Lynne Cox is an accomplished American open water swimmer. Twice, she held the record for the fastest crossing of the English Channel. Cox was the first woman to swim the Cook Strait and the first to swim the Straits of Magellan and around the Cape of Good Hope. Cox swam the Bering Strait from American soil to Soviet soil in 1987, at the height of the Cold War.
Look at her.
I know open water swimming isn’t really glamorous, but Lynne Cox is arguably one of the greatest overlooked athletes of the 20th century.
And quite possibly a mutant.
She can withstand water temperatures that you or I would die from because of her training and her body’s unique reaction to cold (you know how the blood will leave your fingers and toes when it’s cold, to preserve heat? her whole body does that, pooling her blood in her core and insuring her body temperature stays toasty where it counts).
She funded the Bering Strait swim herself, clearing out her bank account when she couldn’t get corporate sponsors. After she succeeded (to almost everyone’s surprise: if you get in the Bering Sea without serious gear you generally just die) Gorbachev mentioned her during treaty talks with Nixon: “Last summer it took one brave American by the name of Lynne Cox just two hours to swim from one of our countries to the other. We saw on television how sincere and friendly the meeting was between our people and the Americans when she stepped onto the Soviet shore. She proved by her courage how close to each other our peoples live.“
She wasn’t just the first woman to swim the Strait of Magellan. She was the first person to make it across.
On top of setting multiple world records, she swam a mile+ to the coast of Antarctica, in just a bathing suit, and did not die.
She’s swum over 50,000 miles.
And look at her. This is a photo from when she was young, at the peak of her career and setting records all over the world. She is a great athlete. She is a human who can do things most humans would die trying. I’m sitting here at 1 AM getting all teary eyed because this is the first time I’ve looked up a photo of her and I am so surprised, so gratified, so overwhelmed to find out that this world record setter, this literal superhuman, has nearly the same body type as me.
Since they wouldn’t let her be a fantasy creature in a video game, she just did it in real life, I guess.
Anyone who thinks there is just one athletic body type isn’t paying attention during the Olympics opening ceremonies.
Her body type is optimized for her sport. The shape of her body and the presence of fat both provide insulation to keep her core warm while she swims.
A lot of open water swimmers aren’t this chunky, but that’s because most of them are actually triathletes, and their body type is a compromise between the ideals for the different sports.
There really is no one way to be fit and athletic. For some reason, we tend to get ourselves hung up on the body type of track and field athletes, especially that of marathon runners (who tend to carry almost no extra fat) as the ideal.
Japanese child actress Mana Ashida (little Mako) was embarrassed that she couldn’t pronounce Guillermo Del Toro’s name so he gave her special permission to call him “Totoro-san” instead.
i agree that jameela makes great points at times, but she’s also the same woman who thinks the likes of laverne cox are women just because they identify that way. you can’t be a woman who calls out the deep-seated misogyny of society while also saying that any male who “feels” like a woman is one, and his opinions on womanhood automatically become relevant.
I hope you and all TERFs shit your pants in public too.
buddy her thinking trans women are women is a bonus not a flaw
Gavin woke up in an unfamiliar room. He sat up slowly, noticing he was lying in a bed. The next thing he noticed was the lack of windows. He was probably somewhere underground then. He climbed off the bed when he noticed another thing, one that made his blood freeze. He had a chain around his ankle. Closing his eyes for a moment he tried to remember the last thing that happened before waking up. He had been at the DPD, arguing with Connor as usual. Gavin pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to remember more. He had been arguing with Connor, and then- then he left to go home? No, that wasn’t right.
Footsteps echoed around him from above, good, he could hear people. He climbed up on top of the bed and tried to reach the ceiling. He had to jump to slap the ceiling with his hand. The footsteps paused before continuing. They were no longer above him but going towards the front of the room, then they were in front of the door. Stairs then, Gavin decided as he jumped down from the bed and lifted his fists. He wondered who would jump him by the DPD, who would just chain him to a bed instead of just killing him or tying him to a chair.
The door clicked and then swung open. Gavin dropped his fists as he laughed. “Nines you scared me for a moment! You found who kidnapped me then? Good you can help me get this stupid fucking chain off.” He turned to pick up the chain and stopped when he took another look at his partner, the partner who made no move to free him. “Nines, help me break these chains.” There was blue blood over the androids hands and he had a tear in his jacket. “Are you hurt? Can you tell me who took me?” Gavin started to feel fear bubbling in his chest as Nines just stood there stoically. Icy gray eyes just watched the human holding the chain and trying to pull it away from the bed.
“Everything will be alright Detective.” He watched Gavin give a sigh of relief before holding up the chain. Nines walked in and closed the door behind him, locking it just in case. “He won’t bother you anymore.”
Gavin looked up at Nines as the android stopped in front of him. “Who? What do you mean?”
A hand covered in blue blood raised up to cup Gavin’s cheek. He tightened his grip as the human flinched away. “Connor won’t be an issue anymore Gavin.”
“Nines. What did you do?” Those deep grey eyes looked up with just a touch of fear hiding in them. Nines just gave a smile and placed the hand not holding Gavin’s face on his shoulder. “I need you to tell me, what did you do?”
Nines leaned down to kiss Gavin, holding the struggling human in place before standing up straight again. “I got rid of the problem Gavin, he won’t be bothering you anymore.”
Gavin pushed uselessly against him. “What the fuck! I don’t know what you’re trying but we-”
He was cut off with a shout, “I’m trying to help! You had a problem and I got rid of it!” Nines knew his LED was red right then. He took a few breaths to cool down his processors before speaking again. “Nothing will come between us any longer.” It amused him, how he could see the exact instant his human realized what position he was in. At the same time, he felt saddened. His human should be glad, he protected him, all he wanted to do was keep his frail human safe from the outside world. Gavin shouldn’t fear him, no not him.
Nines grabbed Gavin by the face again, staring at him and the fear in his eyes before letting go and turning away. “You locked me up.” Gavin sounded so surprised. “You locked me up and- and what? Killed Connor? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you have an error in your system or something?” Nines ignored him, walking towards the door and opening it.
“I’ll come back later. You’ll see eventually that I did this for your own protection.”
Gavin fell back on the bed when the door closed behind Nines. He put his head in his hands and wondered if this was how he would die. Locked away by an android who- what loved him? Was obsessed? He wondered how he would get away. How do you escape a jailer who never slept, who didn’t need food or water? How could he outsmart Cyber Life’s finest?
Rook's Writing 