Strong! (the Movie)

Last night, I joined two friends of mine and went to see this movie, about Cheryl Haworth, a three-time Olympic athlete.  The website for the movie has the following blurb:

"A formidable figure, standing at 5'8" and weighing over 300 pounds, Cheryl Haworth struggles to defend her champion status as her lifetime weightlifting career inches towards its inevitable end. Strong! chronicles her journey and the challenges this unusual elite athlete faces, exploring popular notions of power, strength, beauty, and health."

There were two themes in the movie that deeply resonated with me.  The first was in dealing with injuries, and I'm not going to jump into that discussion here beyond stating that I absolutely understood the frustration of feeling like you're losing ground and time while you bounce from doctor to specialist trying to figure out what is wrong.   And if it's frustrating for an average athlete like me, how much worse it must be for an elite athlete preparing to compete in the Olympics, knowing that this could be the last time she gets a shot.   Although she never asks for sympathy and would probably cringe to hear it, my heart just went out to her instantly.

The second theme that really captivated me was around the question of weight/body image.   This is where I'll spend the rest of tonight's blogtime, and if you are disinterested in hearing about me and my big ass, now is the time to leave the post.  I'm not whining, and I do not want anyone's sympathy--you cannot know how little interest I have in your sympathy on this topic, because I do not feel pitiful.  If I sound bummed or bitter, I'm not.  To the contrary, I often feel amazed at what my body can do, but that has never, ever erased wanting to be smaller than I am at present, nor does it erase my incredulity at what is going on with my ass.  And that, my friends, annoys the shit out of me.

The theme that I found the most fascinating was that even at the elite Olympic level, when you have *factual* information--lifts you've made, medals you've won, people you've beaten--FACTS to *prove* you kick ass, you can still be left confronting this head trip about body image.  One thing Cheryl shares in the film is how she'd like to be smaller, but she understands that "mass moves mass" and it's her explicit job to move mass.   She can't go on a diet and lose 100# because she's expected to total in snatch and clean & jerk, and she's expected to help her team earn spots at the Olympics, and she's vital to that team.   She needs all her muscle, and her body weight was part of the reason she earned a bronze medal at the damn Olympics.   THE OLYMPICS.   We are not talking about some ordinary regional competition.   Cheryl is the real damn deal; she is a legit badass, and she's talking about wanting to be thinner and how she knows people don't want women that look like her.

It blows my mind.  

There she is in the movie, sitting on the same stupid pointless seesaw that I sit on, both of us unconditionally loving what our (relative) strength feels like and loving what our bodies can do, and yet, feeling all sorts of frustration that the prerequisite for that strength is a body that we just cannot find a way to love in the same unconditional way?

I mean, it's one thing when you are me--a near-middle-aged woman lifting pretty ordinary weights.  I'm certainly not Olympic material, nor anything special when it comes to lifting heavy.  But here is a bronze medalist who Clean and Jerks about three times what I can (or could, before rehab of the infamous dead butt), and we are both saying the same stuff?

It blows. My. Mind.   How can she feel that way when she is so FACTUALLY amazing? 

And here's the really-reals from this side of the fence, as an ordinary person who will never be Olympic caliber.

Nobody signs up for a fitness regimen with the thought of "Oh, hey, let's see what I can do about gaining that final 35# I've been meaning to add to my body".  Maybe pencil-necked 14 year old boys who want to impress potential paramours do, but most people don't go into a new gym with that idea.  And yet, that is precisely what happened to me.   Even more awesome: that paleo diet that helped everyone you ever met drop weight effortlessly?   Paleo eating accelerated the weight increase for me--in fact, 10# of that weight jumped on in the single month I ate 100% pure paleo back in 2010.   I gained weight on friggin' Atkins.

Truth.

