Muscle Women: Women and Body Image in the Media

I was looking at the cover of a magazine this week, it had images of middle-aged female celebrities, and the caption read ‘stop working out.’ The images emphasised the muscular physique of these women, and was depicting athleticism in a negative light. I later found an article in a newspaper about Sarah Jessica Parker; it too was focused on her body definition. It seemed to me that the paper deliberately chose images that made her look even more muscular than she actually is. I feel as though by doing this they make any sort of muscle definition for women negative, as they associate it with something so extreme. It is not necessarily that she is ‘manly’ but that it is just not the best shot. The article goes on to closely analyse her physique, with the use of ‘experts,’ who claim that she is clearly working out too hard, and needs to slow down. This agitated me, its a problem that never seems to occur with men, in fact if a similar shot was taken of a male he would be praised for his conditioning, rather than condemned. I’m sure a male would be offered a deal to make a workout video to help others get his body, however unfortunately for women this is far from the case.

There never seems to be a balance when it comes to women’s appearance and its portrayal in the media. Often women that lose significant amounts of weight are commended, however once they either go below or higher than that ideal, they are criticised. You often see headlines such as ‘That’s too thin!’ women just can’t seem to win. There seems to be this ideal body image created by the media, but that changes just as quickly as fashion does. One day curves are in, the next thin is back, and then athletic is desirable. These constant changes appear to me very harmful for women, as they are constantly striving to achieve something different, based on whatever the media deems desirable.

This week I was with some friends, and a few of the females were commenting on one girl’s physique; telling her that all the training she was doing fro her sport was giving her good muscle definition. While the girls were complimenting her, she seemed rather uncomfortable with this; she expressed fears that she would not be able to find a man because he would think she was too muscular. She certainly is not too muscular at all, but this demonstrated to me just how much these stereotypes affect us. I know as female who plays sport, this has always been something that has troubled me, and has perhaps been an even bigger concern for my family. My mum was always telling me to make sure I do not get too muscular because it is not feminine. While this did not me stop me from training, I feel that it does prevent many young girls from working out, or playing a sport. It just seems that as women we always have someone else, or society as a whole determining how we should act, and particularly how are bodies should look.