When someone tells me muscles aren’t for women

I’m sure I’m not the only woman who feels there’s always been something holding me back physically.

Training has been a part of my life for a long time, and for almost as long, I’ve been careful not to train too hard. I was told that women should be lean, not muscular. Muscles are for men.

To this day, women are told how their bodies are supposed to look by everything from posters to actual comments, for example, “Not too big.” It was something I often heard when I started lifting weights. Women came into the gym and said they wanted to be strong, but they “didn’t want to get too big.” The reason? They didn’t want to look like a man.

Men don’t have a monopoly over anatomy. That includes muscles. If you train, muscles become stronger. There is nothing unnatural about it, and no gender can claim ownership over how the body works.

Let the body do what it naturally does if you want to be strong. If you want to bench-press 220 lb., then go for it. I know it’s one of my goals. There are no rules about what a “body is supposed to look like.” It’s your body and your decision.

For anyone who knows my writing style, it’s clear that I like my characters to thrash the idea that muscles aren’t for women or that a woman can’t be physically and mentally strong. Because, believe it or not, muscles we’re a part of us from birth, and they don’t give a crap about gender.