Author: Claire Fitzsimmons
Art:Mariane “Mare” Leon
I started lifting because I wanted to be skinny.
I wish it were a more radical origin story. But like most women raised under diet culture, I walked into the gym thinking of subtraction. I wanted to get smaller. I didn’t know then that I was entering a different kind of transformation.
We’re deep in the second Trump era—after the marches, the thinkpieces, the midterms that didn’t fix anything. Roe v. Wade is gone. Kids are still being caged at the border. Palestine is being bombed. The grief is relentless, shapeless, and everywhere. I’m living in a country that felt like it is unraveling, and somewhere between doomscrolling and despair, I started going to Gold’s Gym.
At first, I was just going through the motions. I followed a basic program. I hip thrusted, squatted, deadlifted. It felt good in a way I couldn’t name. And then, one day, this heaviness heaved out of me—in the grunts, in the last rep, in the weight I slapped on the bar. I cried after a heavy leg day. Not from pain. From everything else. Sadness, helplessness, grief. The tears came in the car afterward, as if my nervous system had been shaken loose and needed to recalibrate.
People think I’m a pretty tough gal, but I still wrestle with an internal narrator shaped by years of diet culture and patriarchy that tells me to be smaller. Shrink my thighs. Don’t take up too much space on the leg press. Don’t correct the guy who gives you unsolicited advice mid-set.
Gold’s Gym is the last place you’d expect a feminist awakening. It’s theatrical and hypermasculine—wall-to-wall meatheads, bodybuilders, fitness influencers livestreaming their sets. The air smells like ammonia and pre-workout. I was nervous at first. I wore baggy shirts. I didn’t make eye contact. I trained like I was apologizing for it.
But now? I take up space.
“My muscle isn’t ornamental—it’s insurance. Every rep builds not just strength, but readiness. Just in case.”
I’ve even started a quiet resistance drill: when men walk toward me in the gym, I don’t move. I used to step aside automatically, as if I were the obstacle. The first time I held my ground, I got shoulder-checked—hard—by a young guy who didn’t even turn to look. I was invisible to him. But I don’t move anymore. If we collide, we collide.
But somewhere deep in my subconscious I think I might be training for the worst. In a country that has stripped me of legal ownership over my own body, where the law won’t protect me from forced birth or state violence, I’ve started to see strength as a survival skill. If I need to run, I can. If I need to fight, I will. My muscle isn’t ornamental—it’s insurance. Every rep builds not just strength, but readiness. Just in case.
Lifting didn’t just change my body—it changed my internal landscape. And it’s not just me. More women are lifting than ever before. As *The New York Times* recently reported, books about women and muscle are having a moment—from Johnston’s work to Bonnie Tsui’s *On Muscle*, which explores why muscle matters and what it means to build it. This shift is personal and cultural. Women are choosing resistance—literally and figuratively.
“Strength, in this moment, isn’t just personal—it’s political. It’s a refusal to vanish.” “I’m training to resist, yes—but also to run, to fight, to survive if I have to. Every rep is an act of resistance, and every muscle I build makes me harder to ignore.”
As Casey Johnston writes in *A Physical Education*, “Strength is a skill, and anyone can learn it.” She’s right. But for me, it’s more than a skill. It’s a language I use to rewrite what I’ve been taught to believe about my body.
Interestingly, conservative women are lifting too. On TikTok and Instagram, there’s a growing cohort of tradwives and right-wing influencers lifting heavy in the name of fertility, patriarchy, and homemaking. As *The Cut* reported in *“The Tradwife Is Strong”*, these women view strength training as part of their domestic calling—build glutes for birthing, stay fit for your husband, avoid being “high-maintenance” by aging out of attractiveness \[[https://www.thecut.com/2024/04/tradwives-are-lifting-weights-now.html](https://www.thecut.com/2024/04/tradwives-are-lifting-weights-now.html)].
It’s what I reach for when the world makes no sense. I still don’t have hope in politics. But I have my body. And I’m not trying to be small anymore. Strength, in this moment, isn’t just personal—it’s political. It’s a refusal to vanish. A refusal to make myself more palatable, more passive, more pleasing. I’m training to resist, yes—but also to run, to fight, to survive if I have to. Every rep is an act of resistance, and every muscle I build makes me harder to ignore.
About the Author:
Claire Fitzsimmons is the Founder and Director of Salty. When she isn’t sifting through pitches, producing photo shoots, or screaming into the void, she’s weightlifting, gardening and rescuing critters.