Some work trips hit different. It was a Friday afternoon in March, and my colleagues and I arrived at a bodybuilding competition on a research trip in search of beauty and feminine expression. We had reason to be optimistic—women make up more than half of the entire field of competitive bodybuilding. This sport is also one that prides itself on a very distinct version of glamour: the heels, the rhinestone bikinis, the spray tans, the hair. On stage, it is nothing short of a spectacle. But as we surveyed the expo floor, there was none to be found.

Since 1989, bodybuilding fans have descended on Columbus, OH., for the Arnold Classic. This premier IFBB Pro bodybuilding competition is part of a larger multi-fitness event known as the Arnold Schwarzenegger Sports Festival. Bodybuilding among younger women is experiencing exponential growth, driven by social media and self-empowerment. It’s no secret that women of all ages have taken up lifting weights en masse, as strength training becomes a new rubric for femininity. If ever there was a place to explore the purest expression of strength, and discover the serious strength training consumer—a woman who might enjoy, say, a premium Cardillo weight belt or a backpack designed to display it—surely it would be here. 

So the three of us—Danimás’ Chief Executive, Editorial Director, and Chief Content Officer—decided we would make a meal of it. With 36 hours in Columbus, we had enough time to browse the 800-booth expo floor and catch the evening finals for Classic Physique, Fitness, and Wellness. We arrived at the convention center strapped in our Pro Performance Crossbody bags (#AlwaysBeRepping), hopeful for a glimpse of our customer in the wild. Instead, we got facemogged. 

Upon arrival, we maneuvered through a mosh pit of twenty-something men in sweatpants and tight, cut-off tanks—their biceps bulging. We were at the booth of YoungLA, a streetwear-inflected gym brand. It seemed to be the hottest ticket in town. The booth pulsated with bass-heavy EDM; the unmistakable smell of a middle school dance wafted through the air, a visceral mix of excitement, sweat, and body spray. One particularly striking guy—young, tall, angular-faced, yoked—was drawing a crowd of fanboys. He was an associate of the influencer and looksmaxxer Clavicular, whose particular corner of the Internet has turned young men towards the gym. The energy wasn’t hostile to women, per se, but something else: we didn’t really exist. 

We moved from one spectacle to the next. Civil Regime is a streetwear brand with 1.2M followers and known for its edgy, Y2K-inspired designs. The brand is so popular, its drop-based retail model shifts entire product lines in less than 15 minutes, according to the LA Business Journal. At its rowdy Arnold pop-up, three male promoters for the brand were swarming a woman with a barbell, chanting her reps aloud as heavily tatted onlookers cheered wildly. They were live-streaming some kind of deadlift competition for TikTok that apparently necessitated heightened theatrics. That they wore horror film-esque face paint and fake blood only amplified the mood. We left the booth feeling mildly disturbed. 

If the atmosphere of Civil Regime was hectic, the vast number of young guys in attendance at YoungLA was intimidating; Darc Sport was offering tattoos in a booth, pumping out heavy metal. Look at photographs of the space, and you’d be forgiven for thinking there were no women here at all. 

This is despite the fact that we found our female customer almost immediately. Nearly every woman competing in the adjacent fitness events as a powerlifter was wearing a weight belt. The difference was that we didn’t see any expressions of her existence; we didn’t see a single booth for apparel or accessories that offered a purely feminine experience that wasn’t tokenistic. The closest alignment was a stall offering hair styling—handy for those on-stage blowouts.

What products were aimed purely at women adopted the design approach known as “shrink it and pink it.” Remember when the NFL did this with women's jerseys in the early aughts—taking things made for men and making them "for women" by making them in a smaller size and offering them in girly colors? At the Arnold, we saw pink gloves, pink weight belts, and the like—the aesthetic equivalent of an afterthought. We were surprised at the lack of innovation, especially in relation to the growth in women’s strength training; 52 percent of women in the U.S. now lift weights, making it the most popular form of exercise. 

YoungLA, Civil Regime, and Darc Sport all have women’s collections in their everyday offerings, but this didn’t fully translate into the Expo. Each brand’s edit of women’s products available for purchase was small—blink and you’d miss them, especially amid the sea of men. 

Within its mainline, each of these brands does offer a distinct aesthetic. Civil Regime and Darc Sport, both owned by the Sakr brothers, borrow heavily from cyberpunk, goth, and sportswear and are known for collaborations with brands including WWE, Von Dutch, and Marvel. The brand’s unambiguously tough aesthetic includes gear with messaging to match: the brand’s tagline, "Never fckin give up," is emblazoned across the back of their tees and sports bras. Shorts, meanwhile, come with flame detailing. While this gear does allow for stylistic expression, and is popular—@shedarcsport has 450,000 Instagram followers—the vibe still borrows from that hard, hedonistic world of the men’s collection. It’s ‘shrink it and pink it’, of an alternate degree. 

Finally, scattered across the smaller booths, we saw the merch T-shirts. They were derivatives of the “FBI: Female Body Inspector” shirts you’d find on Canal Street: a baby tee declaring "Barbell Girl" in Barbie pink font, and "These Glutes Are Made for Walking" above a silhouette of a voluptuous woman squatting in daisy dukes and a cowboy hat. (Silly me, always lifting in my big, sexy cowboy hat!). These playfully patronizing T-shirts reduced strong women to gym-bro tropes. They didn’t honor the time, attention, and intention of the women competing—or even those showing up as fans. These T-shirts were tangible proof of bodybuilding’s male gaze. 

At Danimás, we often talk about the universes in which strong women exist. There are a million little daily rituals that the athlete endeavors surrounding her training that beautify her world and honor the duality of her femininity. Everything from how she takes her pre-workout coffee, the hoops she styles with her sports bra, yes—the color of her weight belt, the podcast where she gets her news, the water bottle she drinks from, the scent of her body mist as she leaves the locker room, and the language she uses in her conversations with herself and others. 

If the Arnold is a mirror, right now it reflects one thing: a world built almost entirely for men. This is not necessarily intentional nor malicious, but this universe is one where brands are increasingly promoting dubious, male influencers and their manosphere-adjacent worldview, where strength has a singular, decidedly masculine expression. Women are seen as collections of desirable parts or vessels for visual consumption, or worse, invisible. The women present at the expo deserved a space that reflected the joy, duality, and personal freedom that come with the ritual of getting strong. They deserved better merchandise and an experience that didn’t sideline them. 

There's no greater reminder of the interconnectivity of strength and beauty than watching the Women's Wellness and Fitness finals. The best women in the world—who, by the way, have already won simply by stepping on that stage, because getting to the Arnold means you're already doing bodybuilding at the highest level—are the embodiment of everything we talk about at Danimás: The rituals, the femininity, the power, the duality. All of it, right there under the lights—the glamour and the gains. Women’s competitions now make up nearly half of the event roster, but beyond the stage, women are not represented. 

Since our visit, the Arnold announced it is expanding next year's festival by a full day—a significant commitment for an event of this scale. With more time, more floor space, and more eyeballs comes a real opportunity to meet the cultural moment it's standing in: to build a space where strength and elegance aren't in opposition, and the woman on the expo floor is seen with the same reverence as the women on the stage.