Plague of Strength

Q: Going back to the topic of muscular chicks in popular culture, I was recently compiling info on a Baddest Motherfuckers for the wrestler Chyna.  My process for selecting those people is basically that they have to be interesting as hell and badass lifters, rather than people who just put up big numbers.  If all they do is train, I don’t really give a fuck if they live or die, because life’s too fucking short to be boring. In any event, writing about women is difficult for me because they’re either interesting or badass lifters, by and large.  And even when they’re both, the entire conversation about them as humans is whether or not dudes would fuck them, whether they’re too big to be sexy, or whatever. On the other hand, you’ve got broads all over the internet who are promoting this whole “Strong is Sexy” thing, which aggravates me because it smacks of insecurity.  Like the fat acceptance movement (if you’re hot, you generally don’t have to scream it at people), or the chicks on IG who write screeds about how they don’t care what other people think because they love their body (if they didn’t care, they wouldn’t even think to write that stupid horseshit), or the idiots who yammer on about their love for their SO on Facebook (which to me looks a lot like a cover for a dogshit relationship or a red flag for cheating).

Where I’m going with this is that it’s fucking ridiculous any of that shit exists in the lifting community, because dudes who lift should respect the physiques and efforts of chick lifters without any prompting.  And who fucking cares what normies think, anyway? They’re all just fucking around on social media while waiting for the sweet release of death anyway. I’ve never fetishized jacked chicks because they’re just the chicks I date and hang out with.  It’s not like male Harvard profs are out there fetishizing chicks with high IQs, because that’s their norm.

In any event, I’d like your take on all of this bullshit, because I feel like the old man on the Simpsons screaming at the fucking clouds again.  If our scene weren’t overrun with posers, bullshit artists, and dudes who couldn’t get laid with a $100 hanging out of their fly, none of that bullshit would be necessary. Your thoughts?

A:   Buckle up, dissertation time -cracks knuckles-

First and foremost, I think that this “strong is sexy” message is coming from a few different places, some opportunistic and simply about commercialism, and some as pushback against the dominant narrative of acceptable expressions of female bodies and sexuality.

Just speaking from personal experience, I didn’t start lifting or hanging out with lifters until my mid twenties, so I spent my formative psychological years just as enmeshed in the toxic mainstream as anyone. And in the mainstream,there has been, for a long time, the pervasive message that “tiny is best!” And being large in way essentially makes you an unfuckable and unloveable beast. This is obviously untrue, and fucked up. Lots of people like lots of different types of bodies, but when you grow up surrounded by other impressionable young people, all of whom are holding themselves to this unconsciously absorbed impossible standard, it really fucks with you, man or woman, but you don’t learn this until you actually start dating as an adult, but by then the psychological damage is already done.

It’s normal to worry about if people find you fuckable, and plenty of people get into fitness just to change aesthetically, often to lose weight, lean out, etc, because we are group animals and even outside of dating, it’s normal to care about one’s appearance. For many women just getting into serious lifting, I’m sure it’s pretty common to have some lingering reservations about getting very muscular and whether her sexual value will change; or of course her own taste for her own body(more on that in a sec). It’s a normal fear, especially if it’s being perpetuated by insecure people around her.  Once you’ve become enmeshed in the strength world, are strong as fuck and enjoy all the perks therein, you probably stop caring as much. I know I care wayyyyy less, but just because you are so different, you still notice, and there may still be some part of you worries about your attractiveness. I occasionally have days where I catch my reflection and I just think “fuck, I look scary!” That is usually followed by the smugness I get from knowing that some other people may have that reaction, and then I laugh, knowing I could crush their dainty skulls into dust if I was so inclined, which is a wild thought, because many women have NEVER experienced  real physical power before, and boy is it a trip. This also likely plays back into people’s various reactions: in the monoculture mainstream, for a long time, women’s first value was as sexy, and that was usually not interpreted as powerful or strong.

Anyway, getting back to my point, even/especially an experienced female lifter is still getting this message of “you’re gross!” and it can certainly wear you down. So I do think a little of the “strong is sexy” thing is genuinely for and by female lifters who are sick of being told by the mainstream that they should be waifish and are looking to genuinely celebrate their bodies and femininity. Also, even though I’ve always liked visible muscle on all genders, having my body change fairly rapidly over the course of a few years into something I was told by the monoculture was too masculine or whatever, can in itself be a weird thing to process as you go through it; regardless of how positively you view it. I know some female lifters who don’t really want to get too much more muscular, but are like “well this is the price for being as strong as I want to be, and my performance is the most important.” It’s important to keep in mind that some women just want to be really strong and aren’t crazy about the aesthetic; the aesthetic just comes with the territory so they embrace it, but what they look like isn’t of main importance, and on that note…

