“Holding Back”: Negotiating a Glass Ceiling on Women's Muscular Strength

Abstract

Researchers have highlighted how numerous women in male-dominated occupations face a glass ceiling. Using ethnography and interview work, I argue that this ceiling is also useful to understanding women in fitness. That is, women in fitness—particularly those who seek muscular strength in the weight room—may find their bodily agency limited not by biology but by ideologies of emphasized femininity that structure the upper limit on women's “success.” Results show that nonlifters and moderate lifters uniquely negotiate the glass ceiling by avoiding, holding back on, or adjusting weight workouts. I consider what forces aid women in forging new definitions of emphasized femininity that push upward on a glass ceiling on muscularity over time. As women increasingly flock to fitness sites, daring to cross into the previously male-only territory of the weight room, we must ask whether a contained and “held back” musculature for women is now the (heterosexy) standard that simultaneously creates “new” womanhood as it re-creates “true” womanhood.