It just does not happen this way for most people.   Most people join CrossFit and manage to achieve the same type of strength gains I saw, or similar, without the commensurate body weight gain.  And I can already hear you saying it, because it's what everyone says to me when I tell them this story.  "But it's MUSCLE," you gamely protest.   "Muscle is good!"    For the record, no one can gain 35# of muscle in a year without benefit of steroids, and I am not on steroids.  

And really, what else are you going to say, beyond "Dear Baby Jesus, please do NOT let that be me, ever."   And trust me, I know you're thinking it, because I certainly would be if I were in your shoes.  Only one person in the history of time has anyone ever said exactly what I'd have said, which is "I don't think this shit is working for you".   I laughed then, and I laugh now. 

So let's go there for a moment.  Don't worry! You can come back to your existing body in a moment.  But first, imagine that this happened to you.  You started running or CrossFitting or MMA or whatever you do for fitness.  Regardless of why you started...to increase your fitness, for mental reasons, for fun, for building endurance or whatever the hell your reasons were...imagine that you gained those things in spades, (as I did--I think in some ways, CrossFit has literally saved my life) but you ALSO gained 35# in a single year.   Sit there in your chair or wherever you're reading this, and imagine where those 35# would land on you.  Fuck it, I'll even say you can add it entirely in muscle (which is not what happened to me).   Imagine how it would feel to try to do pullups with 35 extra, or running, or handstand pushups.   I guarantee it is not easier to do these things even with all your new-found strength.  The many legion of you who lost weight can attest how losing weight helped you in your workouts, most likely.

Now, with that extra 35#, hear everyone around you talking about getting so much leaner after starting CrossFit and try not to punch them square in the face.  My body fat percentage is now at 27%.   Twenty motherfucking seven.  It grinds my gears, big time.

Would you continue to CrossFit, if this happened to you?  Would you be delighted about the new weight?  Would you take the same joy in buying a whole new wardrobe if you were going up 4 sizes instead of down?

 
And yet, I am still CrossFitting.

 
In October of 2009, just before I found the awesome that is CrossFit, I weighed 135#.  It says so right on my online WeightWatchers tracker.  I stand 5'4".   Ever since my high school athlete days, I have carried more muscle than an average woman, so despite the height/weight ratio, I wore a size six or a size eight, depending on who makes the clothes (thanks, vanity sizing in the clothing industry--I still love you for that size 4 I once wore).  I still possess some of the sixes and the eights--they're hanging out in a spare closet for the mythical day when I fit back into them, which will probably happen right after they finally dig up Jimmy Hoffa and we ride my pet unicorn together. 

One year after starting Crossfit, I hit an all-time high of 170# (+26%).  I'm down to 160 now (still +19% vs. original weight), after reining in the really heavy lifting to rehab my dead butt, but I am pretty certain it will come back when I start hitting the weights hard again.

And yet...I am clearly designed to lift heavy shit, because when I do it, and when I eat to support that activity (which I'll interpret here as eating Paleo), I get insanely strong in a ridiculously short amount of time.  I look at a barbell and I get stronger.  My deadlift went from 65# to 255# (+292%) in that same year that I gained 35#--lifted using only 2/3 of my ass to do it, no less.   It was barely difficult to achieve that deadlift PR.   I did no special training to get there--no Wendler, no conjugate--I didn't even have a special focus on any one lift.   I just followed regular CrossFit programming, 2 or 3x/week, and that is only one statistic I could throw at you.  I improved lots of lifts by at least 100% in that same first year.  Every time I walked into the box, I set a new PR.  

However, performing my best and strongest also took me to the point where people were saying, to my face, "wow, you're really getting bulky!"   It's a damned hard thing to hear, especially as a woman, and most especially, as someone who is not and will never ever be an elite athlete.

Here's the other thing: it's become tragically uncool to say that you want to lose weight in CrossFitland.  We're not supposed to want that.  We are supposed to want to get "stronger", "fitter", "healthier".   Check, check, and check.  What insane person does not want these things?  Of course you do, and you should.   Fuck all that noise about looking like supermodels and wanting cheekbones and vascularity and ab muscles!   I wonder what people from the box will think if they read this--and I feel very naked exposing all of this.  I take solace in knowing I can pull this post if I want to.

