The United States is a wonderfully strange place that has entered a remarkably bizarre era.
The Wall Street Journal recently noted the growing appeal of big, muscular arms among women. On its own, it sounds like a harmless, somewhat ridiculous trend. But the veiny flexes are only the most visible part of a broader cultural shift.
The female body becomes another declaration of independence: stronger, harder, more imposing, less vulnerable.
Look around any busy gym in America, or spend five minutes scrolling Instagram, and the directives handed down to young women seem to have completely flipped. Women were once told they should no longer have to conform to male expectations to achieve genuine success. Internet culture somehow turned that promise inside out. Now the fashionable ideal increasingly resembles a female version of masculinity: bigger muscles, more tattoos, even the deliberate rejection of conventional beauty rituals through shaved heads.
The ideal is no longer merely to be desirable. It is to look completely untouchable.
'Resistance' training
This transformation has acquired an unmistakably political dimension. Writing in the Washington Post last year, columnist Karen Attiah described gaining 20 pounds of muscle through powerlifting. Attiah argues that muscles and femininity are perfectly compatible and reports receiving plenty of admiring attention from men. But her conception of femininity is heavily politicized. Connecting women's growing enthusiasm for muscularity to abortion restrictions, male violence, and the revival of traditional gender roles, she wrote, "At a time when the rights of women, particularly Black women, are under attack, we need to return to the basics — to be grounded in our agency, physical power, and transformational energy."
Attiah is hardly alone. Writing in Women's Health last year, personal trainer Lacee Lazoff declared that lifting weights is a feminist act of rebellion. She described grunting, developing calloused hands, and lifting heavy weights as ways of defying traditional expectations of femininity. Even a trip to the gym, apparently, can become another skirmish in the war against the patriarchy.
There is a curious irony here. For decades, feminists argued that a woman's worth should not be determined by her appearance. Now, in certain feminist circles, appearance has become a political statement in its own right. A muscular back is an act of resistance. A shaved head is a declaration of independence. Even the size of a woman's biceps can apparently tell us something about her commitment to dismantling the patriarchy.
Women were supposed to be liberated from having their bodies scrutinized. Instead, they are being invited to turn those bodies into ideological billboards.
Trying on toxicity
Fitness culture is especially enthusiastic about this transformation. Building a wide back, heavy upper trapezius muscles, a thick neck, and bulging biceps is sold not simply as exercise but as empowerment. The female body becomes another declaration of independence: stronger, harder, more imposing, less vulnerable.
The disconnect becomes even stranger when you consider the way masculinity itself is discussed. Traditional male behavior is endlessly scrutinized for signs of toxicity, aggression, dominance, and emotional repression. Yet many of the same outward qualities — toughness, physical intimidation, extreme independence, indifference to approval — are celebrated when women cultivate them.
Somehow, masculinity becomes problematic in men and empowering in women. Female strength once meant endurance, patience, wisdom, competence, fortitude. A mother could be extraordinarily strong without feeling compelled to acquire the neck of an Olympic weightlifter. Increasingly, however, strength must be visible before it counts -- and preferably visible on Instagram.
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Muscle mates
Women spend hundreds of hours dragging heavy sleds, curling dumbbells, counting grams of protein, and sculpting bodies designed to project an aura of absolute self-sufficiency. Add the sleeve tattoos, buzz cuts, and permanent don't-talk-to-me expression, and the aesthetic communicates something before a word has been spoken: I require nothing from anyone.
Perhaps that feels liberating. But it leaves remarkably little room for femininity. And then comes the sales pitch that may be hardest to swallow: that men are supposed to find the whole package irresistible.
Human attraction is obviously more complicated than a checklist, and plenty of men like athletic women. But cross-cultural research on mate preferences has consistently found that men place greater importance on physical attractiveness in a long-term partner than women do. Both sexes, meanwhile, value qualities such as dependability and emotional compatibility. There is little reason to believe that a new fashion for bulging biceps has fundamentally rewritten these preferences.
None of this means women should organize their lives around pleasing men. It does mean we should stop pretending male attraction has been culturally reprogrammed because an influencer said "strong is sexy."
If you're a female reader skeptical of the point, consider the inverse. Would you feel genuinely attraction to a man who deliberately adopted every traditionally feminine aesthetic he could find? Imagine him stepping out in floral sundresses and pearl anklets. Picture him borrowing your crop tops, straightening his hair, spending two hours applying liquid eyeliner before heading to a sports bar, then asking whether he should start carrying a tiny micro-purse for his perfume and lip oil.
Perhaps somebody is into it; most women probably aren't.
Sexual difference has proven remarkably stubborn despite decades of attempts to explain it away. Men and women can obviously borrow from one another, and nobody is suggesting that women should avoid barbells or men should avoid moisturizer. But a culture supposedly devoted to freeing women from male standards has arrived at a curious destination: It increasingly congratulates women for looking and behaving more like men.
To be clear, fitness is attractive. A strong, sculpted female body can be beautiful. But there's a considerable difference between looking fit and looking as though you could throw your boyfriend through drywall.