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+--- Thread: Article Becoming a Bodybuilder at 50 Showed Me That Women Were Never Meant to be Thin (/showthread.php?tid=1292)
Becoming a Bodybuilder at 50 Showed Me That Women Were Never Meant to be Thin - Elsacat - Jun 20 2025
https://time.com/7293999/bodybuilding-women-skinny-essay/
Quote:In fact, for most of human history, women weren’t meant to be thin; they were meant to be strong. Neolithic women had arm bones 11 to 16% stronger than the rowers to 30% greater than typical Cambridge students, according to a 2017 study. Bronze Age women showed a similar pattern, with arm bones up to 13% stronger than rowers.
Obviously there are women who are naturally thin. One of my closest friends is tall and was naturally thin up until middle age and menopause. But this article speaks more about women in general, and how the thinness so many of us have chased is not only not natural but is meant to keep us weaker.
Quote:Bursts of the “return to skinny” have always surfaced at pivotal moments — right when women are on the brink of claiming more power. It’s no coincidence. The flapper look took hold in the 1920s just as women won the right to vote — a new, boyish silhouette for a new kind of woman, one who was suddenly politically powerful. In the 1960s, Twiggy’s thin, androgynous frame became the face of fashion right as the women’s liberation movement was gaining traction, challenging traditional roles and demanding equality. In the 1990s, heroin chic surged in popularity as women flooded law schools, boardrooms, and newsrooms in record numbers — a visual counterpunch to female ambition.
And now, at a moment when women are redefining aging, owning their midlife, and fighting urgently for reproductive autonomy, the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs feels eerily familiar. Each wave of skinny fixation has echoed like a cultural recoil — a shrinking aesthetic that emerges just as women expand their influence.
Some might see this article as just more bodyshaming, and I get that. What I prefer to take away from it is that our bodies are meant to be strong and healthy, in different ways from men, and not just to fit into whatever a celebrity or model is wearing.
Quote:The emerging science paints a clearer picture: women are not the weaker sex. We’re just built differently—and to last.
RE: Becoming a Bodybuilder at 50 Showed Me That Women Were Never Meant to be Thin - Clover - Jun 21 2025
I do appreciate that there is more acceptance of women that isn't just "skinny." Being fit and healthy and encouraging lifting is a good thing.
However, I feel like this article is subtly trying to sell another form of women desiring to appear a certain way. The difference now is that instead of obsessing over calorie counts (r/1200isplenty) and cardio routines, it's high protein meals and weightlifting routines. Not to say that's a bad direction, but this article feels more like a "Century of the Self" attempt at convincing women to go support the fitness industry, but now it's feminist and empowering (which funny enough it technically is, because helping women get stronger is good), unlike the "skinny" fads of prior decades.
In a way, it reminds me of the "torches of freedom" campaign of the 1920s, where smoking industry finally managed to encourage the female demographic to start smoking cigarettes by making it an empowering "free woman" thing. At least with this attempt of detaching toxic masculinity from weightlifting and strength training, it's actually healthy for women. I just still find it interesting.
Jim Rowley, Crunch Fitness CEO Today’s young women 18-to-34 are strong and social. "Skinny" is not where it’s at.
Like does anyone think Jim Rowley actually gives a shit about women's health? Nah, he just wants more gym subscriptions.
I think the ending of the article cements my dislike of it:
Quote:And when she catches herself envying a thinner woman at the gym, she says she reminds herself of what she can do—throwing a heavy weight overhead.“And I’ll say, ‘But can she do that?’”
This whole "girl vs girl" behavior/mentality, the need to tear other women down in order to elevate oneself. And so what does it matter if some thin woman can't lift a heavy weight over her head? Why does that make her better than her? Why do she need to be "better" than her? A thin woman is not "better" than another woman just because she's skinny. Jeez. I just wanna work together, I'm sick of crabs in a bucket mentality.
Also I really can't help but wonder if this whole pendulum swing into strength training is a way to keep people consuming by changing routines. Like maybe in 20 years we'll suddenly have a new trend about how cardio is super important. A mix of both is important. Humans have evolved from being long distance runners as a way to hunt prey. Cardio is still important for health, like I'm pretty sure weightlifters do jump rope specifically for this reason?
And just a side note of interest for me, I have seen that patriarchy managed to solve this "problem" of women getting strong in their fitness routines by sexualizing this avenue of women's fitness just like they did with cardio routines when dubbing women "cardio bunnies", now we got "muscle mommies!" (The "mommies" fits the entire new cultural trend of women now being more successful in academia, careers, etc. while men flounder: men have become floppy helpless babies who have decided women can do everything—be fit af, be well educated, and have a well paying career—while the man leeches off all these benefits in exchange for a "yass queen crush me with your thighs"
)Anyway, I am being nitpicky, this article just made me think about things. I hope this article helps encourage many women to start strength training, and that we finally abandon the stupid era of women being scared of lifting weights because "omg bulky muscles ew."