Once again, I think of Cheryl.  Does she feel naked, seeing herself on a big screen talking about these same things?   Does she wish she hadn't said that stuff?  I am grateful that she did, because it makes me feel slightly less insane.

I did say I had no plans to quit CrossFit, and I mean that.  I really believe the things it has done for me are life changing in ways I can't even go into here.  I do still regularly get a charge out of what my body has learned how to do.  Tonight I banged out 10 pullups, strung, just because I felt like it.  I could go on and on and on about what I can do now that was inconceivable 3 years ago.   I don't hate my body--in fact I think my arms are pretty amazing and my ass, despite no longer fitting into any of my pants, is a hell of a lot nicer than it was before.  Don't even get me started on my beautiful callouses--seriously.  It's ten minutes out of your life that you'll wish you had back.

But I still wish I was smaller.  Those are Cheryl's words (perhaps verbatim) and I echo them.  I truly envy the people--male or female--who can just say, "Fuck it: I yam what I yam and I lift heavy and I'm happy at this weight or any weight because I love everything there is about me."  I've never been so evolved and may never be--and I'm not sure I can ever be happy staying at the weight I hit at my apex of strength.  I have no idea what I will do when I start going heavy again and the scale once again creeps up.  I have no idea what I will do if I can't see gains if I keep dieting.  I have no idea what I will do if I have to someday confront the choice--really confront it--between getting smaller or getting stronger.   


More to come.

An ersatz update

I have realized I'm not updating this thing nearly enough to retain readership.  I do get a fair amount of shit about how infrequently I post, though, which says that at least someone is reading this thing.  Hi there, reader!

In short, I'm lazy or at the very least, sufficiently convinced of my own triviality to be reluctant to share it. 

This is a decent start for this evening's blog post, since I'm realizing that I've been engaged in the business of one long protracted pout since this dead butt business came to pass, which, upon further introspection, could also be bucketed under "lazy" and probably "trivial" to boot.

Regardless of how I choose to term it--lazy, unmotivated, dejected, or whatever--because I cannot deadlift, squat, or do anything high impact to the knees (read as: run, jump, burpee, or even things like push jerks, on the wrong day), I have been taking a pass on too many WODs recently.  The result: I'm letting a lot of metabolic conditioning opportunities slip through my fingers, not to mention, skill-building time.

As I posted on another friend's blog, just because I can't squat doesn't mean I can't still be focused against the shit at which I am sub-standard--and it's not like that list is short.  No, I can't focus on double unders or getting a 300+ deadlift, but I can still focus on doing rowing conditioning work to try to get my lungs back.  I can still focus on getting my upper body organized--it's not like I can yet do muscle ups, HSPU--hell--even pushups have completely fallen apart in my hiatus.  My knees don't care if I do ring dips, or MU transitions, or pullups, or pushups, or stinkbugs...etc, etc, etc.  This is a golden opportunity if I do it correctly.

So yeah, time to get off the pity party wagon about not being able to go heavy with the deads and squats, write some programming to attack the weaknesses.  I'm cheered that the weather is getting warmer, as I'm hopeful that I can get back on my skates/blades and do some speed/endurance conditioning that way as well.   Suck it up, buttercup!

In other news, the dead butt thing has been progressing but s-l-o-w-l-y.  Pilates continues to completely humiliate and embarrass me by demonstrating just how ridiculously weak my transverse abdominus and gluteus medius really are.   The other day my teacher set me up to do a particular exercise and I literally could not do even 1 with proper form.  I could not believe it!  The good news is that the various contraptions at the Pilates studio are actually doing a fine job of isolating the trouble spots and helping me get stronger, but I'm still plagued with knee troubles to the point where even just walking takes a good 2-3 minutes to warm up the joints before I can proceed without any noticeable limp.   So, Pilates will now occur twice a week and hopefully the results will come faster.  I do know that my muscles tend to respond quickly to intense work, so hopefully it will apply here as well.

