Women are told it is unfeminine and gross to have muscles and to cultivate strength, which in turn leads them to actively avoid doing things that will build muscles and strength, which then makes them even less capable of doing things that require strength, which the critics then use as proof of women’s inherent physical frailty. And so the cycle continues…
And I always want to point out here: women, on average, possess more lower-body strength, while men, on average, possess more upper-body strength. There’s a lot of overlap and it isn’t always individually applicable, but that’s the generalization, averaging across the population.
But we SOCIALLY value upper-body strength, and upper-body muscles. So we construct women as weaker, because we refuse to measure them on the body parts where they may be stronger, we devalue those.
Lifting is mostly done with the legs. So women may be as good or better at heavy lifting as men. But we socially construct lifting as having to do with large, muscular arms and chests. You don’t really need powerful arms and chests to lift—you need powerful thighs, otherwise you’re gonna throw your back out. We actually lie about what makes a person strong and capable to favor men.
Push-up and pull-ups are upper-body strength exercises. So they’re socially valued. The military doesn’t tell you to do 20 squats as penance. No one is fucking impressed by all the squats you can do. Squats just sound stupid, hah, squats. We laugh at them because women might be better at them than men, on average. They’re worthless.
This stuff plays into all sorts of other body image problems, too. The body weight that’s regarded as ideal for women, for example, is really only achievable for individuals suffering from mild to moderate muscular atrophy. You literally can’t get there just by shedding fat - you also have to let your muscles waste away. We actually regard it as “normal” for a woman to be suffering from muscular atrophy.
In addition to having more natural lower body strength, women have a higher natural tolerance for pain and discomfort, and actually have more natural endurance because of this. As a matter of fact, women are optimally built for many types of strenuous physical activity, especially activities that require endurance like hiking or long-distance running. (Think about it—women have more natural fat reserves, lower centers of gravity, strong, short legs, and are also usually used to managing pain because of periods and other female-specific occurrences.)
The cissexism in these comments though.
Icky cissexism, otherwise really important commentary that I didn’t even realise.
