Girls with muscle om arm
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#Girls with muscle om arm full
The result? Women operate within a restricted space.īeing thin, weak or helpless doesn’t allow full physical capacity. AAP Image/David Croslingįemininity dictates what women can do with their bodies and there are grave social consequences for not conforming. This performance is achieved by minimising muscularity, clothing choice, make-up, hair-styles, attending to grooming and nails. Femininity normalises a female body that is round, soft, small and heterosexually appealing.īecause femininity can’t be located within the body, most women have to display it on their bodies. Ideas about womanhood make muscular women appear unnatural. Femininity prevents us from accepting muscle on women. When female athletes train and use their bodies as men do, women become muscular and strong too. (We don’t judge male bodybuilders on their masculinity, their “maleness”.) Is there a problem here? Because the muscular female form is so challenging, sports such as body sculpting use femininity as a buffer to counter the fact that women also have muscle. Judges have even been found selecting women who are big-busted, pretty and slim and whose muscles aren’t visible unless flexed.įemininity is linked to a female body that is slender, neat and sexually attractive. They have to wear make-up, heels, revealing and sparkling bikinis. They’re also expected to display graceful gestures, soft movements and have an hourglass figure. In contrast to men’s bodybuilding, femininity is part of the women’s judging criteria.Ĭompetitors are told to emphasise femininity, symmetry, proportion, tone, definition and to minimise physique and muscle mass. Many women train long and gruelling hours to become strong and muscular – only to be told on competition day that they’re not feminine enough. It’s also a sport where the contradiction of muscle and femininity is most obvious. Body sculpting or body figure competition is a sport that only women can compete in. Unlike male bodybuilding, women who compete in body sculpting are required to minimise their muscularity. Their muscular bodies are compared on symmetry, muscular form, size, development and overall presentation. Men compete and are judged solely on their muscularity. Bodybuilding is culturally coded as almost exclusively male. On the other hand, we associate muscle with male-dominated sports such as bodybuilding. They’re charged as having either too much testosterone or too little femininity. They’re frequently told they’re unattractive, man-haters, selfish mothers or transvestites. Muscular women are often accused of taking steroids, being deviant, sexually confused or deliberately trying to offend others.
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A muscular woman can be wildly perplexing. It challenges the assumption that all men are big, strong and powerful and that all women are smaller, weaker and dependent. Therefore, a muscular woman doesn’t conform to acceptable codes of femininity.Ī muscular woman challenges what it means to be a “real” woman or a “real” man. Muscularity isn’t linked to displays of womanhood or ideas about femaleness. Muscle is associated with male bodies and therefore with masculinity. Caster Semenya at the 2012 London Olympics.