RE: Becoming a Bodybuilder at 50 Showed Me That Women Were Never Meant to be Thin - YesYourNigel - Jun 21 2025
Clover, I'm not sure I understand your point? It's feminist and empowering to support what leads to better outcomes for women, even if it's commercialised. I have some misgivings with this article's approach, but the very notion of switching women's goals from starving themselves to putting on muscle is not one of them, and if it's a ploy to sell more gym memberships...so what? If it results in a healthier population, that's a net positive. And lord knows we need more older women with post-menopausal muscle loss picking up actual weights and building actual muscle instead of doing fucking yoga.
I guess my issue is kinda that she doesn't look that different compared to what I'm used to seeing from feminine attractive women? She just looks like a normal woman in shape. On one hand it's good that she doesn't seem to be using steroids like some other bodybuilders, but on the other, she still looks fairly skinny and certainly not like anything outside of normie ideas of attractiveness (complete with makeup and long hair). Like if you look at actual strong people instead of bodybuilders, we're talking world record holders, they often look kinda fatty because their goal is to maximise gains rather than aesthetics.
I actually fear that bodybuilding might be exploited to re-sell eating disorders back to women except under the guise of fitness and health. After all, the key distinction in bodybuilding, as opposed to merely weightlifting and strength training, is that you're trying to minimise your fat percentage. It's not that bodybuilders are so much buffer or stronger than weightlifters, it's that they superficially look that way because they specifically maintain a ridiculously low fat percentage to show off the musculature better. And speaking of, the percentage of fat that women can safely shed is not nearly as high as it is for men.
Quote:And so what does it matter if some thin woman can't lift a heavy weight over her head? Why does that make her better than her? Why do she need to be "better" than her?
I think there's a line between discouraging healthy behaviour and straight up vilifying people who engage in unhealthy but understandable habits. While I want women to help each other out of the hellhole that is femininity and beauty standards, it's good to have an awareness of how unhealthy and weak femininity makes women and feel contempt for that, but with women it's true that it often comes down to the "crabs in a bucket" mentality, especially any time the idea of attractiveness comes up - "I'm not like that dumb bimbo because I'm attractive in a different gimmicky way".
Quote:Cardio is still important for health, like I'm pretty sure weightlifters do jump rope specifically for this reason?
Cardio is primarily for burning calories (which is why woman are so fixated on it), whereas weightlifting is for strength and muscle. Bodybuilders tend to go through a bulking phase where they mostly weightlift for maximum muscle growth and eat a ton of food, followed by cutting where they diet and do a lot more cardio to burn off fat. The problem with cardio is that it can interfere with muscle gain by exhausting your body and eating up your energy - you both can't lift as hard because you're tired, and also your body lacks the energy to build muscle in your downtime.
Quote:The "mommies" fits the entire new cultural trend of women now being more successful in academia, careers, etc. while men flounder: men have become floppy helpless babies who have decided women can do everything—be fit af, be well educated, and have a well paying career—while the man leeches off all these benefits in exchange for a "yass queen crush me with your thighs"
Sighh I will say...I do find that at least preferable to the usual "skinny shivering twig who gets pursued and assaulted by a huge strong man, reproducing romanticised patriarchal violence"...but that's a bar so low it might as well have dug through to the other side of the Earth. This is still ultimately a patriarchal fetish except this time for lazy, failure-to-launch men who think they're enlightened and egalitarian because they want to stay at home and play video games while the woman works her ass off and plays out men's femdom porn category videos for them. It's basically these men who pretend they're taking on the role of "housewives" while doing none of the domestic and emotional labour and childcare that actual women do, nor putting the effort into making themselves physically attractive the way women are expected to. It's also an offshoot of porn's sickening obsession with incest.
I feel like fitness for women is always going to be sexualised in this way as long as it prioritises women being pretty and feminine first and fit and strong second, but I wonder if we can at least budge the standards within that towards a healthier direction. Like, instead of anorexic feminine women, having at least feminine women with some muscle and bragging about how much they managed to lift. I don't know if I dare dream of that eventually turning into being buff, and femininity then being ditched altogether. For now even just not having women starve themselves or avoid any muscle gain for fear of being the Hulk and thinking they can't lift more than 10kg would be a win.
