Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man's World

Content Warning: This section refers to disordered eating as well as female abuse in sports.

Fleshman, a retired professional athlete, coach, entrepreneur, and author, is the subject and narrator of her memoir, Good for a Girl: My Life Running in a Man’s World. As a participant in the running community at all levels—a high school, collegiate, professional, and finally recreational athlete and running coach—Fleshman has the expertise to examine the culture and norms within the running community. She has discovered systemic sexism and gender-based exclusion, which disadvantage female athletes, and she seeks to expose and redress these inequities through her memoir and through her career more broadly.

Fleshman thrived as a high school and early collegiate athlete but slowed in her sophomore year, pushing through deep-seated exhaustion and burnout only to find herself hampered by injuries that continued to dog her for the rest of her professional years. Despite her injuries, which destroyed her dream of representing the USA at the Olympics, Fleshman achieved national and international success as a long distance and track athlete. She also sought to redress sexism in advertising through the Nike “Objectify Me” campaign, which came to exist through her lobbying Nike to advertise their female athletic wear using athletes rather than models.