A growing number of female fitness influencers are openly admitting they are scaling back their training, not to get stronger or bigger, but to look smaller. Fitness content creator Karolina Sliwinska recently addressed the trend in a recent video after encountering a comment claiming that “women have been brainwashed by the weightlifting cult that they cannot get bulky. Weightlifting makes women’s bodies ugly and boxy.”
Sliwinska pushed back on that framing, but acknowledged the underlying behavior is real: “Some women out there are stopping weights. They’re stopping training certain body parts because they feel like it’s making them look like a man. They don’t want to look masculine, they want to look feminine.”
One creator featured in the video explained why she avoids training her hamstrings and quads altogether.
“I naturally have big legs and personally, I do not want to have super muscular looking legs,” she said. “What I focus on when I do leg day is solely my butt.”
She described her approach as minimalist, training three days a week, and said she has no interest in adding more muscle definition to legs that are already large for her frame.
Another woman featured said she deliberately stepped back from years of heavy lifting to pursue a modeling career. “I have to stop lifting heavy weights, unfortunately,” she said, adding that she still incorporates resistance through Pilates-style workouts rather than dropping strength training entirely.
Perhaps the most detailed account came from a former bodybuilding-focused influencer named Madison Johnson who said she built her entire platform around heavy lifting while privately disliking the results.
“I felt very masculine and trapped in a body that did not feel like me,” she said in a video. She described chasing more muscle in hopes of feeling better about her body, only to feel “even more bulky and too masculine.” Eventually she shifted her training style. “The way that I train now makes me feel feminine and strong, and just well-balanced,” she said.
Sliwinska was careful to note that bulk is largely a function of body fat sitting over muscle, not muscle growth itself, and that genetics play a role in how visible muscle becomes on different women.
She said she does not encourage anyone to lose muscle for aesthetic reasons alone, but stressed that training should not come at the cost of someone’s mental health or self-image.
“It’s not that everybody has to be a walking fitness influencer,” she said. “It’s all about health. Do what makes you feel healthy and good.”
Stick and Bones Female Influencers Are Trying to Lose Muscle Because They Think They Look Bulky pic.twitter.com/f4mk4QNuBQ
— calfkicker (@calfkickercom) September 5, 2026
