If you’ve been glued to the Olympic Games coverage like I have (at least when I’m not too annoyed about NBC’s tape-delayed coverage), you’ve probably heard that, for the first time, women on Team USA outnumber men.
Team USA women competing in the 2012 London Games are showing the world one of the best displays of pure Girl Power!
These ladies are beautiful, strong, confident and dominant while exhibiting great sportsmanship, humility and graciousness.
Thank you, Team USA ladies! You represent us all well.
What I hope every woman gets out of these Olympic Games is that everyone should dream big and that being Strong is beautiful!
Strong, powerful bodies are a much healthier aspiration for women. Strength training helps keep your metabolism high while keeping your heart, bones and joints healthy. Being stronger also provides a boost in self-confidence that many girls and women need.
Who wants to be the old woman in the commercial saying, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”? I know I don’t, and I think about that every time I have burpees in a workout. I figure with all the thousands of burpees I’ve done, I should have enough muscle memory to get myself up off the floor no matter what!
Skinny is Not Healthy
Starving yourself to be a size 0, 2 or 4 is a losing proposition because is causes your metabolism to slow down and as you shrink, you lose additional muscle mass, which leaves you eating fewer and fewer calories to sustain your weight. On the other hand, being muscular boosts your metabolism so your body burns more calories 24/7.
Let’s all think “Strong is the New Skinny” and “Strong is the New Sexy.”
In addition, I urge every women who reads this to send it to other female friends, as reports say that top female athletes fall well below their male counterparts in endorsement deals. With all our ladies headed back to the US in the next couple weeks with major hardware, let’s all let the brands that we buy know that we want to see these ladies endorsing their products.
I want to see Missy Franklin or Dana Vollmer in a Visa ad instead of Ryan Lochte or Michael Phelps.
How many cereal boxes have had women on them? Not that many. I’d like to see the women’s 8 crew on a box of the Post, General Mills or Kellogg’s cereal. If you put them on there, I promise I’ll buy it.
Research shows women now purchase or influence 85 percent of all brand purchases, so if we tell brands what we want to see on their packages and in their ads, they’re respond. I, for one, would buy products that supported female athletes and Olympians.
Marketers seem to believe that we don’t want to see our female Olympians pitching their products and they continue to have male Olympians as the face of their brands. I guess they like weak, frail, women in their ads or strong men.
Girl Power can change this. Let’s start now. Put a note on all the Facebook pages of brands whose products you buy telling them that you want to see more female Olympians endorsing their products. Marketers need to get the memo that Strong is the New Skinny!
–Julie Upton, MS, RD, CSSD
