I just found a link to this killer essay

[rydra_wong]

Carrie Patrick: Of tiny pink dumbbells and fat chicks

Carrie Patrick talks about her personal history of lifting through illness and injury, and the extreme folly of thinking you can judge someone's level of effort or work by looking at them:

The amount of discipline, time, and effort that a person has put into their physical training does not always show.

(Which makes me all hells to the yeah, as a nearly-middle-aged dyspraxic climber who has fought ridiculously hard for every tiny bit of climbing skill I possess.)

Also:

I saw a picture on Facebook recently: a smoking hot woman, all abs and skintight shorts and straining bra, deadlifting multiple plates over the slogan “STRONG IS SEXY.” And inspiring as that visual might be, I couldn’t help asking myself … okay, if strong is sexy, why do all the people making “strong is sexy” images make sure to only show people who look like that? Why not, say, Sarah Robles? Holley Mangold? I’m pretty sure either of them could put any 20 randomly chosen Facebook commenters into a basket together and overhead-press them. Or getting away from international-class strength, there’s the ordinary schmuck like me who is certainly much stronger than the average woman who doesn’t lift, but also knows damn well what I’d get from the caring folks of the Internet if I put up a picture of my middle-aged ass deadlifting in spandex panties. No, Internet, we know what you mean when you tell us strong is sexy. You mean “looking like this is sexy.” And we’ve heard that one before, for any given value of “this.”

(Brief mentions of weight and weight loss.)

Comments

[killabeez]

Thanks so much for sharing that, and the quote.

[mongrelheart]

Awesome article, many thanks for posting! Yeah, am I ever sick of all the disingenuous "strong is sexy" porn!

[rydra_wong]

Yeah.

I mean, given how incredibly constricted mainstream standards of "attractiveness" are, it's not a bad thing if they're being widened to include things like visible muscle, and the idea that muscle and strength aren't incompatible with "femininity" (if that happens to be part of one's gender expression). That may let some people who'd otherwise have been deterred get into strength training. And eroticizing female muscle is not necessarily un-subversive.

But it's still all about a) attractiveness, and b) attractiveness by dint of looking a certain way physically.

(Not to mention imposing an extra burden, in some ways: forget just deadlifting, now you've got to make sure you look hawtt while doing it.)

I am as susceptible to an inspiring visual image as the next person, but I want images of strength and exercise and sport which are about all sorts of diverse bodies belonging to people doing cool and fun shit.

Which do, of course, tend to involve story elements which can't so easily be compressed into a jpeg of ripped abs.

[mongrelheart]

I am as susceptible to an inspiring visual image as the next person, but I want images of strength and exercise and sport which are about all sorts of diverse bodies belonging to people doing cool and fun shit.
Well said! It would be so better if the emphasis was on "look at the awesome stuff that human beings can do". Hmm that reminds me there was a photo set of athletes from the Olympics that came out a while ago, it was cool because there were so many different shapes & sizes, and all of them were tops in their sports. The idea that fitness is just one thing, & looks just one way, was shown to be bunk. Wish I bookmarked that page, it was years ago.

[rydra_wong]

Wish I bookmarked that page, it was years ago.

Looks like the blog post where I first found it has had to take the images down for copyright reasons, but -- ta-da!

http://reelfoto.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/howard-schatz-and-beverly-ornstein.html

Also here (which looks like it has the jgs from Nina Matsumoto's original post):

http://prettystrongpowerlifting.com/2012/06/06/athletic-body-diversity-reference-for-artists/

Bonus Olympians here:

http://fiercefatties.com/2012/08/03/olympians-they-come-in-all-shapes-and-sizes/

[mongrelheart]

Oh sweet! Many thanks! Gosh those photos are so amazing. Human beings are rad.

[coffeetime]

It's like posting a picture of a hot young woman in a lab coat unbuttoned strategically, wearing a pair of big glasses and dramatic red lipstick, with the caption "smart is sexy." Because that's what ALL the smart people look like.

[rydra_wong]

It's like posting a picture of a hot young woman in a lab coat unbuttoned strategically, wearing a pair of big glasses and dramatic red lipstick, with the caption "smart is sexy."

It's been tried:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g032MPrSjFA

(To such universal derision and fury that they had to pull the ad, thankfully.)