women and muscularity

[MitchierInge]

anyone interested in a sort of amorphous chat about this, from the bodybuilding competitions (bikinis and high heels) to women weight training generally?

I would like a pound of lean muscle for everyone who has warned me it is not attractive in a woman when:

1. I am not attractive anyway (although obviously can't help sort of wanting to be but not to extent that I will actually get a hair style etc)
2. I think it is attractive, perhaps not the bulked up by steroids look but healthy athleticism definitely is
3. What does being attractive have to do with strengthening your body? Or is that what they mean, strength is unattractive?

I don't find muscular bodies attractive on anybody, male or female. I have never weight trained in my life; it doesn't stop me from lifting heavy furniture or doing any other day to day physical tasks that most people have to do. Part of my work is also very physical for some of the year.

I just think this is another way of trying to mould women's bodies, because women's bodies constantly have to be representing something.

I am as strong a person as I need to be to get through life's tasks. I don't see what the appeal is of wasting time in a gym to get a certain appearance or change people's perceptions of you.

Mostly I see people with their clothes, male or female, on so can't judge whether they are muscular or not. Don't think there's a problem with 'strength' for either gender... too simplistic to say 'women must be weak-looking' sorry..... but that unnatural bulking up, swollen, vein-popping thing people do for body-building competitions just looks wrong outside of a cattle-market. The Michelin Man effect.

I don't know what you mean by naturally really, a 'natural' hunting/gathering lifestyle and lugging water around and that sort of thing would result in the kind of muscularity I'm thinking of.

Suppose it depends where the threshold is, in anyone's mind, but people have always modified their bodies one way or another haven't they? That much is 'natural' at least.

There is nothing unnatural or difficult to attain about a healthily muscled body.

I don't think hunter gatherers do look very muscular. They spend far fewer hours working than agriculturalists do.

If people want to look a certain way, that is up to them. But I don't think it is actually any different from a feminist perspective to putting on makeup or having a time consuming hair style.

If you want a hunter gatherer level of fitness, walk a dog for two hours a day and then look after your children, because that is pretty much all the exercise they do. Unlike farming, hunter gathering is not labour intensive.

To be honest, I'm finding this thread a bit creepy and Aryan idealish. Who cares what muscle tone other people have? Is somebody going to come around and start measuring us with callipers?

As long as people are fit enough not to drop down dead from a heart attack at 50, I don't see why it should be of any interest other than to the person actually going to the gym who may enjoy it as a hobby in the same way people enjoy nail art.

muscles good

I have a close friend who is a female natural bodybuilder (doesn't use drugs or steroids) who has done fantastically well in competitions this year. She says she has never felt more powerful and attractive, though this was a side effect, not the aim. Prior to this she has accomplished major goals in running, swimming etc - it's all about setting and beating goals for her, not about appearance.

The thing that gets me is that 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. I am training at the moment to build strength and stamina - not because I want to be a different shape, but because I want to be stronger and go further! But where are the female role models advocating training for physical ability gains? There are deafening voices when it comes to cajoling women to exercise to lose weight/"tone up" etc. One of the reasons I was so angry about no Sportswoman of the year was because that would have been ONE opportunity to celebrate female physical achievement, not appearance. I don't have high hopes for the Olympics in this regard.

whoops - hadn't rtft.

muscles good in general.

wouldn't personally go to gym or sculpt self. But if people want to, why not?

"To be honest, I'm finding this thread a bit creepy and Aryan idealish"

But the point of the thread isn't whether it is essential to be muscular, it's a discussion of whether people find muscular women unattractive and why.

I find both sexes unattractive if they are really muscled.

I don't care much about other people's bodies at all, although sometimes I see physiques that I admire - male or female, human or animal, living or marble - I am a bit interested in why some people are quite so opposed to my quest for muscularity. I'm still waiting for a copy of Venus With Biceps to arrive, maybe that mini history of Strong Women will give me something to think about.

BTW... Muscularity has been deemed attractive in women for quite some time. If you look at films from the seventies and earlier -something like James Bond where you get a fair smattering of women in bikinis - the bodies are slim but remarkably flabby. Today's models are far more muscular and toned than their predecessors and you've got all kinds of sportwomen like Jessica Ennis regular appearing in adverts etc.

Oh what quodlibet said actually. Why can't I express myself properly!

"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.

"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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It's not really solely 'are muscles attractive' as much as, I don't know I've sort of forgotten - why is that such a ready and almost universal response, 'don't set personal strength goals for yourself because you will end up with an unattractive body'.

If I had to crudely divide activities into pro or anti broader feminist goals I think I'd nudge competitive body building and the figure/fitness competitions somewhere towards anti.

But really just wondered why people are more uncomfortable with women and muscularity than with men - if they are. Maybe they are not. I might be a bit touchy?

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"?

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.

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.