The Newest Face of Diet Culture Is the Instagram Butt
This booty-building trend isn’t about health or fitness — it’s about selling us stuff
When I first started regularly going to the gym in college, there were rarely women in the weight room. Sometimes there were a few extremely built women and maybe a rock climber cross-training while she waited for a spot on the wall, but for the most part, the gym was segregated by gender. Swishing ponytails dotted the rows of ellipticals. Alarming grunts and clanging weights escaped the sweaty room full of bulging cis guys.
A decade — and a lot of breaking down of the gender binary — later, the bikes sit empty and there’s rarely a free spot at the Smith machine.
As plenty of writers have noted, people of all genders have begun discovering weights in exponential numbers. There’s been a noted increase in powerlifting and competitive strength training, particularly among women; spurred by the CrossFit craze of the last five years and amplified in a post-Trump era, “iron therapy” has become an important part of self-care and pride.
The increase of women weightlifting is also related to the rise of body positivity and self-acceptance; strength-training pairs well with “intuitive eating” plans and mantras about “healthy” being the new…
