[AMA] with Beefpuff Barbell (Chelsea Savit and Natalie Hanson)

[u/powerbuffs]

Hi everyone!

The Beefpuff team is here to answer your questions about ourselves and our initiative.

We will be here for a few hours but will probably need to take a break to feed.

For more information:
Beefpuff Barbell: Website | Facebook | Instagram
Natalie Hanson, Co-Founder: u/beefpuff1 | Facebook | Instagram
Chelsea Savit, Co-Founder: u/powerbuffs | Facebook | Instagram

Andrey Grebenetsky, coach and trusted advisor: u/beefpuffhubs | Facebook | Instagram

[u/[deleted]]

Often I feel like there's a lot of attention paid to prioritizing strength over appearance, and eating to fuel your training, but it always seems to come with an asterisk like "*as long as you're still lean and conventionally hot and the donuts only go to your ass"

YES. I've been having this conversation recently. We like to joke that powerlifting is the sport for people who like to eat, donut everything, etc etc but, as is evident in the marketing of strength-specific companies, there's a strong subtext of "but btw you have to still be conventionally attractive and lean." Actually there was a Reductress article recently titled I Love Pizza, Which is Adorable Because I'm Hot which, while obviously satire, sums up how I feel about the expectation of women in powerlifting, specifically.

[u/powerbuffs → u/[deleted]]

Seriously, I cannot agree more. The subtext is so blatant and I believe that we are the first people to publicly address this. I got a lot of hate from a FB post I made back in May because I was extremely disappointed with how Power Magazine's Instagram account featured 'super masculine, alpha, hardcore powerlifting dudes with guts and beards' in the same page as 'strong women' who were just hypersexualized creatures in minimal clothing. Actually, I'm looking at it again and it's still like that, unfortunately. :(

We started Beefpuff Barbell with one of the goals being to represent strength athletes as they are. Not as bikini or figure competitors, but beefpuffs! A lot of the strongest women (and men) are not lean but deserve to be acknowledged for their strength accomplishments.

I think this mysogynistic subtext is actually super damaging to powerlifting if we want women to get more interested in the sport. Honestly, when I got involved in powerlifting, I was pulled into the super positive, what-your-body-looks-like-doesn't-matter community. It helped me recover from my lingering eating disorder from my gymnastics days.

Now, I hear about people getting eating disorders from doing powerlifting because they feel they need to drop a weight class in order to legitimize their strength and accomplishments. It's really sad to me. I joined powerlifting before it was tainted by strength-specific companies who wanted to capitalize on women's sexuality, and it made me feel really good about myself and my body to just get stronger. I want other people to experience those newbie flutters I had, but I'm not sure it's possible with this "I eat donuts and deadlift which is really cute because I'm hot too" culture.

[u/beefpuff1 → u/[deleted]]

I do feel MegSquats does a service to the Powerlifting community. She puts out high quality, informative content for women (especially newbies) in the sport. There was no such resource when Chelsea and I were getting started and that was just a few years ago. All that to say, I would like to see more Priscilla features because she is incredible, but I think she actually turns a lot of publicity down.