For generations, we women have been told what to do with our bodies. Typically, it’s been directives to tone, tighten, sculpt and lengthen them. Each word in the lexicon of female fitness has shared a common goal: to encourage a woman to become smaller, sleeker, more contained, more acceptably packaged for society. 

The culture is shifting—and fast. A growing number of women, myself among them, are doing what the mainstream fitness language does not typically promote: we are building our bodies.

I started lifting weights nearly a year ago, after decades inside the lengthening/toning/sculpting ecosystem. Since picking up the dumbbells, I’ve noticed a shift that goes far beyond my body. The act of building, which I define as the choice to grow a body, has rewired how I move through every domain of my life. And in conversations with women across different lifestyles, ages and locations, I keep hearing the same thing. 

Building is a fitness goal, sure, but the terminology comes with meaning. To build is to grow, like a flower moves towards the sunlight. It’s the opposite of wilting, of staying smaller in the shadows. Building is intentionally saying, “I am going to take up space here”—physically, emotionally, or energetically. It demands agency, control, and durability. 

To understand what women are growing toward, it helps to understand what we are moving away from. The vocabulary of female fitness has been pretty consistent for decades. It is the vocabulary of subtraction; of scarcity. Think: losing weight, dropping inches and shedding fat; so-called ‘problem areas’ are melted away. 

"These words treat the body like a device,” says Lily Sperry, the writer behind the popular Health Gossip Substack. “It’s as if you are operating on and tuning a machine." Emma Bowen, a 47-year-old yoga instructor in Brooklyn who came to lifting after an injury in her mid-forties, says this language has an emotional impact. "It scares women into thinking that there is one way to look feminine, and if you don't achieve it, you have failed."

This framing is not accidental, because it is derived from a multi-billion dollar industry that depends on women chasing an unrealistic ideal. The author Chloe Happe, who took up Olympic weightlifting in the New Mexico desert last year as a complete beginner, puts it plainly: "The fitness industry has no interest in marketing 'strong' to women, because strong implies strength of character as well as strength of the body. True strength is bad for business." In other words, a woman with a growth mindset, who uses her body as a means to construct her own agency, has no need for the latest marketing message.

Strength training often starts with a specific goal that is often aesthetic: Instagram posts documenting women 40+ looking stronger and more toned than ever are a persuasive sell. What often happens for women, as I realized myself, is that that goal swiftly switches to something more profound. Strength training rewires our brains as women. We stop accepting being shaped by others and start shaping our own lives. That's because building is intentional. It is regenerative. It is something you actively do, with sustained effort over months and years, to produce something new in the world. 

The women who have committed to building their bodies describe the shift in remarkably consistent terms. Happe notes she has expanded her confidence, her creativity, and the love she is able to give, both to herself and others. It’s a new kind of selfhood that is the true foundation of empowerment. She says it’s altered her aura. “Before lifting, my energetic field was small, shrinking, caving in on itself. I'd slink into the back of the room at parties.” No more. 

For others, the idea of building is futureproofing and foundational. Sperry says it means being capable. It connects who she currently is to the woman she wants to be—someone who can keep up on a long hike, who can come to the rescue in an emergency, who can carry her own life independently. Underneath capability sits something more primal: safety. "I move through the world feeling safer and more prepared for whatever situations might come up," she says. 

Since starting weight-lifting, I have come to learn that I can do hard things because I do them 3x a week with dumbbells. Moreover, I truly respect my body. I support it to ensure I can show up with energy and stability. I feed my body well, with pleasure and gusto. I take serious rest days and enjoy them. I aim to grow my body rather than keep it small. 

That’s not to say there aren’t growing pains, literally. There is a transition period where your body changes and it feels odd and uncomfortable. You have to go up a size in clothing because you now have glutes and hamstrings and a beautiful set of shoulders. Before long, you learn to love it. It becomes a reflection of hard work, courage, resilience, self-sufficiency, and strength. That growth makes you feel pride. Once a woman has started the act of building, that growth mindset extends into every domain of her life. 

Happe used to avoid confrontation and tended toward people-pleasing behavior. "Instead of adapting myself to situations, I assert myself into them—I am no longer ashamed of my desires," she says. For me, building muscle has eliminated the impulse to shrink to fit into spaces that are too small for what I am actually capable of. Life becomes much more fun when you leave yourself room to grow.

This is part of a broader cultural movement happening among women. Women are coming to strength training in their 40s exactly as their hormones are changing. It’s at this point where society previously rendered women invisible. “As we enter perimenopause… our role in society is meant to shift to that of the wise elder,” says Bowen. Today’s menopausal women have a new collective manifesto: momentum in strength. 

The women picking up dumbbells right now are no longer accepting what society has decided for us. In the process, we are discovering that there is no ceiling on what we are capable of becoming.