Estrogen, Olympic Hockey, and the Art of the Middle Finger
Turning our simmering rage into a Joybellion.
I am a huge sports fan. To me, watching sports is like watching an exaggerated version of life. While the physical aspect is vital, it’s the mental side that gets deep—mimicking how the tie between our thoughts and our actions directly impacts the final outcome.
This brings me to the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team. They’ve been getting a lot of heat for those painful videos of their gold medal celebration—specifically, a phone call with the current occupant of the White House. My heart dropped watching them engage in behavior that demeaned their female counterparts.
It was especially disappointing because we saw those same men cheering in the stands for the women’s team just days prior. There is a glaring disconnect between what many of these athletes likely feel in their hearts and how they choose to behave when “locker room” pressure is on.
Society loves to dismiss this as “locker room talk”—a trope suggesting this behavior is okay because it isn’t “real world” life. But the truth is, the locker room is a micro-example of attitudes that bleed into our daily lives. It’s a tool used to justify degrading behavior and gaslight women into thinking their discomfort isn’t valid.
But here is where I want to turn the mirror on all of us.
This behavior isn’t isolated to male locker rooms. I see it every day in subtle social interactions. When someone makes an off-putting or offensive comment or says something we disagree with, our natural default is to want to fit in.
To avoid conflict, we often:
Stay silent to “go with the flow”.
Offer a fake chuckle or a brief “yeah, yeah” to indicate we are “with them,” even if our hearts are elsewhere.
Wait for someone else to lead before we find the courage to speak our own truth.
While we can rightfully call out those hockey players for not standing up to a powerful figure—and hold a special kind of fire for the ones who see nothing wrong with shitting on women—we have to ask: Are we willing to be brave and speak up in our own daily interactions?
To be clear, I am not suggesting that a polite chuckle at a dinner party is the same as the toxic, systemic disparaging of women found in a locker room.
However, those smaller social moments are the fertile ground where harmful behavior takes root. If we want to dismantle the culture that makes the locker room possible, we have to stop watering the weeds in our own daily lives.
I think midlife women are one of the best equipped to be brave and say “Yes!” when asked to speak up in our daily lives.
As our estrogen dips and we enter our “zero f*cks” era, we have a unique opportunity:
To speak freely without the paralyzing fear of what others think.
To be the example for younger women who are still in stages of life where speaking up may feel dangerous.
Not to mention we are a “badass cohort” carrying decades of wisdom and the scars of navigating a patriarchal society.
When we choose “locker room behavior,” we are living in survival mode—trapped in our heads, overthinking social consequences, and strategizing how to fit in. But when we act from our values and who we truly are, we move out of the head and into the heart and our intuition.
This is why I’ve made the headless woman the midlife woman’s mascot.
To reclaim our power, we have to stop listening to the logical “politeness” of the brain and start trusting the wild honesty of the gut. I call it The Sacred Art of Self-Decapitation, a joybellious act to stay sane in a world that insists we are untrustworthy.
A Joybellion is Here
This isn’t about “teaching” others; it’s about making our own lives more authentic. By choosing honesty over comfort, we become the spark—the example just by being. This is how we shift culture on the down-low at a grassroots level—through small, daily moments of honesty.
This is at the heart of my upcoming book, Joybellion: Transforming Midlife Insignificance into Freedom, Power, and Everyday Magic.
When the outside world tries to define our worth, we respond with joy and rebellion. A joybellion happens when intuitive courage meets quiet disobedience. We trust our intuition—however we experience it—and have the courage to follow her lead. That’s joy. Giving the status quo a low-key middle finger? That’s rebellion.
The men in that locker room chose the path of least resistance. We don’t have to. We have the experience, the resilience, and—frankly—the lack of patience to finally call out the “locker room talk” wherever we hear it.
Are You Pissed?
There are so many “locker room” situations we have to navigate as women it can leave us simmering with rage.
Rarely, if I get into a deep conversation with a fellow midlife woman, do I not encounter her anger.
It pains me and I love it.
It pains me knowing when women swallow their anger it contributes to our dis-ease.
I love it because anger coming to the surface means we can use it as fuel to address what the anger is telling us.
If having a safe space to express what pisses you off so you can turn it into liberation and authentic action speaks to you, join the waitlist for my upcoming Holy Rage workshop. It’s going to be fun and emotionally freeing.
Thank you for being a part of the magic and mischief here—I’m grateful for your presence. If you want to keep the Joybellion thriving, here’s how you can support:
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To the Joybellion. 🤸🏽♀️✊🏽
Here’s to our collective middle fingers!