Rule Breakers and Barrier Bucklers

The Great Sandwina, showcasing how she wins an argument at home.

I’ll bet the first thing you think about when thinking about women during the Victorian Era is NOT bodybuilding.  Indeed, this is partially because “strongwomen” of the era were not brought to the public’s attention until much later. Typically, these first strongwomen were part of a circus act to showcase their enormous strength as something unusual and surprising. No doubt it was regarded as unusual because women of the Victorian Era were not encouraged to exercise as it was thought to produce results that were regarded as masculine. Fashion and society at the time expected women to showcase their femininity in a way that was desirable to the male gaze. Women could wrap their ribs with tight whale-bone corsets to display the perfect hourglass silhouette, but showcasing athleticism broke the rules of polite society.

One of the most renowned strongwomen of the era was Vienna-born Katie Brumbach. Known as the Great Sandwina, she’s pictured here lifting her husband (who weighed 165lbs) high into the air with a single arm.. She, like many of her predecessors including her mother, was a strongwoman in a circus.  Later in life, Sandwina joined the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus as a powerlifter who wowed eager audiences by snapping iron bars with her bare hands.  Even at the then very ripe age of 57, she was still able to lift her husband over her head with a single arm.

It was the strongwomen of the circuses though, that broke down the sexist barrier and even led to different types of muscular women such as female wrestlers and even female bodybuilders. This breakthrough was not to last, as the societal stigma that women of the 19th century were only viewed favorably if they seemed frail and weak was pervasive. One health educator of the era even encouraged the view that it was not only undesirable for women to exercise and become “masculine,” but that it was downright unhealthy for a woman to be active. It took time before strong women were accepted into society, but we as women have come a long way from the Victorian Era. And though not everyone at our gym is a bodybuilder or strongwoman, what’s important is that the stigma that strength for women as unhealthy has finally been smashed.  

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Written by Kate Erwin Weiskopf