other." It's antiquated, stigmatizing and says far more about those doing the testing than about the athletes tested. The only thing suspicious is the gender and sex bias in professional sports. We should continue to debate the pros and cons of gender segregation in sport. But right here, right now, we must end sex testing and acknowledge the fluidity of gender and sex in sports and beyond.