What is femininity?
Feminine bodies are considered to be slender, neat and sexually attractive. The idea of what it means to be a beautiful woman is different for different people. For me personally, I fell into the category where a woman weighing as much as Adriana Lima or Miranda Kerr, having the hashtag “thigh gap”, and having a Kim Kardashian tush with Kendall Jenner legs is considered as a beautiful woman. Our instagram feed is clouded with models with their “perfect” bodies and beautiful skin which affects how we picture an ideal-female body. The image of rail-thin, wispy women dominates most magazines and catalogues that are marketed to women.
I’m not a blessed soul who can eat everything and get away with it. In middle school, I was a chubby kid who didn’t care much for being “attractive”. My appearance didn’t bother me at all. This was till all the name-calling started. I was the “fat kid” in the class. It obviously took a direct hit on my self-confidence. I looked in the mirror and saw a “fat and ugly” girl staring back at me. So, I decided to lose all my weight. All I wanted was to have a lean body and I was ready to try anything for it. I followed all sorts of diets. The boiled-vegetables diet, the 3-day-surviving-on-water diet, one-meal-a-day diet, I’ve tried them all. I was ready to sacrifice all my cravings to have a skinny body. And I’m not gonna lie, it worked. I had a lean body with skinny legs and flat tummy by the end of my high school. All my endless cardio training and crash diets worked as you would expect them to work. It came with a price though. Hairfall, brittle nails and worst of all, crankiness. But you know what? It was alright with me. I was satisfied with my body, nothing else mattered. The compliments helped me get through a 10 kilometer jog or a plate full of nothing. The boys who made fun of me in 8th grade, complimented me in 11th grade. Getting attention from the opposite gender is always a big deal in high school, isn’t it? Specially if it's on something you worked so hard on.
While I was suddenly seen as how Adele is seen right now, beautiful, appealing and feminine, I was constantly worried about weight gain. There was a point in my life, when this was literally the only thing in my mind. “What if I re-gain all my weight?”, “ How long do I have to eat nothing, in order to maintain this”, “Oh my god, do I smell a burger?”. As anyone reading this article would have guessed, my weight-loss was temporary. Crash diets and a whole bunch of crap for nothing. The re-gain began when I started lifting weights to get some glute muscles. “Bigger bum” was the new culture. All the fitness influencers on YouTube posted workouts to achieve a toned backside. So, I started following that.
When I joined college and became a part of the football team, I realized I liked lifting weights more than all the runs and jogs. Lifting weights brought a sense of satisfaction every time I increased the weight I was lifting. Squats, Lunges and dead lifts became my thing. I thought to myself that my cardio is being taken care of on the field, I’m gonna focus on some additional leg exercises to have stronger legs for scoring solid, powerful goals like Ronaldo or Bale (Hala Madrid!). I had two main objectives, gaining muscles and maintaining a lean figure. I stopped worrying about my appearance and started focusing more on my game. I wanted to get better at football and that became my new challenge. From one and a half hour of practices in the morning and all the strength training in the evening at the gym, my diet obviously increased. I was constantly hungry. I burned around 1500 calories while I ate 3500. From crash diets of less than 500 calories a day to a full day of eating and consuming 3500 calories. And if I’m being honest, I didn’t even realize that my body was getting “bulky". I was happy with my performance on the field and my strength was something I was proud of. After the end of my first year, when we had a summer break, I continued working out in the gym. I wasn’t doing much of cardio. Non-stop cardio became boring and the only thing I focused on was muscle gain for excelling at a sport I love.
I distinctly remember the first day of my second year in college, in metal-cutting lab, “you’ve gained weight right?” My batch mate asked me looking at me. That question shook my very soul. I realized that yes, I actually have gained weight. The only thing in my mind for the next few days was how my muscles are making me look “masculine”. The idea of Femininity prevented me from accepting my muscles. The defined stomach and strong legs that I was so proud of and worked so hard for, didn’t matter to me anymore.
My brain instantly came up with a solution. No more weights. My routine then became practice in the morning and cardio in the gym. For the countless months I was focusing on my body, trying to get back a lean figure and eating lesser than what my body required to perform.
After a whole year of enduring this misery, I decided to put an end to this craziness. I started accepting my body. I realized I’m a healthy-looking girl with a firm stomach and rock solid legs. I could lift weights at the gym that were heavy for most of the girls there. I could hold a plank for four and a half minutes and survive a killer leg day. I started accepting my body for what it was. I am strong, and just because some dresses are tight on my arms or a certain size jeans wouldn’t pull up my thighs didn’t make me any less beautiful. Being muscular and being attractive are not mutually inclusive for women.
When female athletes train and use their bodies as men do, women become muscular and strong too. Muscular women are often told that they’re unattractive, man-haters, selfish mothers or transvestites. They’re charged as having either too much testosterone or too little femininity. It is hard for a woman to accept their muscular bodies because muscularity isn’t linked to displays of womanhood or ideas of femaleness. Professional tennis playing sisters Serena and Venus Williams are good examples of female athletes who have received a lot of negative attention for their “thicker” arms and heavier-set, muscular bodies.
We associate muscle with male-dominated sports such as bodybuilding. Bodybuilding is culturally coded as almost exclusively male. So, the pressure to remain feminine is perhaps the most difficult on female body builders. With becoming muscular, participating in an activity many people still think about as being only “ for men” is constantly on their minds too.
The problem here isn’t muscles. The problem is femininity itself. Because femininity can’t be located within the body, most women try to display it on their bodies. This results in women operating in a restricted space which prevents and discourages them from reaching their full physical potential all in the name of femininity.
While there’s a cultural shift where people are more accepting of a toned and athletic female body, some girls and women, like me, are still preoccupied with diet and weight-loss. I will be lying if I say I fully accept my muscles. There are days where I’m tempted to go back to my crazy diets specially after a long day at a mall, trying on a certain dress size that once fit me perfectly. But I promised myself to not fall back into that trap. I constantly remind myself that caring for my body will only result in me being strong, healthy and capable.
“…for some female athletes…their best body type, their best performance build, is one that is not thin; it's one of power” says Pam Shriver.
To all the female athletes out there, going through the same societal pressure to measure up to a certain ideal, you have to know that you can be strong and beautiful, muscular and feminine.
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