women and muscularity

I think it comes down to muscularity in women being threatening. If a woman is muscular she has to also demonstrate overblown sexuality to mitigate it, otherwise she is ripe for ridicule.

Look at that bloody Fat Fighters programme. Both the female trainers on the programme are all sex sex sex. One is a dominatrix and the other is a 'princess' ffs. They're clearly both impressively fit women, but it seems that TV has to undermine that by turning them into sexual stereotypes.

I remember that Guardian article NarkyPuffin. Yy to the sense of power and achievement when you can do a push up/pull up. Tremendous.

I can also see tether's point - there is always something wrong with women's bodies, isn't there? They're always compelled to change them. However, I do think that if that change is self-motivated, by a desire to open up your world by being fitter, stronger, able to jump higher or hang upside down or whatever, all power to you. But either way the first step is an eradication of this ceaseless fucking visual critique of women's bodies.

I'm recommending to all and sundry the Nike Training Club app. Hardcore no-nonsense exercises demonstrated by seriously impressive but not sexed up women.

Love the Guardian article. And it took me back to my university days. There were two weights rooms in the sports centre - one with MTV, lycra-clad poseurs and machines, and one with large blokes lifting free weights in near silence. A (male) friend took me along to the free weights room, and I found it a much more pleasant environment to work out in. To my (pleasant) surprise, the huge men were respectful and welcoming, the peace and quiet made exercise an almost meditative experience, and the free weights provided a much better workout. (I also don't get on in aerobics classes - I'm always the one lunging up and to the right as everyone else bobs down to the left).

Soft and squishy is an interesting issue. I think perhaps both sexes come in a variety of body shapes, and it's probably quite difficult being a soft squishy man, just as it's difficult being a muscular woman.

I had an interesting chat with my DM (who was a painter) once about Leonardo's female nudes and the theory that because of his homosexuality he painted muscular men then put breasts on them as an afterthought. I suggested that if he used peasant women as models, it's quite likely that after a lifetime working in fields they were muscular.

If you are into serious weight training with the aim of competition then you'll have very low body fat and a 'hard' body. If you are just doing some weight training then you'll have fat on top of the muscle.

By the end of the summer I have 'hard' muscly legs from all the hours out cycling but my tummy stays squishy . And if you're not doing weights at a very high level, you''l find your breasts stay soft but look 'perkier' as the muscles behind/around them pull them up.

Men have squishy bits too

"Why is it natural for a woman to have a sofft squishy body? Most us might do in the 21st western world but thT is no more natural than the opposite."

Really? Women aren't naturally meant to have squashy breasts for feeding and a squishy stomach from having children?

If the muscular ideal was inclusive of these attributes, I think I'd have less of a problem with it; as it is, it seems that the idea is for a muscular body to be 'hard'; perhaps I am wrong in my perception of that?

Guardian article

And weight training for women is really important - resistance training helps keep bone density up as we age.

it's like your body is not your own

Very true. Whatever state a woman's body is in it seems to be considered public property and as such fair game for people to comment on.

"women's exercise goals ALWAYS seem to be defined by the end result of how you will look, not what you will be able to DO."

Yup.

You know, if that were exclusive to women, you'd have a point. But all those mirrors in gyms. I've seen the guys preening themselves in the mirror when they think no-one's looking. They aren't thinking about what those weights will enable them to DO, they're as vain as they come.

But the mirrors are for them. So they can look at themselves and judge their bodies. Not for the eyes of others IYSWIM.

Why is it natural for a woman to have a sofft squishy body? Most us might do in the 21st western world but thT is no more natural than the opposite.

I suppose my concern is that the revering of the muscular is another example of women's naturally soft, squishy bodies being rejected.

Thinking about it, when you have female sports people who do not meet general ideas of feminitity or attractiveness, they generally get the piss taken out of them, people say "is that a bloke hahahha", and all that stuff.

When women are good at a sport and meet conventional standards of attractiveness they are feted. Much more than women who are less good looking who beat them.

I don't think this is quite so stark with male sports people. Thinking about it, although good looking ones do get noticed and snapped up by ad agencies, I'm sure I have seen people like wayne rooney gracing adverts for stuff. And I'm sure people won't argue about whether he meets conventional standards of male good looks, and he has dodgy morals to boot.

Madonna famously got hammered in the press for looking muscular and at the time I talked with people IRL who shared that view.

I don't know what the reaction of the public was to fatima whitbread on I'm a sleb - anyone know? I thought she was great

The boxing thing linked earlier - ok let women box if they must but for gods sake make them wear skirts

i think OP has a point, personally.

i think female bodybuilding sits a little strangely with most people because traditionally the male ideal is visible musculature and the female ideal is not.

male bodybuilding is taking the male ideal to the extreme, but female bodybuilding is subverting the female ideal.

i always laugh though at women who are scared of 'getting muscles like arnie' by doing a little bit of sport because the chances of that are really so, so slim.. and i've not met a man who doesn't find jessica ennis attractive

MI, you are not being touchy. I'm in a towering rage about unconnected matters and you are all being very accommodating of me ranting rather too much on this thread.

