But while we wait, I wanted to repost this blog from 18-year-old British Olympic weight lifter Zoe Smith. She is strong, beautiful, and deals with an extraordinary amount of crap about being in her chosen sport.
No, I am not going to get bulging Arnold-sized biceps. Honestly anyone who tells women not to lift because they will get "bulky" hasn't stayed up to date in sports science in the past decade. And apparently that's a lot of people judging by the looks I get when straying into the "men's" area of the Y.
Clearly I'm not even close to this woman's level. My wimpy 55-pound squat is measly compared to this woman clean and pressing twice her body weight. Simply put, she rocks. Unfortunately there are a lot of internet trolls who have taken to facebook, twitter, and the blogosphere to comment on her achievements, and not always in a positive way.
Here is a bit from her blog responding to all negative comments she's received so far in the games:
The obvious choice of slander when talking about female weightlifting
is “how unfeminine, girls shouldn’t be strong or have muscles, this is
wrong”. And maybe they’re right… in the Victorian era. To think people
still think like this is laughable, we’re in 2012! This may sound like a
sweeping generalisation, but most of the people that do think like this
seem to be chauvinistic, pigheaded blokes who feel emasculated by the
fact that we, three small, fairly feminine girls, are stronger than
them. Simple as that. I confronted one guy that said “we’re probably all
lesbians and look like blokes”, purely to explain the fact that his
opinion is invalid cause he’s a moron. And wrong. He came up with the
original comeback that I should get back in the kitchen. I laughed.
As Hannah pointed out earlier, we don’t lift weights in order to look
hot, especially for the likes of men like that. What makes them think
that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very
much, we’re flattered. But if you don’t, why do you really need to voice
this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually
give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive? What do you
want us to do? Shall we stop weightlifting, amend our diet in order to
completely get rid of our ‘manly’ muscles, and become housewives in the
sheer hope that one day you will look more favourably upon us and we
might actually have a shot with you?! Cause you are clearly the kindest,
most attractive type of man to grace the earth with your presence.
Oh but wait, you aren’t. This may be shocking to you, but we actually would rather be attractive to people who aren’t closed-minded
and ignorant. Crazy, eh?! We, as any women with an ounce of
self-confidence would, prefer our men to be confident enough in
themselves to not feel emasculated by the fact that we aren’t weak and
feeble.
And here’s some food for thought – maybe you should broaden your criteria for what you consider ‘attractive’ anyway, because these perfect, feminine women you speak of probably have no interest in you either.
What makes me sad is that some girls had this opinion too!
How ironic that the title of the show was Girl Power. You’d think that
young women around the same age as us would commend us for doing
something different and with our lives, and putting 100% effort into it
in order to make something of ourselves. But apparently we’re ‘weird’
for not constantly eating crap, binge drinking regularly and wearing the
shortest, tightest dresses that the high street has to offer. Sigh…
I love this girl. She's a role model for strong, beautiful, healthy women. And she is exactly who I would want my daughter looking up to. Imagine if all young girls found beauty in athletes and women with healthy lifestyles instead of 400-calorie-a-day super models and the Kardashians?
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