Has strong become the respectable face of skinny for young women?
It is a grey January morning in a gym near Leicester and Madeley, a former TV presenter turned personal trainer and Instagram phenomenon – and the daughter of daytime telly pairing Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan – is trying gamely to teach me the correct posture for squats with weights. Bum stuck out, shoulders pinned back, move from the hips. None of this is dignified. It is also killing my hamstrings, although there is only a wimpy 5kg weight on the bar I am lifting, compared with the 60kg she usually manages.
But Madeley is kind, funny and ridiculously encouraging. Half an hour of pumping iron with her leaves me in an unexpectedly good mood. My head feels clearer, lighter. And there is something very appealing about the insouciance with which she strolls through the weights area, past all the men in sleeveless Ts doing press-ups.
But Madeley is kind, funny and ridiculously encouraging. Half an hour of pumping iron with her leaves me in an unexpectedly good mood. My head feels clearer, lighter. And there is something very appealing about the insouciance with which she strolls through the weights area, past all the men in sleeveless Ts doing press-ups.
Once upon a time, gyms divided rigidly by gender: treadmills and pilates classes for the ladies; grunting men lifting weights by the mirror. Women shied away from dumbbells for fear of getting bulky or embarrassing themselves. Men’s fitness magazines featured rippled torsos and articles about protein shakes, while the female versions were all bikini bodies and how to be your happiest self.
Well, not any more. “Shed kilos, build muscle, strip fat,” screams the cover of January’s Women’s Health magazine, alongside features on getting a “strong mind” and “killer abs”. Inside, editor Claire Sanderson describes proudly how she hip-thrusted 130kg (a move that involves lying down with a barbell across your middle and pushing your hips skywards) as part of a January transformation feature.
Rival magazine Women’s Fitness, meanwhile, offers “21 days to strong”, a diet and workout plan that will ensure you can shift furniture upstairs on your own. Even Davina McCall now boasts the jutting abs and sharply carved physique of a bodybuilder, prompting the Sun to ask whether the 50-year-old has “gone too far” for her latest fitness
Yet she is only reflecting a cult of muscle that is all the rage on Instagram, led by a new generation of so-called fitness influencers such as Madeley, the 26-year-old Australian blogger Kayla Itsines, the 29-year-old American Massy Arias (famous not only for her abs, but for the speed with which they snapped back after the birth of her baby last year) and Alice Liveing, the British personal trainer who coached Sanderson for her hip-thrusting challenge.
Their feeds are a mixture of filmed workout routines, zippy motivational messages and photographs of their dogs and their breakfasts. Itsines in particular is hot on sharing “before” and “after” pictures of ordinary women who have followed her method. But the best adverts for their burgeoning business empires are invariably their own bodies. These women are built like athletes, not scrawny models: slim, but with biceps, calves and formidable six-packs (plus, in the case of 24-year-old US fitness guru Jen Selter, a famously Kardashian-esque behind). What is most striking, though, is how influential they have become in young women’s lives.
Middle-aged readers are more likely to be familiar with Madeley’s parents than with the 30-year-old personal trainer herself, yet her diet and fitness book The 4-Week Body Blitz has shot into the January bestseller charts. You may never have heard of Liveing, but at 24 she has three bestselling books, a clothing line at Primark and numerous corporate partnerships to her name.
These women’s brands were built independently of mainstream media, on Instagram and YouTube, where moody shots of perfect abs combine with ass-kicking, vaguely feminist sentiments. If that sounds superficial, their “strong in mind and body” mantra perhaps resonates deeper with anxiety-prone millennials, who increasingly use exercise to manage their mental health.
Five years ago, Madeley was working in TV, worrying that she lacked a passion in life, when her then-boyfriend introduced her to weightlifting. At the time, she says, she suffered badly from anxiety and was experiencing “panic attack after panic attack”. But lifting made her feel capable and strong.
“I would say weightlifting – this methodical act that results in physical and mental feelings of strength, capability, accomplishment – has absolutely had a massive ripple effect on my life. I feel like if I got into a sticky situation I could handle it, I can do it, it’s fine,” she says.
“If I do start to get anxious, I have an outlet, a form of CBT, something I can do to focus all my energy.” She compares lifting to cooking, another soothingly repetitive process that many find relaxing because the rhythm – all that chopping and stirring – takes over.
There is something unexpectedly touching about this, just as there is something thrilling about shattering the myth that strength and power are not feminine. But have we really learned to value bodies for what they can do, not merely how they look? Is strong becoming the respectable face of skinny?
Vicky McCann’s fitness career began at the age of 13, when she got a job tidying the changing rooms of a local gym. She moved into teaching aerobics, then lifting weights. In 1990, she entered her first bodybuilding competition. Since then, she has twice been world champion in the so-called natural branch of the sport, which strictly forbids the use of steroids, male hormones and other artificial enhancements, including cosmetic surgery. She also runs her own gym in Perth, Scotland.
McCann, who at 48 still competes, says more women are entering the sport, but primarily via “bikini-body” competitions, a kind of bodybuilding-lite where contestants must be extremely toned, but much less musclebound than in traditional contests.
“It’s a halfway house, almost a cross between a fitness pageant and a beauty pageant,” says McCann, who prefers the more heavyweight version. “A lot of these women, I don’t see them as muscular – I’d almost describe it as a wedding day. They get a chance to wear a fancy bikini and have their hair and nails done and look pretty.” Hopefully, she says, some will be inspired nonetheless to move into bodybuilding proper.
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