What Do Men Think of Your Body? On the Challenges of being an Olympic Weightlifter
Katie Rose Hejtmanek
He stares as he approaches me. It is past 10 pm. I live in New York City and I am on high alert as I walk home, alone. As he passes me on the sidewalk he asks, “What do men think of your body?”
What do men think of my body? I’m muscular. My shoulders are defined, capped off. My arms are defined; you can see my biceps and triceps clearly. My legs are muscular, well-defined and thick.
“You look strong,” he continues. I think this means I look tough, a woman you might think twice about messing with. In a world where women are raped on a mere whim, I hope this is what he meant. But he messes with me anyway. What do men think of your body? As a woman, I find myself defined by this question, really. What do men think of my body? Do they find me attractive? Am I attractive enough so that they hit on me/ask me out/make me their girlfriend/marry me? A woman’s social worth has been defined by what men think of her body. This man is not sure what men might think of my body.
My art is to build my body into a strong, explosive machine. I am a weightlifter. I spend my days practicing three movements - the snatch, the clean, and the jerk. These movements are combined into a sport called Olympic weightlifting that includes two lifts, the snatch, and the clean and jerk. In order to perform feats of strength on a platform in front of judges, in uniform, and in competition with others, I must train my body to be strong, fast and stable.
Training and Performance: The Sport of Weightlifting
Building and Training My Body
I train four days a week. Typically, I warm up and then spend an hour snatching. I have been learning to hang snatch, snatch from blocks, and to snatch from the floor. After snatches, I move on to clean. Like with the snatches, I am learning to clean from the hang or blocks. After cleans, I practice the jerk, training my hips to move the barbell, as opposed to my upper-body. After my weightlifting technical training, I work on strength by squatting or deadlifting. I complete my training session by doing one more strength-building exercise and some kind of conditioning or cardio training. Importantly, I practice all of these movements and positions and use the various techniques— hangs or blocks— like any other weightlifter would. This is a typical weightlifting practice where technique and strength are trained through the movement of the barbell.
After practice, I sit in the sauna for thirty minutes, eat something, drink a protein shake and make sure I have enough water to replenish my system. The sauna is part of my ‘recovery’ work. Sport and high-level performance require that I not only practice my sport but also care for my body so that I can demand rigorous training of it. I sleep enough, drink enough water, rest enough, stretch, eat good food, and take supplements.
My training sessions are also important performances. I am learning the techniques of weightlifting and in order to perform perfectly during a competition, I must learn to perform well in every practice session. My body must be able to lift heavy weights as I perform my practice. All that effort, work, sweat, dedication, commitment, thoughtfulness, desire, love, and performance of a sport, my body— the body I am building to weightlift, to snatch and clean and jerk, in front of a judge, to win medals— is whittled down to “what do men think of your body?”
The Performance
My session begins at 4 pm. I must weigh in at 2 pm. I wait in line for my name to be called, Katherine? I enter the room, strip to my underwear and stand on the scale: 57.27kg. I make weight, which means I have to be under 59kg in order to be able to lift that day. “Openers?” the official asks. What will be my first attempts at the snatch and clean and jerk? 58 and 72, I respond. I will begin the competition with a 58 kg snatch.
I begin warming up at 3:15. I roll out my neck, elbows, wrists, shoulders, hips, knees and ankles. I perform a few downward dogs and hip opening movements. I stretch my hamstrings, quadriceps, and calf muscles. I begin moving the barbell a half hour before I step onto the platform, working backstage. I take the bar for three repetitions of the snatch. I slowly make my way to 50kg before we are presented to the audience at 4pm.
At 4pm, 12 women in this session parade out onto the platform and are presented. The platform is on a raised stage and lights shine down on us. There is soft music playing in the background— ambient noise. We are in our singlets, the required uniform for the sport. When our names are called, we step forward and wave at the audience and the three judges who sit on chairs in front of the platform in their blazers and official uniforms. We have 10 minutes until the first woman snatches.
Weightlifting is about lifting a weight as heavy as possible on a stage or platform in front of a judge. The judge determines if you perform the events according to standards— no movement in the elbows as the barbell is moved overhead. The athletes get one minute to perform the lift. If she receives 2 or 3 ‘white lights’— signalling the judges’ approval— she has made a ‘good lift’, and is ‘on the board’. The board displays not only the weight of the attempt, 58 kg, but the age and weight of the athlete. For me: 41 years old, 57.27kg. The two things I would want to keep safe and secret from the world as a woman— my age and weight— are displayed on a large screen for everyone to see.
I come out for my attempts in my singlet and wait to be judged on my ability to lift weight over my head with locked elbows. The 11 other women do the same. We get three chances to make a snatch and then three chances to make a clean and jerk. That’s the sport; an hour and a half for a group of athletes to walk out onto a platform and lift heavy, waiting for the judges to white-light your lift. It takes 6 minutes for each athlete. That’s it.
But as with any sport or performance, hours, weeks, months, and years of training go into the 6-minute performance. We train at the gym to learn the technique, practice the movement and to get stronger. We eat to make weight. We sleep to be able to train hard. We organize our lives so that during our session we perform to the best of our abilities and training.