Summary: more pilates, more skillwork, more metcon/TABATA, and a whole lot less pouting is on the agenda for the coming month.

First World Problem: An example*

I am sitting in a coffee joint, with my sweatshirt zipped up over my nose, probably setting off alarm bells in the employees that I'm about to conduct felonious activity of some kind.  Why am I doing this?

A woman who is wearing WAY too much perfume sat her ass down in the seat next to mine, and it's too crowded in here to move to another seat.  My stubborn refusal to leave has rendered me with an allergy attack and a near-immediate headache.  My "solution" is to zip my sweatshirt over my nose so I can block the sickly scent of dead flowers and baby powder, which is exactly what this woman's perfume smells like to me.

My recognition of exactly how much this is a "first world problem":
I am sitting in a ridiculously high-priced coffee store, drinking my tasty beverage, with a full belly, on a glorious day with warm temps and lovely sunshine, and the worst thing I have to bitch about is this bitch and her perfume. 

I have *nothing* to complain about, by comparison with roughly 99% of the world.

I still wish she'd leave, though.  She seems impervious to the glares of hate I am drilling into the back of her head.  I have literally considered eating or drinking something with the sole intent of producing farts, just to get her to leave.

I am so, so wrong, on so many levels.


* This post is alternatively titled, "I absolutely fucking hate your perfume, and I am consequently judging all your computer activities as stupid because your existence has given me a splitting headache and an allergy attack.  Kindly get off pinterest, get off kayak, get off The Mother's Service Society (not EVEN lying about that) and go the hell home before I asphyxiate, please."

A Serious Post

There have been at least five things happening in the news lately that I've said, "I should blog about that".   Yet this blog sits untouched.  I have no better excuse than 1. flu 2. cold following the flu 3. I've been ridiculously busy when not laid out flat with a plague.    In no particular order, here are the things rattling around in my head:

1. Monsanto (I'll get to it some day)
2. Whitney (I probably won't get to her.  A friend of mine said it best when he said "In many ways, we lost Whitney a long time ago".  I don't think I need to say anything else about it, really.)
3.  The Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood Defunding Kerfluffle (this one got me WAY riled up, and I'll probably get back to it)
4. Update about experiments with lateness, dead butt, and other things
5. Chris Brown...see below

I will not be able to do this subject matter full justice, but I have to say something about it, and this blog and today are as good as any other time/place.

I won't beat around the bush: I wish the earth would swallow Chris Brown and take all his fans with him. Remember this photo?  Do you remember this event?  

And yet, almost as soon as news started filtering out about the story, we started seeing people apologizing for Chris Brown.  To quote this (IMO excellent) article:

Carrie Underwood: “I don't think anybody actually knows what happened. I have no advice.”
Lindsay Lohan: “I have no comment on that. That's not my relationship. I think they're both great people.”
Nia Long: “I know both of them well. They're young, and all we can do is pray for them at this point.”
Mary J. Blige: “They're both young and beautiful people, and that's it.”

This was all predictable enough.  Hollywood and the music industry have long been apologists for bad behavior by their own crowd.   And frankly, Lindsay Lohan is an example of pretty much nothing positive.   The article that I stole theses quotes from also details the backlash after the event--not toward Chris Brown though.  No.  People were all kinds of pissed off at anyone who spoke out against Chris Brown, not to mention the amount of energy wasted wondering what Rihanna had done to precipitate the argument, because, as some seemed to suggest, it's OK to make someone look like this if she/he has done enough to warrant it. 

