Four years after becoming a nationally competitive weightlifter, Samantha Wright shares at Ravishly.com how some of her fans and supporters are way off base by calling her the “cutest weightlifter.”
“Buzzfeed compared me to a certain Caucasian rapper, and Pop Hangover declared me the ‘Cutest Weightlifter,’” she writes in her Ravishly essay. Not cool.
Behind the pairing of those words, “cutest” and “weightlifter,” lies an implicit irony, an irony intended to juxtapose mental images that render the qualities of daintiness beside that of brutishness. Contrary to that implication, the qualities, beauty and strength, are not antithetic. They are harmonious.
Through the centuries, women have battled discriminatory social norms, antiquated laws, and oppressive counterparts. We’ve won fights for suffrage, marriage and dating liberties, the right to work, equal compensation, and the honor of serving next to our brothers. With each conquest, we have shattered a piece of our self-diminishing societal conditioning, and have begun to embrace our beauty, knowledge, ability, power, and strength.”
Samantha Wright is a former gynmast turned nationally competitive weightlifter from Philadelphia who now resides in Arizona.