Tough Broad
From Boogie Boarding to Wing Walking—How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age
by Caroline Paul
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Pub Date Mar 05 2024 | Archive Date Feb 21 2024
Bloomsbury USA | Bloomsbury Publishing
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Description
From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Gutsy Girl, a funny, inspiring, deeply researched exploration into the science and psychology of the outdoors and our place in it as we age.
Caroline Paul has always filled her life with adventure: From mountain biking in the Bolivian Andes to pitching a tent, mid-blizzard, on Denali, she has never been a stranger to the exhilaration the outdoors can hold. Yet through it all, she has long wondered, Why aren't women, like men, encouraged to keep adventuring into old age?
Tough Broad is her quest to understand not just how to live a dynamic life in a changing body, but why we must. She dives deep into the current research on aging, and highlights the results with the stories of women like ninety-three-year-old hiker Dot Fisher-Smith, eighty-year-old scuba diver Louise Wholey, fifty-two-year-old BASE jumper Shawn Brokemond, sixty-four-year-old birdwatcher Virginia Rose, and the many septuagenarian Wave Chasers who boogie board together in the San Diego surf. These women aren't experts. But their experiences and the scientific studies that back them up offer important insight into our own physical and emotional health as we age, showing that growing older is no reason for women to sell themselves short. Tough Broad is a high-spirited call for women to embrace the outdoors, not back away from it, in our fifties, sixties, seventies, and beyond, casting our own futures in a new and dazzling light
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781635576498 |
| PRICE | $27.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 288 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
PJ H, Librarian
I am so grateful to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me access to this title the day after my 48th birthday. This is a perfectly-timed read for me as I approach the 5-decade mark.
This book spotlights the invisibility and/or lack of women (especially older women) in rarer outdoor sports and activities by interviewing at least one that participates in them.
In the very first chapter, I am inspired! I had to look up what a OneWheel is...and now I want one!
I like how each chapter is focused on a particular activity and a particular aging-related lesson and includes poetic descriptions of each activity. I enjoyed how the author writes of her own thoughts and experiences as a newbie as well as the experiences and advice of other participants during her research.
I love the inclusion of the viewpoints of BIPOC and LGBTQIA participants!
At first, I thought it was rather elitist that the activities discussed are either expensive or require expensive gear. But when I'd finished reading the book (which included simple and/or cheap activities as well) and absorbed the messaging, I realized that the basic message this book could offer is "if 50-98 year old women can do these spectacular things, you too can be daring even in milder ways; aging is not about the body crumbling to dust the moment you turn 60." I have been inspired to try new activities or to try modified versions to fit my physical/financial limitations.
Quote: "It's about claiming those aspects of physical vitality, novelty, exhilaration, agency, and adventure for ourselves, at this age, right now."
Most of all, this book is about letting go of what we've been taught about how the human body ages. Because old science was wrong and new science is proving that humans, especially females, can lead full and adventurous lives well into their elderly years!
And I've already pre-ordered my own copy!
Lindsay R, Librarian
I was afraid this was going to be one of those books about older women being physical super heroes, guilting those of us choosing not to jump out of airplanes or hike the Himalayas, but Ms. Paul managed to balance the adventurous women with others just deciding to brave learning to swim for the first time, or hop on a boogie board. I found myself laughing and nodding my head in parts, about the emotional and physical struggles we encounter as we age.
Very well done. I've already recommended it to my best friend over over 40 years who has been an avid cross country skier and cyclist for years, even after double hip-replacement surgeries.
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