In a TikTok video she made to promote Liftoff, her beginners' step-by-step weight-lifting manual, fitness writer Casey Johnston demonstrates the way she used to pick up a 40-pound box of kitty litter and carry it into her apartment. In this "before" scene, she goes through a series of painfully familiar contortions, scuttling, scrambling, and finally pushing the box through the door wheelbarrow style, butt in the air. The "after" video is about two seconds long; Johnston simply reaches down, picks up the box, and carries it inside.
The clip is simple but encapsulates what makes Johnston such an effective teacher, one who has convinced her readers that bulking up, not slimming down, is a worthy fitness goal: her willingness to put her imperfections on display to get her message across, her commitment to the quotidian benefits of lifting, and her body, which is, as you would expect from the author of an advice column called Ask a Swole Woman, commendably swole.
It has been a particularly confusing January for those of us who live in bodies and consume culture. Whiplash abounds as we careen between newsletters and podcasts (Burnt Toast, Maintenance Phase) that remind readers of the diet industry's insidiousness, then fly back to social-media feeds dominated by "before and after" weight-loss photos and "New Year, new you" ad campaigns. Even the most enlightened among us can't help but notice that celebrities are currently thinner, the rise of their jeans lower; when we notice this, it has an effect on us. I asked a trainer at my gym whether she has witnessed a shift in how her clients talk about their goals, and she told me that while they had once wanted a big juicy ass, they're back to using euphemisms for skinny like toned and lean.
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