Strong is the new skinny

Strong is the new skinny or so I've been told but I'm not entirely sure I buy into it.  Are you familiar with fitspiration ? It's fitness inspiration mostly in photo form and it's all over the internet if you care to go looking for it. Throughout my teens and twenties I used to look at models and celebrities with their airbrushed bodies and wish I could look like them not seeing the airbrushing but only the ideals I could never hope to meet especially because I ate whatever I wanted and didn't have an exercise regime as such.

 In the intervening years I've grown up a lot and actually started to take care of myself (clean eating and crossfit) and now fitspiration is kind of my thing. That is not to say to that I am one of the few posting weight loss and progress photos to a band of loyal followers because that would feel weird and attention seeking. I could however happily while away several hours trawling fitspiration photos online and I'm such a sucker for the ones with motivational sayings or perhaps I'm just a sucker full stop. 

 Now I will admit I stopped following a girls who crossfit group on twitter because I soon realized that it was some ploy to show half naked women allegedly crossfitting but to the untrained eye it often looked a lot like they were standing beside barbells looking mildly sweaty or there was one photo that actually made me laugh out loud. It was a girl in training gear/underwear (depending on how you look at it) with her hands all chalky pointing at some rings and it was captioned muscle ups. Now I could do that no bother but I couldnt do a muscle up to save my life so I took issue with that.

 Recently I read another blog post about the damaging effect that some of these fitspiration pictures can have and the message they are really sending and it kind of hit a chord with me. 
Strong is the new skinny gets bandied about a lot but it doesn't mean what you think. When I first heard it I thought it's a great sentiment and it means that we can stop battling to be the thinnest or obsessing over how we look but start celebrating what our bodies are actually capable of. If you really look at the photos that accompany this motivational saying you will notice almost all of the women have one thing in common, they are skinny, skinny bitches and often half dressed. So really it's not telling us that strong is the new skinny because if that was true these pictures would be celebrating genuinely strong women regardless of their body shapes. Ironically even as I say this I know that I am looking to be strong and skinny at the same time minus the desire to prance about the gym half dressed.

 But what it has showed me that fitspiration isn't the great thing I had built it up to be. Instead of yourself up for not being skinny enough you can feel bad that you don't look like a fitness model and I'm sure half the time those images are airbrushed to shit and that fitness model doesn't even look like that. It's just another unrealistic Ideal to strive towards.

 I'm not saying I'm going to cut out my little fitspiration habit but I will cut back and I've already gained some perspective. Like the photo above, why is she wearing knickers and a belly top, where is she off to ? bed I should hope. 

 I think that strong might just be the new skinny even if the world of fitspiration isn't ready to truly embrace it yet. 

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