RE: Becoming a Bodybuilder at 50 Showed Me That Women Were Never Meant to be Thin - Clover - Jun 22 2025
(Yesterday, 8:29 PM)YesYourNigel Clover, I'm not sure I understand your point? It's feminist and empowering to support what leads to better outcomes for women, even if it's commercialised.Yes, I had made those acknowledgements like disclaimers multiple times throughout my post because I realized how silly my criticisms of this are, since women getting involved in strength training is an overall positive. I still hate consumer culture and the weird ending that tries to pit thin women vs muscular women, so I felt like pointing out my observations. 🤷♀️
Edit to add: I think the other thing that irritates me about the article's ending and this new hype over strength training (which again, yes, it is good) is just like, idk this some sort of assumption that this is the right way people are "meant" to live. Like I even did it myself in my first post by referencing how humans are evolved for distance running (which is hella cardio). But now apparently we're actually supposed to have arms stronger than rowers because of new ancient findings? Like maybe the answer is that human beings are insanely adaptable to many conditions, and can work themselves into various optimal forms for their environment and requirements to live that could all be considered "healthy"?
Like a long distance runner, a bicyclist, a swimmer, a person who does yoga, a hiker, and a person who does strength training could all be considered healthy human beings. Some are stronger than others. Some are thinner than others. Why does it matter, any of these comparisons, if they are all healthy beings?
I'm glad women are feeling more comfortable to get into strength training, but the article's need to add disparagement of those who still prefer cardio, or those who just care about maintaining a healthy weight and not necessarily adding muscle, is strange to me.
RE: Becoming a Bodybuilder at 50 Showed Me That Women Were Never Meant to be Thin - YesYourNigel - Jun 22 2025
I think I get what you mean, but it feels fixated on this idea that it's bad for specific trends to pop up because it's "telling people how to live". Certain things are good for your body because that's how our biology works. This fact isn't oppressive just because some people don't like hearing it, or because everyone's choices have to be equally valid. Women preferring cardio is kind of meaningless when they are pushed so incessantly into it for weight loss and beauty reasons and discouraged from strength training because strength is something that will make you ugly and you should leave it to the men. It sounds very "choice feminism" to write it off as just different preferences. I have literally been told by some women that an exercise is bad if you can't smile through it. This is how fucked up women's ideas on fitness are.
It's always good when you see trends alongside gender lines to ask why they are set that way. Usually you will find that men are hogging the most beneficial trends (even if they sometimes take them to self-harming extremes), whereas women are pushed into the shallow end of the pool.
Quote:Like a long distance runner, a bicyclist, a swimmer, a person who does yoga, a hiker, and a person who does strength training could all be considered healthy human beings. Some are stronger than others. Some are thinner than others. Why does it matter, any of these comparisons, if they are all healthy beings?
Health isn't a boolean state, and there is a difference between exercise that significantly improves your physique and abilities vs something like fucking yoga. Yoga is popular with women because it's easy and light and feminine. It doesn't push your body because women are told hard effort is futile and unattractive.
While some cardio is undoubtedly beneficial both for general health and day-to-day life (you don't want to tire after running up stairs, or biking to work), strength training both has special benefits for our body, and is also ideally suited for our modern life. There aren't many jobs or hobbies where merely being able to run a lot benefits you. There are a LOT where strength does.
Strength training is also good for aging and independence in a way that cardio isn't, because our muscles are what props us up, and once you grow them, part of the gains are permanent in the form of "muscle memory" (extra nuclei in your muscle cells). When your muscles can lift heavy loads and are also taught how to do so safely, it means they prop your own body up with ease, meaning your posture and abilities don't waste away with age and it also benefits your bones (especially important for post-menopausal women). There's simply a whole lot more of functional strength you get from a lot of weightlifting than a lot of cardio, and the gains are not as fickle, which is precisely why men have monopolised it.
Strength training is especially beneficial for women because women, who have spent all of history contending with a man's world and also having their physical strength severely downplayed, benefit from getting in touch with their physical abilities, gaining the strength to pick heavier things up and carry them, maximising any self-defense abilities as well as the psychological benefits from this by feeling strong, capable and feeling a sense of power from their body. Women are brainwashed into a state of learned helplessness when it comes to their physical abilities and cardio doesn't do much to change that.
We evolved to be able to run compared to like, a chimp. That doesn't mean running is all we evolved to do, because strength demands of day to day life were still very high alongside that compared to sedentary life, and undoubtedly involved consistently dealing with heavy loads. Hell, I imagine cardio gains are so fickle precisely because we're all already well-adapted to endurance by default - a chimp sure as hell can't keep up with us even on a longer walk. We don't need to push and specialise our bodies for it the way we need for strength.