This is still a discussion of “is she sexy?” And frankly when it comes to my sport, it does not fucking matter, and it is hugely insulting to athletes to constantly scrutinize their sexual attractiveness. I was at the fucking ARNOLD once and a male announcer kept saying “these beautiful strongwomen, these sexy girls!” And it blew my mind. This was at a strength competition at THE strength expo, by someone who I assume must have a decent amount of exposure to strength sports and athletes. So yeah, we shouldn’t care what the general population thinks, but when people in your own sport are reinforcing that your appearance and value as a sexual product is the most important aspect of your participation as athlete, it disgusts you. And because stuff like this is still rampant, I get annoyed by the “strong is sexy” thing sometimes, because it misses the point of performance. At the same time, we all deserve to celebrate our bodies and sexuality and also still be taken seriously as athletes. Those things do not need to be mutually exclusive (in general I think Americans have some twisted ass views of sexuality in general THANKS PURITANS).

Again, I understand why people care about being sexy; hell, I know I do – there’s lots of reasons(cultural, social,instinctual, etc) to think about it. But when it is brought up to me as an athlete , it is so goddamn frustrating. The way I look is directly a result of the training I do to be good at my sport. That is what is important to me, and asking a female athlete something to the effect of “but don’t you do X and Y to look a certain way?” is denigrating of our efforts, to put it mildly.

Q: I don’t think there’s a single person who’s gotten into lifting and not had at least an iota of an intent for making themselves more fuckable- we’re a horny bunch of primates.  Bearing that in mind, saying someone is sexy who’s jacked pretty much goes without saying. It’s not like they’re saying that stupid shit at the Crossfit Games, because everyone in the crowd has towels in their laps to hide their frantic masturbation, haha.  To anyone who doesn’t understand the Kinsey Scale I simply say, watch the fucking Crossfit Games- you’ll find someone of every conceivable gender you want to fuck. In short, the “look at these sexy lady lifters” shit needs to stop, because it makes the strength scene look weak, backwards, and weirdly desperate.

With that rant at an end, what lifters inspire you the most?  I can use some ideas for future articles, and that always interests me.  Can be dudes or chicks- I don’t care which, though if you throw Janae Kroc in there I’ll enjoy the thousands of screams coming from the direction of Reddit and 4Chan.

A:  Hah, well, speaking of Crossfit, I’d be remiss to not shout-out Annie Thorisdottir; she was one of the first women in strength sports I really became aware of; she looked the way I wanted to look and her abilities just blew me away – a total package bad bitch, she was immediately an inspiration. I met her at the event I attempted the 160 ft Farmers Carry at; she was super nice and told me “That was amazing” even though I failed miserably both attempts, so that was a pretty validating experience on multiple levels, haha.

Liefia Ingalls is hands-down one of my favorite people in strength sports. She’s literally one of the strongest women to ever exist to our knowledge, and she just keeps breaking records. For many women, this has the effect of breaking down mental barriers by showing them what’s possible and elevating ideas of what “women’s strength” can be. She’s also incredibly intelligent, an excellent coach, and a very thoughtful person; I’ve hung out with her on a few occasions at competitions and always been impressed by her intellect and wit. She and her boyfriend Chris Burke are both total work horse freaks as lifters, thoughtful coaches, enormous geeks, and I love them.

Andy Triana, my coach, is another – he’s just a maniac in the gym, he isn’t afraid to try really bizarre shit because he’s concocted a training scenario in which it will pay off. He’s not just creative in his application of his impressive understanding of human physiology, but he gets fucking results, and is like the living embodiment of “growth mindset.” He’s got more enthusiasm than almost anyone I’ve ever met, and honest enthusiasm for the things you love is a highly commendable quality in my book.

There’s also this guy, DJ Murakami, who I recently started following on IG (@strongcamps); I’ve been digging his videos a lot. He’s into unconventional/old-timey inspired lifting, as well as what I believe is energy manipulation oriented work through the lens of building muscular/body control. He’s got a ton of online stuff with something called the Online Movement University I’ve been meaning to dig into. He seems to have a pretty spiritual view of what movement and training can do for us, which I dig. A quote I loved from a recent post of his is, “There are no magical exercises, but you can learn to conjure magic through exercise.” I think he and Bud Jeffries have worked together on some of the OMU stuff, if the IG tags I’ve seen are accurate indicators.

