Scrolling through your facebook, twitter, or instagram feed you are constantly exposed to images of various women and slogans depicting qualities that “real women” possess. 
Real women have curves.  Real women have muscles.  Real women have tattoos.  Real women lift heavy.  Real women wear heels.  Real women satisfy their men and make them sandwiches, real women BLAH BLAH BLAH, the list goes on for days! These slogans have the ability to both empower and degrade.  If you are in fact a woman with tattoos then you feel amazing, strong, and beautiful.  If not, are you somehow less?  Are you lacking?  If you aren’t tattooed and therefore aren’t a “real” woman, then what does that make you? 

I haven’t always been fit.  With the exception of three years of volleyball in high school, I didn’t grow up playing sports.  I was more of a bookworm.  I hated gym class in school.  Running around the track, and the various sports, it was torture for my uncoordinated, teenage self.  The only section of gym class I ever remember really loving was the weight lifting.  Those were my favorite few weeks of the semester.  After high school I got into weight lifting a little more… however it didn’t last.  Much of my twenties were spent in more of a party mode.  Going out to eat, parties, barbecues, and more.  We were young, and oblivious, and invincible!