How Lifting Weights Made Me More of a Woman

The following is a guest post from Rouzeen Imaan, a 3rd year AHS student and first-time contributor to the WARRIORS blog. To learn more about Rouzeen, check out her bio at the bottom of the page. In this article, Rouzeen shares her personal story about how weight lifting drastically changed her life and helped her grow into a strong, confident woman. Enjoy! – Austin

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By: Rouzeen Imaan

This article isn’t here to tell you how lifting weights will give you a fantastic female body — high perky butt, great legs and a great set of abs. That’s not what I mean by “more of a woman”.  Women can look any damn way they want. I’m trying to dig a little deeper.

Let’s start with me.

I’m 22 years young. Female. Indian. Muslim. Bodybuilder.

  Stereotypes, come at me.

In high school, I wore a headscarf, a decision that wasn’t really mine but came with the turf of being the daughter of a priest. A priest’s daughter, that’s right. As a result of not being able to portray myself the way I wanted to, I had pathetically low levels of self-esteem. At heart I was an extrovert who lacked confidence to do all the extrovert things I wanted to do, like dance in public and twerk on a goose.