Flash forward to this year, when we hear from the Grammy executives as they announce Chris Brown will be performing:

“We're glad to have him back,” said executive producer Ken Ehrlich. “I think people deserve a second chance, you know. If you'll note, he has not been on the Grammys for the past few years and it may have taken us a while to kind of get over the fact that we were the victim of what happened.”

Bold text was my doing.   I had to read that part a few times, because I could not believe what I was reading.  Rihanna was violently assaulted, but the fucking Grammys were the victim?   Well, we are very lucky that everyone has finally been able to move on, because we really wouldn't want the Grammys to be without him for another year.  

And spare me the business about how the man has paid his debt to society.  First of all, his punishment was insanely out of line with the crimes of which he was convicted.  Even if that weren't the case, there is a very active debate about whether and abuser can actually be cured.   There is good evidence that some abusers cannot ever be cured: the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illness (DSM IV) lists many of the disorders that are present in abusers in the same category as "intellectual disabilities" (e.g., mental retardation):


Common Axis II disorders include personality disorders: paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder; and intellectual disabilities.

The takeaway from this point is that if an abuser has any of the above disorders, he or she has the same chance of being cured as someone who is mentally retarded: in short, no chance at all.  This person cannot be "rehabilitated".  Some would argue that depending on the disorder, the person lacks the emotional tools to feel genuine remorse about the event. 

In plainer English: virtually all abusers have at least one of these personality disorders, often more than one.  If so, that abuser will continue to abuse, and many of the systems designed to prevent this actually further enable an abuser to continue to victimize, because they teach him/her how to game the system.  The abuser learns how to "talk the talk" of someone who has seen the light, so to speak, and in so doing, he or she is better able to convince a former partner to return to the relationship.  The trouble will start soon enough once the partner returns, and often, in an escalated fashion.

Very, very few victim programs, and fewer batterer programs, recognize this pattern, unfortunately.  The general populace is left to wonder, then, how someone like Rihanna could allow herself to be re-associated with the man who beat the living hell out of her.   Billboard recently decried, publicly, the possibility that they are working together, let alone sleeping together.   In an open letter that's getting all sorts of commentary, pro and con, Billboard basically asked Rihanna to tell Chris Brown to fuck off, if not to save herself, then to set a positive example for her fans.  Another Billboard column told Chris Brown to grow the hell up and stop throwing tantrums, conveniently ignoring the fact that these tantrums are really indicative of a larger personality disorder that also allowed him to beat up his lover--and further proof that he hasn't changed his stripes, and possibly cannot.


I could write a whole separate post on the Billboard open letters.  On the one hand, it's exceptionally hard to watch someone fall back into the hands of someone who has abused her, and I think the Billboard writers probably meant well.   On the other hand, I have a real problem when the media steps forward to insist that they (best) know how someone should live his or her life.   It's not Rihanna's job to make everyone feel comfortable with the whole event and even though she's a public figure, she doesn't owe anyone anything on who she decides to date.  It's also incredibly overreaching of them to figure they have a stake in any of this, much less to send her an open chastisement of her choices.  I'd rather have seen them ask Rihanna to be careful, and tell Chris Brown to fuck off themselves..

I wasn't going to write about all this, though, because other writers have done a very good job of detailing all the insanity and I didn't need to give a lowlife asshole any more attention.   At least, that was the plan until I saw "25 Extremely Upsetting Reactions to Chris Brown at the Grammys".  The gist of these 25 tweets, all by different women: "Chris Brown can beat me anytime".

Either these women are serious, which I cannot bring myself to believe, or they are making jokes, because when it comes to funny, nothing is more hilarious than domestic violence.

This can't be the best we can do as a society.  It's appalling. I sincerely hope that none of these hilarious pranksters will ever actually be in Rihanna's situation.  I can't quite believe anyone would willingly invite physical violence into their lives.  Parenthetical side note: I get that there are people out there who are wired to enjoy pain as part of their sex lives--and I am neither judging that nor talking about that--consensual activity between adults is their business, not mine.  The key word in that last statement is "consensual". 

