Maria Popova at BrainPickings.org has written a splendid piece on “Venus with Biceps: A Pictorial History of Muscular Women” by David L. Chapman and Patricia Vertinsky. The book itself is an exhaustive collection of images and commentary, spanning nearly 200 years of female physical strength and society’s varied reactions to it:

“There is something profoundly upsetting about a proud, confident, unrepentantly muscular woman. She risks being seen by her viewers as dangerous, alluring, odd, beautiful or, at worst, a sort of raree show. She is, in fact, a smorgasbord of mixed messages. This inability to come to grips with a strong, heavily muscled woman accounts for much of the confusion and downright hostility that often greets her.” David L. Chapman

“The ambivalence about women and muscularity has a long history, as it pushes at the limits of gender identity. Images of muscular women are disconcerting, even threatening. They disrupt the equation of men with strength and women with weakness that underpins gender roles and power relations.” Patricia Vertinsky

Click here to see the article itself, many wonderful pictures, and an amazing 1901 video of a female circus performer “disrobing” on a trapeze.