Now the very fact that a high street retailer such as Boots is going into the female fitness nutrition market is a sure sign that market is believed to be a goldmine.
And that is undeniably great news, but not what we're concerned with today.
Instead, let's look at the ad Boots (originally) lined up to market their new range.
The problem with the ad is - did you spot it? - the "tone up not bulk up" tagline, deemed "shocking" and "appalling" by "furious" social media users according to the Mail Online.
That so many got so riled is largely due to the efforts of the wonderfully named Peach Lee Ray, a pole dancing instructor and confidence coach from the Wirral, who was so incensed by the ad she went public with her ire. Disappointed that Boots UK is spreading this misinformation to women, she wrote on her Facebook page. So many women are scared to invest in their health and fitness because they worry about 'bulking up', gaining 'too much' muscle and not feeling feminine. The fitness industry has used the idea of 'toning' to spread and continue to support the stupid idea that women should not be muscular or take pride in a certain body aesthetic.
If you have the type of body type that gains muscle then you should be proud of who you are and what you look like, she went on. It isn't bad for a woman to be muscular. It doesn't make you less feminine or desirable, we should embrace ourselves in all of our variety. Screw this noise. Bulk up if you want to. Be muscular if you want to. It's your body and this BS fitness industry shouldn't be spreading these messages.
We like Peach. We like her a lot.
The Mail article led to other media sources contacting Peach direct.
'Toning' and 'bulking' are synonyms for the same concept: building muscle, she told Today a couple of weeks after the Mail had run its story. To create a differentiation is misleading. 'Toning' plays on women's insecurity of needing to be skinny or small, I just want people to know I think being a strong, muscular woman is a good thing.
The social media furore that led to Boots pulling the ad suggests Peach is not alone in her thinking, and on top of that, the evidence of my own eyes during the recent hot spell tells me that more and more women in Britain have been hitting the gym this year, and fewer and fewer of them are shy about displaying the results of their efforts - particularly their 'toned' (or should that be 'bulked'?!) arms and shoulders.
The female muscle radar has never been so busy!
Kudos once again to the Mail as well for bringing Peach's rant to an even wider audience, and once again - I'm more and more convinced there's a raging female muscle head on the editorial team there! - supporting women's right to build muscle.
Read the Mail article and Today's follow-up with Peach in full here and here.
You might also want to follow the pole-dancing confidence-building female muscle advocate on Instagram. She is currently "super busy" (understandable) and has "nowhere to train properly", which is a bit of a crime. If any of you lovely readers are, or know of a gym owner in the Wirral area with room for a pole at their premises, perhaps you might like to help our new heroine solve one of her two problems.
Enjoy!
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