Female Bodybuilding; Female Empowerment
The female bodybuilders of this world are a committed and exceptional bunch. They fight cultural and societal stereotypes of beauty and femininity and go on to become some of the strongest women on the planet. Female bodybuilding was never taken seriously in the past, and it was a male only discipline. Why would a woman want to make herself become very muscular and look almost like a man? All the articles found about the sport claim that women want to pursue bodybuilding to forget their accepted notion of beauty and define a new one. The world of female bodybuilding is a complicated and very competitive place.
In the past, women who wanted to pursue bodybuilding only had a very limited set of options. According to Wikipedia, they could join the circus or become part of vaudevilles and be a sort of freak show side-attraction. They were treated as freaks because so few women would follow this path in life; these early women were pioneers. At a time when women were definitely the secondary citizens in the country, these women threw tradition and societal norms out the window and blazed their own path through the world. Modern female bodybuilders have a lot to thank these women for.
The odd thing about female and male body building is the fact that a lot of experts say that a woman cannot gain as much muscle mass as a man, and this has traditionally been the fear for women who wanted to lift weights. They did not want to look like muscular men and so did not lift weights. Experts and health professionals say that women should lift weights and they will never become as muscular as men, because their bodies are not able to gain as much muscle mass as a man. Why this is odd is because someone should show these experts the incredibly muscular and powerful women of the bodybuilding world. They actually have as much muscle mass as men, and while this is not an issue - if they want to look like that it is their choice - but it throws the accepted theory that women cannot gain bulging muscles out the window.
Cultural and societal norms are a big issue when it comes to female bodybuilding. There seems to be an underlying ‘accepted’ way for a woman to look, and if she looks different from this view then she is an outcast. Many articles start off by telling female bodybuilders that they have to forget cultural stereotypes about female beauty that they may hold. Articles actually tell women that if they want to become female bodybuilders, they have to remember that they are beautiful. The problem occurs because when women lift very heavy weights and gain mass, they will gain mass and not be delicate featherweights anymore. They will have a very muscular body and they should be happy with it. Society, at the moment, is caught up with being thin; women are supposedly only beautiful when they are thin, and overweight women or muscular women are not seen as being beautiful. This is a sad state of affairs, but female bodybuilders can rest assured that no one considers them freaks anymore as they did in the past.
However, female bodybuilders are still part of a show, because they perform in front of crowds of people and they are judged on their bodies. So maybe it is not the best form of female empowerment out there. But then again, if they want to do it, then that is their choice. One of the best female powerlifters in the world at the moment is Becca Swanson. This American bodybuilder and power-lifter feels it is her life’s mission to lift weights, and she loves every minute of it. Becca has always been a seriously strong competitor, and she was instantly attracted to lifting weights and becoming a very strong woman. What is interesting about her is the fact that she feels that more women should get into powerlifting and bodybuilding because of the empowering aspect of the sport. She feels the sport makes her a much more confident and determined woman ready to take on all challenges. This, it seems, is the answer to why women lift weights. It seems that bodybuilding makes them much more powerful and stronger willed women. By breaking free from the chains of society, they carve their own path in life and do not follow anyone else’s traditions and rules.
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