top of page

Enjoy my content? By me an egg 🥚

Donate with PayPal

I eat two eggs most days for breakkie, so small contributions like this make a massive difference!

Built to Last: Rethinking Strength, Resilience, and the Power of Women’s Bodies

Thanks, to the mum of one of my clients Jo, for sending a Time Magazine article on women and strength training through, it’s a great read with some nice stats!

Here’s a brief rundown:

💪 The Myth of Fragility

For centuries, society has sold us a narrow definition of female strength—one that often equates power with delicacy, and health with thinness. But a closer look at history, biology, and anthropology tells a radically different story: women were never meant to be frail. They were built to endure, to labour, to lead—and to last.

🦴 Prehistoric Powerhouses

When anthropology professor Alison Murray examined prehistoric female remains at the University of Cambridge, she uncovered a truth buried in bone: ancient women were incredibly strong. Their arm bones, shaped by years of grinding grain, hauling water, and farming, rivalled those of today’s elite rowers. In fact, Neolithic women had arm bones up to 16% stronger than modern rowers and up to 30% stronger than the average Cambridge student. Bronze Age women weren’t far behind.


This wasn’t incidental. It was the result of daily, load-bearing labour—evidence that women were central to the development of agriculture and the survival of early communities. These weren’t passive figures in the background of history. They were the backbone of it.

🧬 Strength in Structure, Resilience in Biology

Modern science continues to dismantle the myth of female weakness. While men typically have more upper-body muscle mass, women often outperform them in endurance and resilience. A 2016 review of over 55 fatigue studies found that women outlasted men by an average of 36%. Sandra Hunter, a leading researcher in movement science, attributes this to differences in muscle fibre composition and fatigue resistance.


And when it comes to longevity, women consistently outlive men by 5 to 20% across cultures. Three out of four centenarians are women. Theories range from genetic advantages (like a second X chromosome) to the physiological demands of motherhood, which may prime the body for resilience. Whatever the cause, the pattern is undeniable: women are biologically built for the long haul.


📉 The Rise of Thinness—and Its Timing

So how did we go from revering strength to idolizing thinness?

The cultural obsession with being slim is a relatively recent invention. It emerged in the late 19th century, alongside industrialization, calorie counting, and the rise of consumerism. As food became more accessible, thinness replaced fullness as a marker of status and self-control. But this shift wasn’t just about aesthetics—it was political.


Every time women have gained power, a new beauty ideal has emerged to shrink them back down. In the 1920s, the flapper’s boyish silhouette coincided with women winning the right to vote. In the 1960s, Twiggy’s waif-like frame rose to fame just as the women’s liberation movement gained steam. And in the 1990s, “heroin chic” surged as women entered boardrooms and law schools in record numbers. These weren’t coincidences—they were cultural counterpunches to female ambition.


🌾 Grinding Grain, Shaping History

Even today, in many parts of the world, women’s strength is on full display in daily life. In rural communities, women still perform physically demanding tasks like grinding grain, pounding yam, or hauling water—echoes of their Neolithic ancestors. Ancient grindstones found in the Sahara, from a time when the desert was green and fertile, are silent witnesses to this legacy of labour and endurance.

📣 Reclaiming the Narrative

It’s time to rewrite the story we tell about women’s bodies. They are not ornaments to be shrunk or softened. They are instruments of survival, resilience, and power. From prehistoric fields to modern-day farms, from ancient grindstones to Olympic podiums, women have always been strong.

Not the weaker sex. Just the marginalised one.

❤️ My favourite bit of the article? Here!

"In fact, for most of human history, women weren’t meant to be thin; they were meant to be strong. Neolithic women had arm bones 11 to 16% stronger than the rowers to 30% greater than typical Cambridge students, according to a 2017 study. Bronze Age women showed a similar pattern, with arm bones up to 13% stronger than rowers. Our cultural obsession with thinness is a relatively recent invention, born of fashion, patriarchy, and postwar consumerism.


When food became more accessible, especially in Western cultures, thinness replaced fullness as a marker of status and self-discipline. It began in the late 19th century, with new warnings about 'corpulence,' the dawn of dieting as a moral virtue, and the invention and rise of the calorie, all of which paved the way for modern food restriction.”


We are meant to eat, lift and grow. Take up space and be strong. The world needs stronger women.



 
 
 

Comments


Enjoy my content? By me an egg 🥚

Donate with PayPal
Featured Posts
Recent Posts

I eat two eggs most days for breakkie, so small contributions like this make a massive difference!

Archive
Search By Tags
Follow Me
  • Instagram
  • Facebook Basic Square
bottom of page