Another Stupid Wellness Trend to Get Judgy and Compulsive About: Why You're Too Old for This Shit

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Soy Breno on Unsplash

Don’t get sucked into yet another industrial strength wellness trend that hurts you

Before you rip my head off, I’ve been bodybuilding and lifting weights for fifty-two years. Longer than many of my readers have been alive, thank you very much. So when I listened to an NPR program on Swole Girl Summer outlining how the new ideal woman is jacked, I wanted to vomit.

Why? Because, as the program outlines, it’s just one more way that women get sucked into a trend and are handed a new unrealistic standard of beauty by which others judge them into heartbreak.

Look. Nobody loves the gym more than I do. I’ve lived my adult entire life in it, which is why my view on this is so harsh. I want people to be healthy, not compulsively driven driven DRIVEN to get “swole,” or muscular, which is precisely what’s going to happen. Is already happening with this trend.

Those of us old enough recall Twiggy. Those of you less old enough will recall the heroin chic trend that was personified by Kate Moss who always looked one hit away from death.

This article delves into that world, which promoted sick-looking women who were emaciated and fragile, as the ideal. Really?

Then of course was the love your body as it is, which just wasn’t enough, because those folks who wanted to love their fat would viciously attack people like Adele for losing weight and loving her thinner self. You cannot win.

The NPR program, smartly, outlines those historical trends before explaining how weight training has now shoved aside the body positivity movement.

Look. I started lifting decades before it was cool. Back when I was the only woman in the gym, where chalk filled the air along with plenty of farts and shouts of HUGE when guys got their last lift out of their bulging muscles. I’ve been there. Done that.

Am still doing that fifty years later. Just like I dumped some 85 lbs 38 years ago and have largely kept it off.

My commitment isn’t seasonal, it’s not trendy, and it sure as shit isn’t driven by some goddamned influencer.

Yes I’m angry about this. Why? Because weight training is a damned good habit…but for life. Not a trend. Not to fix what ails you otherwise. It’s the kind of fitness habit that can transform you in so many ways but not if treated like just another thing to do for a while to be fashionable.

And kindly, it’s not some new thing.

While my entry into bodybuilding was earlier than most, I am no pioneer. This is a pioneer:

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 1948

While women were active before her, Abbye “Pudgy” Stockton is widely credited with being the first.

With thanks to

Stephen Bero

, please also see this terrific story of an American strongwoman, which provides additional history.

Years before I ever went to the gym there were plenty of pioneers ahead of me. I honor them, and am deeply grateful that there were brave women who did the work long before it became a thing that millions aspired to.

When I was barely 16, the mother of one of my first boyfriends was a power lifter. Tiny Winter Haven Florida didn’t know what to do with a five-foot tall woman who could pop a 100-lb barbell effortlessly over her head.

I wanted to be that strong.

I started hitting the gym hard at about twenty.

The current crop of women-seeking-swole might be the first to take weightlifting and turn it into a compulsive habit like we’ve done with damned near everything else.

So many ideas start out healthy and end up killing people off. Like the demand to be so skinny we nearly disappear. My hand is up, been there.

Over the decades, I’ve been delighted no end to see more and more women join the gym, stick around, get strong. I was not pleased to watch many of those 80s and 90s women end up taking steroids to compete in the Ms. Olympia contest.

That was as predictable as snow in New England. The guys did it, so the women wanted to get uber-jacked, and by god they did.

This is that standard. Iris Kyle is the best female bodybuilder of all time, bar none:

Eddie Maloney from North Las Vegas, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

This is jacked.

You don’t get this without injecting serious drugs.

The first Ms. Olympia winners looked like strong women. You can call this generational, call it what you like- I love muscles on women but for my part I think that the extreme version is grotesque. I absolutely support the work ethic. I don’t support the drug use and the end product.

This YouTube video gives you an inside look at a few who took their muscle journey to the extreme:

In the same way that too many young boys suffer from bigorexia or the need to look like Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, as soon as this new swole trend gets bigger, so will the women want to be more like Iris. Jacked.

Why? Because in America we always take these trends to their illogical and mindlessly stupid extremes. The early enthusiasts of the 80s and 90s, far from mainstream, did just that.

Social media will make it worse, because foolish trends for how to get bigger will spread like wildfire. This fix, that fix, this shortcut, that drug. People will get hospitalized and die.

This Washington Post article addresses the issue (forgive the paywall). Just Google “early deaths of bodybuilders.”

Extremes kill people. Anorexia, bulimia, bigorexia, all of them kill. Any time a trend starts, influencers jump on board. As soon as that happens, false information spreads, fake fixes spread, and truth flies out the window as long as someone makes a buck.

It’s not just for younger folks, either.

For us older folks, Jane MacDonald is the perfect example, a bodybuilder who started at 70 and transformed herself. Now there are millions of elders who wanna be Joan.

I applaud Joan, but you don’t get her results overnight. It took her years. She’s still got kidney issues, she’s slowing down, she’s nearly 80. I assume she’s all natural (natty) but once you become famous, all bets are off.

But she will by god finish strong because she took the gym seriously.

She also spends much of her life in the gym these days because it’s a business. Is that how you want to live?

I am a fan of what anyone is willing to do to improve their health. NOT a fan of trends that peak and fizzle, taking plenty of folks down with them. I am NOT a fan of trends that spawn quick fixes, promise big muscles with no work and results in no time.

There is no such thing.

This is me at 64, eight years ago. While surgeries and being down have cost me a bit of this, bottom line is that all the muscles are still there, and what I’ve lost I am getting back. I can still do 100 men’s pushups without stopping, and a whole lot more. There are no shortcuts to results like that.

I know I use these photos a lot but they’re all I have from that time.

Like all the women who came before me, and all the wiser women who started lifting after, we do it for strength, tone and flexibility. As I’ve aged, nothing has supported my aging process more directly than the 32,000 hours (yes, I did the math) I’ve invested in my gym work.

The swole trend has all the hallmarks of doing to women what these trends always do: dictate an impossible standard, give too many women more reasons to abuse, shame and judge themselves and others for not being as jacked as someone like Iris, and far worse.

Readers like

Penny Nelson

got into lifting late and transformed their bodies and their options. THAT’s what I want. Options. Health, strength, flexibility, vibrancy. I love being able to lift just about anything around the house at 72.

Swole? Frankly, it’s a trend, it’ll peak and die off, then give way to something else that the patriarchy uses to shame women about their bodies.

If you’re motivated to pick up weights, I am your biggest cheerleader. Don’t do it because it’s trendy. Don’t do it because you think that big biceps are the fix for what ails your soul.

A stronger body will do a great many things for you, but your soul doesn’t need bulging muscles. You need to feed your body intelligently to build muscles in the same way you need to feed your soul the right “foods” to thrive.

The compulsion to be swole, in my humble opinion borne of doing this hard work my entire adult life, is just another bullshit trend. That said, if you pick it up, and it serves you, great.

Try keeping it up and see how being stronger truly does support your life, your aging, your body confidence and your options.

That’s not a trend, that’s a lifestyle choice. I’m all in for that.

Let’s play.

Tim Ebl 🇨🇦

Heather Hausenblas, PhD

and every other Substacker who cares about health and fitness

Photo by Brian Lee on Unsplash

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