About a year ago, I saw Bill Burr perform.  He lost me as a fan that night, because of his bit about Rihanna.  Burr's point was that he's never personally hit a woman, but he was able to understand how Chris Brown could have gotten pissed off enough to do it, because women are so incredibly infuriating.   How is anyone is helped by making a joke out of a violent beating?   Is there really something funny here that I'm missing?   How did someone look at this and think, "There's a joke there, I know there is."

The fact that we had 25 examples of women making "jokes" about Chris Brown's assault on Rihanna isn't hilarious, it isn't cute, and it's not something we should just shrug off.

And I know someone will read this all and think "wow, you are one humorless person--what's the big damn deal?  A few people made some tasteless jokes, so what?"

Making jokes about things is a way that people deal with uncomfortable situations, but it's not always the right way to deal with it.  Domestic violence affects virtually everyone--either because you know someone who's experienced it directly or indirectly, or because you have treated, taught, employed, or otherwise come into contact with someone who has been victimized.  Maybe you have been on the receiving end.  Chances are, someone reading this blog has been victimized, if the stats below are correct.  And make no mistake--men can be victims of abuse as well as women.

Why Should You Care:

Videos:
Domestic violence statistics & facts
Impact of domestic violence on children

Facts
More Facts (click that link to see the website where I found these facts below):

INCIDENCE, PREVALENCE AND SEVERITY
␣ Nearly one in every four women are beaten or raped by a partner during adulthood.1
␣ 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men have experienced an attempted or completed rape.2
␣ Three women are killed by a current or former intimate partner each day in America, on average.3
␣ Over 22 percent of women surveyed, compared to 7.4 percent of men, reported being physically assaulted by a current or former partner in their lifetime.4
␣ Approximately 2.3 million people each year in the United States are raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend. Women who were physically assaulted by an intimate partner averaged 6.9 physical assaults per year by the same partner.5
␣ Approximately 37% of women seeking injury-related treatment in hospital emergency rooms were there because of injuries inflicted by a current or former spouse/partner.6
␣ Women are at an increased risk of harm shortly after separation from an abusive partner.7

CHILDREN AND YOUTH
␣ Approximately 15.5 million children are exposed to domestic violence every year.8
␣ Men exposed to physical abuse, sexual abuse, and adult domestic violence as children were almost 4 times more likely
than other men to have perpetrated domestic violence as adults, according to a large study.9
␣ Incest accounts for half of all sexual abuse cases.10
␣ Children that are exposed to violence are more likely to attempt suicide, abuse drugs and alcohol, run away from home, engage in teenage prostitution, and commit sexual assault crimes.11
␣ Girls and young women between the ages of 16 and 24 experience the highest rate of intimate partner violence.12

COSTS
␣ The cost of intimate partner violence annually exceeds $5.8 billion, including $4.1 billion in direct health care expenses.13
␣ Between one-quarter and one-half of domestic violence victims report that they lost a job, at least in part, due to domestic violence.14    Women who experienced domestic violence were more likely to experience spells of unemployment, have health problems, and be welfare recipients.15
␣ Domestic violence has been estimated to cost employers in the U.S. up to $13 billion each year.16 ␣ In the U.S., rape is the most costly crime to its victims, totaling $127 billion a year including medical costs, lost earnings,
pain, suffering and lost quality of life.17
␣ New research shows that intimate partner violence costs a health plan $19.3 million each year for every 100,000 women between the age of 18 and 64 enrolled.

