Caitlin Clark's biceps and the bigger conversation around women and muscles

Yahoo

a day ago

Thanks to a strain that's left her sidelined for weeks, all eyes are on Caitlin Clark's quad right now. But it's the Indiana Fever star's arms that had people talking in the days leading up to her second WNBA season.
It all started in March, when 23-year-old Clark was photographed cheering on her alma mater, the Iowa Hawkeyes, during the NCAA Big Ten tournament. 'Okkkkk hello arms!' one commenter wrote, adding a flexed bicep emoji in reaction to the point guard's noticeably muscular appearance.
Those muscles were on display when Clark's team photo was released in early May, prompting side-by-side comparisons to her 2024 physique. According to Clark herself, she's been intentionally bulking up since last year. 'I try to put on some weight and I've been working hard in the weight room,' she told reporters in August.
That ramped up in the offseason, per the Fever's head athletic performance coach, Sarah Kessler, who told ESPN that Clark was in the weight room four to five times a week. Cue the toned courtside pic that got tongues wagging in March — and a lot of body discourse that not everyone is comfortable with.
'Speculating about women's bodies generally and speculation of women athletes' bodies is not new,' Michelle Manno, a sociologist, associate provost for community enrichment at Northwestern University and the author of Denied: Women, Sports and the Contradictions of Identity, tells Yahoo Life. 'What stands out as new to me in this case is that the speculation is positive. … For the most part, we're seeing people applauding [Clark's] effort to get stronger and gain muscles between seasons.'
Indeed, adjectives like 'beautiful' have been used alongside 'jacked' and 'ripped' as commenters weigh in on Clark's muscles. One X user hailed her as having the 'peak female athlete form,' while an Instagram commenter wrote, 'Girl you show off those muscles. You worked hard on those. Lookin' great.'
According to Mikala Jamison, author of the newsletter Body Type, those compliments are a sign of evolving standards. 'It's hard to overstate how much conversations about women and their musculature has changed,' she tells Yahoo Life.
She references a survey done by writer Leigh Peele in 2009 (which Jamison wrote about in 2022) in which 2,000 women were polled on their views about weightlifting and the attractiveness of muscles. The majority of those surveyed indicated that they didn't like the look of muscles on their own bodies and figured men didn't find it attractive either. A majority also said they'd rather be 'too thin than either too fat or too muscular,' and when asked which female celebrity exemplified the 'muscular/bulky' look, many chose Hilary Swank (43%) and Jessica Biel (36%).
'There was this sense that any shade of muscularity on a woman's body wasn't something that, at least per this survey, was desired by a lot of women. And there are a thousand reasons for that in the culture and in media messaging,' says Jamison. 'But that has definitely changed over the years, and you see that in things like more women strength training regularly than ever before.'
A growing interest in lifting weights, eating more protein and paying more attention to the benefits of building muscle has roots in conversations about menopause and aging. However, the reaction to Clark's body in particular seems to be an indication that the positive messaging about stronger bodies could be reaching and influencing younger women as well.
The focus on Clark's muscles follows a general shift in gears in terms of how female athletes — and their bodies — are being discussed.
'People were talking about this a lot during the [2024] Olympics with Ilona Maher,' says Jamison, referring to the U.S. women's rugby player who won bronze in Paris last summer. 'She was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and she's not a super-slender, super-skinny woman. She's very muscular.'
After nabbing the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit digital cover last fall, Maher donned a bikini again to pose for the pages of the magazine's recently released 2025 print issue, which quotes her as saying, 'I hope people see my photos and understand that strength can be so beautiful and so feminine.' The latest issue has won praise for featuring various female athletes, including fellow Olympians Jordan Chiles and Gabby Thomas. 'How different my and many other women's lives would be if these strong bodies were the center of attention when I was growing up,' one fan commented.
'If you see more different types, sizes and shapes of bodies, it gives any person who is seeing those body types an understanding that there are many different ways that your body could look, or maybe that you want your body to look like,' Jamison points out.
But even still, who people praise is dependent on certain standards. 'If I think about athletes like Serena Williams or Brittney Griner, the commentary around their bodies throughout the course of their careers has been pretty uniformly negative,' says Manno. 'So when I see what's happening with Caitlin Clark, I have to think that her race and her gender expression' — i.e., being a white, straight woman — 'are really helping her in this moment.'
At the end of the day, the beauty standard for any and all women continues to be a tight line to walk, especially for those in sports, according to Manno. 'A lot of women athletes still navigate this very strong tension between wanting to be strong, wanting to do the things that they need to do to excel at their sport and still be accepted societally as looking, quote-unquote, appropriately feminine enough,' she says.