What do men think of your body? The judges? Those men? Sometimes the judges are women. All of that work, training and practice and dedication and commitment and sacrifice for a sport, as an athlete is ignored: what do men think of your body?
My initial response to the man on the street was that of an artist and athlete trying to improve her performance. “I don’t care what men think of my body. I want to lift well, be strong, powerful, to perform well. My performance is my focus,” I said. But I suspect he really didn’t want that answer. He wanted something else. So I directed the question back to him, “What do you think men think of my body?”
“It’s probably difficult being a strong woman. But I like strong women,” he said. He conflates muscularity with strength; they are not the same thing. But I see why he does— he sees me as strong; he knows that most men do not like women who are strong (or muscular). He wants me to know he does. I think of my sport— the sport of being strong and explosive. In that world, the goal is to be the strongest woman that day.
It is probably difficult to be a strong woman. It isn’t just this man. Almost daily, a stranger comments on my body. The video below illustrates what it is like to go down a sidewalk as a muscular woman.
As a woman, I have always felt the male gaze. However, as a woman who doesn’t quite look like most other women, I’ve found the male gaze more intense. Men (and women) try to figure me out, single me out, and position me in a hierarchy of desirable bodies. I do not embody the ideal—
trim, lithe, bouncy— but I do not embody the undesirable either— the unkempt, too large, or boyish (Bordo 2003; Dworkin and Wachs 2009). My body is an anomaly and therefore, I believe, people comment: “I see you; I see you’re putting in the work,” as if my goal is for men to see and honour my ambition and work ethic. They read this well-cared-for body, this cultivated body, this built body, as one that is built and cultivated for them. Why else would I— a woman— put so much effort into my body?
I hear it all the time: “too much muscle makes a woman look like a man.” Off the platform, it is difficult being a strong woman. I mean this figuratively and metaphorically. Strength is a ‘masculine’ feature. Therefore, the stronger a woman is, the more she deviates from the feminine ideals, the socially appropriate way to be a woman. I hear regularly that I have the ‘right amount’ of muscle— I am not ‘manly’ in my physique but sufficiently muscular. Men and women comment on my body all the time— at the grocery store, in the gym, on the sidewalk, in the classroom. My shape challenges but upholds the performativity of gender (Butler 1993). I build and train my body to move heavyweight and to have muscles, and in doing so I challenge feminine ideals and I create discord; people comment, stare, and question. But I have not crossed the line, I still present feminine ‘enough’. I don’t look ‘like a man’.
What do men think of your body?
My body has worth insofar as men (or a man) find me attractive. My art, my performance, my sport, my lifts, my training, my desire to lift as heavy as possible, my complete and embodied dedication to weightlifting, is reduced by this man to whether he or other men, might like my body.
What's at stake?
I will continue to train in my sport and to build my body not only as an athlete but also in an act of resistance to misogyny and patriarchy and the idea that women should only look a certain way.
Misogyny is a tool of control and punishment of women who challenge male dominance or patriarchy. The rise of the body-positivity movement in the United States encourages everyone to love their bodies, regardless of what their bodies look like. This movement was first initiated for larger women to celebrate their non-conforming bodies. How were their bodies non-conforming? They did not resemble the ‘attractive’— feminine, small, thin, fit, taking-up-minimal-space— bodies (Bordo 2003; Dworkin and Wachs 2009). This movement began because of what is at stake for women in societies where the male gaze determines her worth.
What is at stake for women in these societies is their sense of self, their goals, their desires, their non-conforming practices, their ability to live comfortably in their own skin, and their ability to live life on their own terms. Is it possible to live life on your own terms? Is this itself a cultural desire cultivated in the United States where independence is valourised more than other qualities and values? What are the costs of challenging patriarchy and misogyny? As with any challenge to social norms, the costs operate as coercive mechanisms to return to the fold: policing, violent coercion and/or ostracism. Is the challenge worth it? What happens if I choose my sport? What if I develop my body, my strength, and power, my muscle mass? If I choose to adhere to a sport, if I choose not to worry about what men think of my body, I choose living my life on my own terms and social ostracism. Edging further into the realm where my focus is on how I perform my sport, will my ability to engage in serious athletic endeavours replace the judgment or desire of men? If not, will I do it anyway?
What is at stake for society? If more women challenge patriarchal norms and refuse to let misogyny dictate their art and life, perhaps we wouldn’t need a social movement to celebrate how different human bodies can look. Perhaps one day we can present and look the way we want to, confident that our ways of being and living in the world will not cause us rape, harassment, violence or cost us love, belonging or happiness. What do men think of my body? For the sake of my soul, the legacy of my children and the next generation of girls and women, I cannot and do not care.
WORKS CITED
Bordo, Susan. Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the body. Univ of California Press, 2004.
Butler, Judith. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex. routledge, 2011.
Dworkin, Shari L., and Faye Linda Wachs. Body panic: Gender, health, and the selling of fitness. NYU Press, 2009.
Katie Rose Hejtmanek is a cultural anthropologist and associate professor of anthropology and archaeology at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She is currently competing in the sprints in track and field and Olympic weightlifting, qualifying for USA Weightlifting Masters Nationals 2018 in her first meet.