PROGRESS FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE VICTIMS
␣ Research estimates that VAWA (The landmark Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) first authorized in 1994 has changed the way federal, tribal, state and local entities respond to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking) saved nearly $14.8 billion in net averted social costs in its first 6 years alone.18 ␣ More victims report domestic violence to the police: There has been a 27% to 51% increase in reporting rates by women
and a 37% increase in reporting rates by men.19
␣ The rate of non-fatal intimate partner violence against women has decreased by 63%20 and the number of women killed by an intimate partner has decreased 24%.21
␣ Staying at a shelter or working with a domestic violence advocate significantly reduces the likelihood that a victim will be abused again and improves the victim’s quality of life.22
␣ A 2008 study shows conclusively that the nation’s domestic violence shelters are addressing both urgent and long-term needs of victims of violence, and are helping them protect themselves and their children.23

OVERWHELMING NEEDS REMAIN
␣ In 2008, a 24-hour survey of domestic violence programs across the nation found that over 60,000 victims were served in one day. Unfortunately, due to a lack of resources, there were almost 9,000 unmet requests for services.24
␣ In 2008 the National Domestic Violence Hotline received 236,907 calls, but over 29,000 of those calls went unanswered due to lack of resources.


How can you help?  Good question.  Go here and find a way to get involved.  Or go here, if you know someone who is facing abuse and needs support.   And when someone makes a joke out of domestic violence, find the courage to speak up and let them know that when it comes to domestic violence, you're not amused.

Apples and Oranges

Perfect example of what is wrong with me, for the many who wonder. I am in the grocery store and see a blood orange nearby the honeycrisp apple.

The next thing you know I'm posing them for pictures together because I had to.

Who gets where I was taking this? Let's see which among you are as mentally ill as I am.

New Division?

I was informed at dinner tonight that there is a new way to perform division, and for that matter, a new way to perform multiplication.

Mind = blown.

In the inimitable words of J.Fu: why the fuck was this necessary?

Strip Malls Think You're a Delicate Flower: A Minor Rant

I am sort of over it with these "Yield to Pedestrians In Walkway" signs popping up all over the place.  

There are places where crossing the street is legitimately akin to a game of Frogger (yeah, I'm that old).   And, I'm *not* talking about situations where it's legally required to yield to pedestrians; e.g., when you're driving in your car on a real street, turning on a green light.  PA law does require you to sit still, enjoying your music while the stream of humanity crosses the road.   Once the road is clear, then, and only then, are you legally permitted to move your car.   I don't mind this, and actually appreciate the way drivers in most cities (NYC notwithstanding) actually pause and allow the nice pedestrians to cross. 

The signs that vex me are the ones appearing in supermarket parking lots or similar places, popping up with a frequency and tenacity that rivals dandelions in spring, legislating that you yield right of way, whether you're driving straight or turning, any time you see a human being who intends to cross.

Reasons why these signs are annoying:

1.  I am opposed on general principle to the pussification of the American people.   If you cannot be trusted to puzzle out crossing a street, despite the encumbrance of your weekly groceries, you probably shouldn't be out unsupervised without your helmet.   Where does the nanny state end?  Next thing you know, someone will be stationed at every street corner, sending you home if you've forgotten your hat and gloves on a cold day.  I want to go back in time and sit in the meeting where it was decided that this benefited anyone other than people who make metal signs.   If drivers are driving like assholes, hire some extra police to pull them over and let the localities get some extra money in the coffers.  God knows, most of them need it desperately and there are plenty of people who would be happy to take a job doing something useful.
 
2.  This trend is clearly endowing the average pedestrian with an overly-developed, and false, sense of entitlement vis-a-vis crossing the street.   People used to walk closely to the parked cars, and look around before they moved into the flow of vehicles.   This is happening less and less as people now seem to believe they are protected from on high, no matter how carelessly they are walking, or where, regardless of signage or crosswalk presence.   Was this the plan all along?  Is someone in city planning Machiavellian enough to have thought this through to the logical conclusion: if you encourage people to rely on a nanny state, soon enough you'll create a true need for it?

The horror.

On the plus side with signage are the new stop signs cheekily informing you that a "full and complete stop is free, while a rolling stop will cost you $195".  Way to have a sense of humor, local townships.