Why are most people, both men and women, stunned to see a woman with a very muscular body?
For thousands of years we have been accustomed to the idea of a powerful and dashing male body, while the female one alternated between a shapeliness synonymous with wealth and fertility and a frail thinness enhancing by counterpoint the physical superiority of man.
Either way, muscles were banned from the standards of feminine beauty, remaining a male prerogative to hunt, fight and work. Things have started to change with the progressive emancipation of women in the last century, and in the late 1970s bodybuilding had become a phenomenon more and more widespread even among women.
Yet the question that, even today, all people outside that world seem to ask themselves remains the same: Why? Why should a woman attempt to emulate a type of physique that does not belong to her?
I too asked myself this and many other questions before I started this project; I tried to document myself and talked to the girls I photographed to understand what had led them to make such a drastic choice.
This way I discovered some incredible people. Theirs is a path paved with sacrifices and continuous renunciation, which they pursue through
determination which also seems to be a liberation from that macho vision that considers women incapable of reaching the same levels as men, and therefore relegates them in circumscribed environments and roles.
A syllogism that, starting with the superior physical strength of the male, comes to determine that same gender superiority in any other field.
Their self-care and dedication reminded me of women in the 1950s/60s, with the radical difference that at the time, attention to one’s image was meant to please mainly the male universe, while today it seems to be challenging it.
Hence the idea of reworking the stereotypes of 1950s/60s iconography, based on a domesticated female beauty, eternally smiling and dedicated to the care of the hearth, where, however, the performers are strong and tough women who become protagonists of their lives, redefining their role in the community.