Q: On a wholly unrelated note, I keep getting asked for my opinions on psychedelics and weed, in spite of the fact I am not into either.  I’ll party occasionally, but neither of those things scream party to me. You, on the other hand, are into psychedelics for therapeutic reasons, and I assume for fun as well.  I’m not Joe Rogan and I’ve never had a subscription to High Times, so I really couldn’t be bothered to research it.  The sum total of my drug input is that coke is performance enhancing if you don’t go full Lindsey Lohan with it, and it pairs nicely with exogenous testosterone [I am not telling anyone to do it, however, for it is illegal and its use by others makes Republicans incredibly angry, judicious, litigious, and trigger-happy].   

Have any thoughts on weed or psychadelics to share?

A; Hahah, coke is one drug I never need to try; I love caffeine too much as it is. I don’t need to be more “up.”  Disclosure/warning; I am not telling anyone that they should go and do any unknown substance; I can only talk about my personal experience, what it did for me, and how that has affected my view of these drugs/medicines/plants. Context: my family has a history of mental health woes; we are of the melancholic Celtic stock for the most part. I started developing anxiety in high school that expressed itself as panic attacks; that continued to college, where I also developed depression, which got worse when I got out of college. 2010-2013 was really dark and while I never self-harmed or attempted suicide; I won’t say those things never crossed my mind. I went to therapy in 2013, that helped a decent amount and I got semi-stable. I was leery of anti-depressants. It seemed that there was so much I could do better as a baseline to improve my life that it made sense to me to fix those things first and then see what happened. Maybe I would have felt better sooner if I had gotten a doctor-prescribed drug, I’m not saying I’m against it; that’s just not what I did. My instincts said don’t, so I didn’t.

Around ceasing therapy for financial reasons, I was able to get out of bartending and start foraying into fitness with a front desk gym job, which led to becoming a trainer. I spent 2014 focusing on learning how to lift, getting strong, and the effects on my mental state were incredible. By the time I tried psilocybin (mushrooms) for the first time, I had done a ton of work on myself internally and externally in journaling, lifting, therapy, and was really changing things for myself in a positive way. I still had pretty intense anxiety, but the immobilization of depression was leaving slowly; although I would still get oppressive bouts of it.

In early 2015, I had my first psilocybin (mushroom) experience. As far as psychedelics go, I have only used mushrooms, so I can’t speak to ayahuasca or DMT or anything, they’re very different plants, and they have different effects. Mushrooms even will not have the same effect on any given person even in the same dose on very similar individuals. It interacts with your unique consciousness and it is not predictable. For anyone curious about this stuff, go read or listen to Paul Stamets (the guy literally wears a hat that IS a mushroom and he’s likely one of the most knowledgeable sources on the planet for all things fungi); the organization MAPS also a ton of research easily available on their website.

There is a lot of discussion happening about the chemical actions of mushrooms and what they can do in terms of healing mental health issues. Obviously the physical action is important, but so is the experience itself, and the setting, people and mindset I brought to my experiences has always been critical.

My first experience was in a shamanic setting guided by trusted friends. I had worked to put myself in a receptive and healing physical and mental state. The experience was nothing short of wonderful. The immediate and fairly long lasting emotional effects were of releasing the tension I always carried, and feeling deep connectedness to all life itself. I felt like I realized that my physical form was a temporary gift that I got to do with as I wished, and that my me-ness/consciousness was vast, powerful and deeply loving. It was deep existential relief that everything would be okay. In my life I noticed a deep overall change of not getting caught in negative thought spirals as often or as intensely. It was hands down one of, if not the single most important things I’ve ever done for my mental health and it enabled very productive work on myself as well as pure enjoyment of existence itself. I would also say it opened me up further to the idea that my body was simply much more powerful and full of potential than I’d ever realized.

Q: That was a much better reasoned and insightful response than I ever would have imagined.  Most of the people I know into psychedelics are just trying to find different pseudo-intellectual ways to say “I wanna get fucked in half.”  I’ve no love for the pharmaceutical industry and an open mind regarding alternative therapies though, so this is a very fresh take on treating issues with which I would imagine a lot of people deal.  Hopefully, that information will open up some doors that don’t involve going full white trash and snorting oxys or some shit. And as for coke, yeah, you’d probably hate it- it’s basically like super caffeine, if caffeine made you so horny it feels like you’re transforming into a cartoon rapist in front of everyone’s eyes, haha.

Up next, we’ll have the last part of the interview, which covers training, diet, and some random shit. In the meantime, if you want to contact Cara, she’s on IG and like her Asher page on FB.

Liked it? Take a second to support Jamie Chaos on Patreon!