She stood before the squat-rack, a petite, Filipino beauty, focusing on
a steel bar inches before her face. Then, oblivious to the rest of the
crowded base gym at Hurlbert Field, Florida, she began squatting for
dozens of rock-bottom repetitions...with 250 pounds.
I don't
remember her name -let's call her Rachel. What I do recall is that this
was ten years ago, before Fitness competitions, before women so
exquisite consorted with barbells. This tiny E-4 was handling more
weight than any fitness competitor today uses, in fact, more weight than
used by most men. I asked her if she competed in bodybuilding. "No,"
she replied, "powerlifting."
Powerlifting? That's about grunting
up a single maximum lift...powerlifters don't look like this!
Enlightened as I thought I was about female muscle, my mental images of
blocky, chalk-covered, "she-males" now had to yield to new
possibilities.
I'd defy anyone looking at Rachel (or her tens of thousands of successors) to prove it. Muscle has no genderU.S. News & World Report was reporting that the number of women using free-weights had doubled between 1987 and 1996, from 7.4 million to 16.8 million. One can only guess what those numbers are now, but with the profusion of Fitness magazines and competitions, along with the emergence of female sports, it is a safe bet they've doubled again.
👉 Muscle, The New Femininity (Part 2)
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