When Kristin Rance joined a CrossFit gym in Washington [DC] about a year ago, she had one vision: muscle. The 30-year-old mother of two wanted to look in the mirror and see someone 'who looks like (she) works out - without flexing'.
How she didn't want to look? Skinny.
Washington Post, 13th October 2014
"Strong Is the New Skinny" was trademarked in 2012 by Marsha Christensen, a personal trainer and blogger from Texas. I imagine Marsha has made a fair few quid out of it, being as it is, as I'm sure you are well aware, on T-shirts as well as about 399 other products too. It has a Facebook page with over 100,000 likes, and plenty of gyms have built entire marketing campaigns around it to get women to weight train.
A measure of its popularity, particularly in North America, as the new ideal for women is the fact that the backlash has already started. It may be a healthier body image than the stick-thin supermodel look, critics say, but it is no more achievable.
The female athlete portrays a little bit healthier body image than Kate Moss, but it's not realistic, says Boise State University psychologist Mary Pritchard, an eating behaviour and body image specialist, for example. We have kids, we have families. Our job is not to look and be like an athlete.
Nevertheless, the phrase, and the more general notion of self-empowerment through strength training, is, as they say, 'trending'. Quite apart from the seemingly inexorable rise of CrossFit and the growth of interest in muscle building among women in North America, the trend has entered the mainstream, with high profile companies as diverse as Chevrolet and Always creating "pro-sporty girl" marketing campaigns.
And now, it seems, that trend is spreading across the world - well, the English-speaking world, the part of the world FMS' limited language skills allows us to monitor anyway!
Women across Ireland are abandoning the weighing scales and picking up weights to sculpt their bodies, according to the Irish Independent. In South Africa, the sport [of female bodybuilding] is reported to be "building momentum quickly", and it's a similar story in New Zealand. And here in Britain, the phrase 'Protein Princesses' has been coined to describe the new generation of gym-obsessed women, most recently mentioned in a Daily Mail piece that focused on how British women who work out are ditching sugar-dense cereals for protein-packed breakfasts.
And we've even come across evidence of participation in female bodybuilding growing in India. Starting last Friday in Mumbai, Indian women took part, for the very first time, in an international bodybuilding contest in their own country at the magnificently-entitled "6th World Bodybuilding Championship & Physique Sports Competition" organised by the India Bodybuilders' Federation (IBBF). Athletes from over 50 countries were reported to be taking part, and in the build-up to the contest, the Indian media focused on pioneering female athletes like 31-year-old Leela Phad, who was due to be the first ever Indian woman to compete in the Physique division.
Pioneering Indian Physique competitor Leela Phad
To this day, her parents do not know she practises bodybuilding, the Times of India reported, which is not the whole truth, but does give an indication of the kind of extra problems female bodybuilders face outside the West. They know I am a trainer, Leela told dnaindia, but they don't know that I will be competing. They are conservative and don't like women wearing that particular attire [bikini] on stage, and are angry that I haven't taken up the secure job of sales tax inspector to pursue sports.
One result of all this media attention on the rise of the muscular woman is a kind of redefinition of what a "female bodybuilder" is. To give one typical (and perhaps unintentionally hilarious) example, health24 begins its piece on "What It Takes to Be a Female Bodybuilder" thus: Female bodybuilding has become extremely popular worldwide with participants, often called fitness models, inspiring women all over the world to begin fitness training, modelling and competing.
It seems a "female bodybuilder" ain't what she used to be!
But it would be churlish to complain too much about this when there's so much to be thankful for. From Manchester to Mumbai and from Dunedin to Durban, more and more women are lifting weights, and more and more of them are going on to compete, even in countries where traditions have made it an especially difficult task.
And as their national media reports this rise, yet more women might be inspired to take up the sport. It's like the opposite of a vicious circle, apparently known as a "virtuous circle" (although I'd never heard that phrase before).
The women of the world getting hotter and hotter and harder and harder...
Which only leaves us female muscle fans scratching our heads and wondering,
Where exactly is this new horde of muscle-building women when I go to the gym?
Enjoy!
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