Narrator: An eight-year-old girl wants to play with the neighborhood boys, but they tell her to go away. "You're a girl," they say. Frustrated, she goes to her father, who tells her, "They’re just scared of you. They know you can beat them. They don’t want to lose to a girl, but too fucking BAD!" He then gives her a shocking piece of advice: if they give her trouble, she should kick them in the balls. This girl, Lauren Fleshman, would grow up to be one of the most decorated collegiate runners in American history. Yet, her journey reveals a deep and troubling paradox at the heart of women's sports. The very system designed to build girls up often becomes the one that breaks them down. In her memoir, Good for a Girl, Fleshman dissects this system, exposing how a world of sport built for men and boys fails its female athletes, and she offers a powerful vision for how to rebuild it.

Narrator: From a young age, Lauren Fleshman learned that power and approval were linked to masculine ideals. Her father, a charismatic but volatile man, was her first coach in life. He taught her to be tough, to fight back, and to compete not just with girls, but with boys. When she jumped off a high cliff into a river at age seven, he didn't praise her for being brave; he roared with pride, "My girl’s got balls the size of Texas!" This became the ultimate compliment, a validation tied not to her own female identity, but to a masculine trait.

This early conditioning shaped her entire athletic worldview. She internalized the idea that to be great was to beat the boys, to adopt their aggression, and to earn respect on their terms. This mindset was a double-edged sword. It fueled a ferocious competitive drive that led to early success, but it also set her on a collision course with her own biology. She was being trained to value a male standard of performance in a body that would soon diverge from it, setting the stage for a profound conflict between her ambition and the realities of being a female athlete.

Narrator: The world of co-ed competition Fleshman thrived in as a child came to an abrupt end with puberty. Suddenly, the boys she used to beat were getting stronger and faster, while she and her female friends began a different journey. This is a critical turning point where girls drop out of sports at twice the rate of boys. Fleshman’s book illuminates why: the system is unprepared for the female body’s natural development.

She recounts the disorienting experience of shopping for an eighth-grade dance dress with her softball teammates. While her friends celebrated their developing curves, Fleshman, a late bloomer, felt her athletic, muscular body was "defective" for not fitting a feminine ideal. This captures the "body duality" that haunts female athletes: the pressure to be strong and powerful for their sport, yet simultaneously conform to narrow, often passive, beauty standards. The body that brings them success on the field becomes a source of anxiety and conflict off it. Without coaches and systems educated on how to support girls through these changes, many simply walk away, convinced that their bodies have betrayed them.

Narrator: At Stanford University, Fleshman entered the elite echelons of collegiate sports, a system she describes as built by men, for men. The expectation was for linear, year-over-year improvement, a model that aligns with male physiology during college years but often clashes with female development. This created a dangerous environment where thinness was conflated with fitness.

The book details the devastating consequences of this blind spot. Fleshman watched teammates develop eating disorders in a desperate attempt to maintain an "ideal race weight." One teammate, Julia, a picture of discipline and strength, broke her leg after a minor fall, only to discover she had the osteoporosis of an old woman because she had never gotten her period. The condition, now known as RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport), was rampant but unspoken. Coaches, 80 percent of whom are male, were often ill-equipped to discuss periods or eating disorders. Fleshman herself, in pursuit of an Olympic dream, restricted her diet so severely that she stopped menstruating and developed a stress fracture, realizing too late that she "thought I needed to get light when I really needed to get strong."

Narrator: Upon turning professional, Fleshman discovered that marketability for female athletes was often judged by a single, narrow metric: their appeal to straight men. When she sought her first endorsement deal, agents and marketing executives were more interested in her appearance than her national titles. One executive bluntly told her, "The female athletes worth watching are the ones that appeal to men. It’s gross, but it’s the way it is."

This culminated in a pivotal moment with her sponsor, Nike. After complaining that a women's catalogue featured only thin, non-athletic models, she was invited to be the face of a new campaign. The creative brief, however, proposed an ad inspired by a naked photo of another athlete. Fleshman was horrified. She had fought to be seen as a serious athlete, only to be asked to sell shoes with her body. In a risky move, she pushed back, proposing an alternative. The result was the iconic "Objectify Me" poster, where she stares defiantly at the camera, arms crossed, with text challenging the viewer to see her for her accomplishments—her lungs, her legs, her heart. It was a small victory, but it exposed the deep-seated sexism that forces female athletes to choose between their integrity and their careers.

Narrator: Fleshman’s career was a constant battle between conforming to a broken system and trying to change it. The pressure eventually led to a public breakdown during a national championship race, where she simply stopped running, overwhelmed by anxiety. In the aftermath, she was forced to confront her perfectionism and her unhealthy relationship with her body.

A turning point came through her friendship with fellow runner Kim Smith. While Fleshman meticulously counted calories, Kim ate with unapologetic enjoyment. During one breakfast, Kim bluntly told her, "You think you’re eating healthy, but you’re just obsessive. It messes with your confidence. You gotta let it go." This simple, honest feedback was more powerful than any coach's advice. It helped Fleshman dismantle the rigid, self-destructive rules she had lived by. She learned that true strength wasn't about having "balls" or being the leanest. It was about listening to her body, embracing her own unique power, and having the courage to run on her own terms. This realization transformed her from an athlete trying to survive the system into a coach and advocate determined to rebuild it for the next generation.

Narrator: The most critical takeaway from Good for a Girl is that true gender equality in sports is not about giving girls the same opportunities as boys within a system designed for the male body. It is about fundamentally redesigning that system to honor and support the unique physiological and psychological journey of female athletes. Simply adding women to a male-centric model and expecting them to thrive is, as Fleshman puts it, "backfiring."

The book challenges us to move beyond simplistic measures of equality and ask deeper questions. Are we creating environments where girls can succeed not in spite of being female, but because of it? Are we educating coaches, parents, and the athletes themselves about puberty, nutrition, and mental health in a way that empowers them, rather than shames them? Lauren Fleshman’s story is more than a memoir; it’s a blueprint for a revolution in women's sports, one that begins the moment we stop asking girls to be "good for a girl" and start building a world that is good for them.