LLF, I have no links for this, but I read a while ago that most women find men who are toned but not particularly muscular the most attractive. I think this may also be true of what men prefer women to look like. Rather more extreme images of muscular men and busty but skinny women are then shown in magazines, but men and women tend to claim that isn't what they actually look for in a partner.

The issue then seems to be that women (as a group, not all of them) are prioritising getting that preferred figure over other things they would rather do, be it eating 20 cream cakes sitting on a sofa or going out to be the best rower they can be. Men (as a group, not all of them) seem much less concerned about appealing to the largest number of women, and seem keener on looking a way that increases their supposed power to other men. That means looking big; be that by building up muscle, or just becoming fat, and by emphasising that largeness, be it due to fat or muscle by wearing clothes that emphasise their largeness. This seems to come to its extreme conclusion in aggression in pubs at weekends - chubby shaven headed football hooligans posturing and glassing each other, because lets face it they'd be weaklings in an actual fair fight in a Greek gymnasium!

So rather than wondering why women make an effort to look attractive for men, I wonder why men make so little effort to look attractive to women. I think if women had more economic power and freedom, men would be concerned with appealing to women through physical appearance rather than each other.

Actually (rant alert) the aspect that really annoys me is the idea that women should have arms like twigs. I have big biceps and triceps muscles - a lot of tops/blouses just won't fit because the idea that a woman could be a size 10 and have chunky upper arms just does not compute for most clothes designers.

Clothes, I sort of see what you're getting at (I found the murals in the town hall in Stockholm - very 30s Aryan ideal - really freaky). But I'm not sure that's what's being talked about here. I used to coach rowing many years ago, and remember one promising woman giving up because she didn't want to get "all muscly and ugly". Generally when women exercise for a sport that involves strength (sprinting, rowing, rock climbing) they will put on muscle bulk, and it seems that this is frowned on by society at large. As others have said, the emphasis is always on becoming "toned", i.e. no visible muscle, just firm, smooth body outlines. And obviously it depends on what sort of exercise you do - for a toned body, you do lots of reps on low weights, to build strength (in order to do stuff with your body) you do less reps on much higher weights (or just spend hours bouldering). It also depends on your underlying body type - some people are naturally skinny and never seem to put on much muscle, I'm one of life's mesomorphs - show me a resistance exercise and my muscles just expand like crazy (my record, when I first started training, was putting on 2 inches round my chest in 3 weeks - and I mean chest, it went on my lats, boobs remained as small as ever). So what people are asking is "why is the idea for women seen as toned but not threateningly muscular"?

It was. Nude representations of the Ayran woman, with the intended audience being other women, were muscular. Young women were also frequently depicted in sporting activities and exercising as part of propaganda footage.

I think the Greek element is also part of it. Western ideas about the body haven't come from nowhere. The idea of the muscular physical form in both men and women and what it stands for has come from a lot of longstanding cultural ideas, and I think it is worth looking at that in the same way we look at all the other ways that the body is made to represent something. I don't think we can uncritically think that muscular or athletic is something to aspire to or particularly feminist, or is somehow a better alternative than women being seen as having weak bodies.

I am not sure the Aryan ideal for women was to be muscular. Blong, blue-eyed and fertile was the main thing...

And going back to the 5th century Athenian ideal (as you do) the emphasis of those upper class body torsos and the exclusivity of the gymnasia (which were academic establishments) was presumably about the control of perceived pollutants into the male realm. In fact I do wonder if the male world wasn't much more fragile than the female.

Surely whether or not muscular women are attractive or not is part of the Aryan ideal. It is about people's appearance representing something.

I can see the appeal of weight training when people are talking about what they can achieve, like somebody who wants to be able cycle 20 miles in a certain time or win a fell running competition. But I don't see making women think of their body as a representation again, particularly with a concept so nebulous in perceptions of a person like strength or weakness, is a positive thing for women.

"women's exercise goals ALWAYS seem to be defined by the end result of how you will look, not what you will be able to DO."

You know, if that were exclusive to women, you'd have a point. But all those mirrors in gyms. I've seen the guys preening themselves in the mirror when they think no-one's looking. They aren't thinking about what those weights will enable them to DO, they're as vain as they come.

"it's a discussion of whether people find muscular women unattractive and why."

It's personal preference and fashion, surely? That whole heavily-muscled thing is unattractive to a lot of people, male or female and must be equally attractive to a different set. Look at the popularity of the stars of Twilight etc. That lot look like they need a good hot dinner and a vitamin pill .... there's not a bicep among them. I can't see the kind of girl that swoons over the anaemic stars of that movie getting hot under the collar the weightlifting type.