Today’s guest post comes from Kellie Hart Davis, a name familiar to many regular readers. Kellie is a lot like me in spirit, only smarter and more attractive. She’s a copy editor and a prolific health and fitness writer, so she can tell the difference between an independent and a dependent clause, while I’m known for run‑on sentences. Still, we both love lifting heavy things and encouraging women around the world to do the same.
This post serves as a companion to last week’s piece by Emily Socolinsky, and while it can stand on its own, I’d recommend reading Emily’s article first if you missed it.
WHY WE ARE THE EVEN WEAKER SEX
As a kid, I didn’t spend much time thinking about how my grandmother lived. Now I find the idea fascinating—how she managed so much every day without ever labeling the work as such.
Her husband died the year I was born. She kept a modest three‑bedroom home and a backyard garden that could rival Martha Stewart’s. Her garden stretched 20 by 5 meters and included fruit trees—apple, cherry, plum, and apricot—along with berry bushes and other edible plants.
Downstairs, she stored the harvest in jars, jams, pickled vegetables, and sauces she’d made by hand. The freezer held prepped vegetables, potatoes, and meat for winter.
And this was just a hobby. She worked at Colorado State University every day until she retired at 66. Until her late fifties she rode her bike to the printing press on campus, weather permitting. Fort Collins isn’t flat; that ride wasn’t easy.
I remember days when my aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered at Granny’s for harvest. The women sat in lawn chairs shelling corn and beans for dinner, while the kids picked cherries from the trees and the men pruned bushes.
That was her life for 70 years. She was as strong as an ox, but she never talked about it. She didn’t describe how she built her back muscles by tilling soil or how she cut back on carbs in winter when she was less active.
She didn’t think about dieting. But she ate Clean Eating™. Tosca Reno would be proud. Granny wasn’t very muscular; she was rail‑thin, still almost primal in her ways.
Today’s women may have more luxuries than the women of the past did. When my dad was a kid they lived on a farm with no running water in the plains of Nebraska. They had to walk to the outhouse in the dark and milk their cows. By the time I was a kid, Granny had a washer and dryer, a vacuum, running water, a dishwasher, and many of the same conveniences we have. So she wasn’t fully primal, either.
I don’t think it’s fear of getting bulky or eating too much that sends modern women to the couch with their iPhones for daily macro updates. It’s a deeper fear of everything.
WE ARE A SOCIETY SCARED OF ALMOST EVERYTHING
We fear injury, disease, germs, dirt, crime, being hit by cars, concussions, aging, and a host of other worries—whether real or imagined. We worry so much about what could go wrong that we end up immobilized. It’s easier to text and plan than to actually do something.
That’s the generational difference. Our grandmothers acted on instinct, doing what had to be done to live. Today, the female mind often shifts to making choices. We must choose to be active and to eat well, but instincts for movement and nourishment have faded as life becomes a prepackaged, automated experience.
It’s time to turn off that automation. It’s time to reach into our core and pull out the instincts that tell us to move and to eat in a way our bodies were designed to. Whether you pick up a barbell or plant an orchard, be present in your daily life.
Presence means tuning out things that aren’t truly happening and tuning in to what surrounds you. It may sound old‑fashioned, but it matters.
Back to faddy diets and fears that muscles aren’t feminine: these fears have left modern women weaker. If you don’t want to deadlift or eat skirt steak, that’s fine. You don’t have to do those things. But don’t let fear freeze you either. Look at where that fear can land you—in the headlines about not even whisking an egg without harming yourself.
Is that the legacy you want your granddaughter to read about online 30 years from now? I’m not pointing fingers. I’m guilty too of times when I wasn’t fully present. I’ve spent too many moments staring at a screen or binging a show instead of living. I’m writing to spark change in all of us, including myself. May we reclaim the skills our grandmothers tried to teach: pride in our homes, our bodies, and our lives. If we own them, strength will always be sexy.
AUTHOR’S BIO
Kellie Davis is a freelance writer and blogger turned fitness coach living in Northern California. She has published fiction and essays in books and magazines before moving into health and fitness writing full time. She writes for online fitness publications including Greatist and Bodybuilding.com, and also runs corporate health blogs. She helps women worldwide achieve optimal health as a fitness and nutrition coach, runs MotherFitness, is the co‑owner of Get Glutes, and co‑authored Strong Curves: A Woman’s Guide to Building a Better Butt and Body with Bret Contreras, due out April 2.
