Fitness Work That Body!

By SALLY B. DONNELLY

I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman.

-- I Am Woman

When Helen Reddy belted out her 1972 hit, she had no idea it would pump up women. Not only did the song become the unofficial anthem of the feminist movement, but women and girls seemed to take the words literally and headed off to the gym. In the two decades since, female attitudes toward fitness and athletics have undergone a vigorous shake-up. Across the country, women are working out, running hard, even pumping iron. And they are doing it not just to look attractive but also to gain strength and a sense of self-sufficiency. They have discovered the secret pleasures long enjoyed by athletic men: the heady, sweaty, solitary joy of hard physical exercise and the rosy, relaxed afterglow that follows it. "Sports and exercise make you feel better," says Gail Weldon, who runs the Women's Traac Health Club in Los Angeles. "Women want to be more in control of their bodies."

All the sweating and grunting has redefined the cultural parameters of female attractiveness -- away from soft curves toward a more athletic body. For proof, just compare pop icon Madonna to her prototype, Marilyn Monroe. On her Blond Ambition tour, Madonna flashed chiseled biceps and deltoids, so impressing one Los Angeles critic that he wrote that instead of the customary audience call for "Author! Author!" the cry from Madonna's fans should be "Fitness trainer! Fitness trainer!" Tennis ace Martina Navratilova also notes the changing standards. When the Czechoslovak-born athlete defected to the U.S. in 1975, she was so embarrassed by her powerful build that she favored baggy, concealing clothes. "I was always covering up my arms because I have these big veins," she recalls, "and I didn't want anyone to see my ; shoulders." Now that muscles are in, Navratilova doesn't hesitate to appear in a tank top. "I don't seem as big anymore because other women are bigger!"

The sweat-soaked revolution is borne out by statistics: more than 62% of women over age 18 exercise regularly. According to a 1990 survey by the Melpomone Institute in St. Paul, which studies females and exercise, women also make up more than half the participants in the eight most popular sports in the U.S., including 95% of the 15 million people who do aerobics.

Baby boomers led the change. Growing up with the feminist movement, they wanted not only to work alongside men on the trading-room floor but also to play alongside them on the gym floor. "I started working out to get stronger," explains Sidney Perry, 39, a Portland, Ore., wardrobe stylist. "I wanted to be my own person." Other previously nonathletic women were swept up by the more general fitness movement. "I used to think there were two classes of people: athletes and the rest of us," says Nancy Crichlow, 29, a sales assistant in Houston who now works out regularly. Improved health is another motivator; regular exercise helps prevent osteoporosis and other age-related ailments.

Though it came too late for most boomers, the U.S. government gave a boost to women's athletics with the 1972 Title IX Amendment, which prohibited sex discrimination in federally funded educational institutions. The act helped encourage girls to go into sports by providing college scholarships and spurring the organization of girls' athletic teams. Since 1975, the number of girls' track-and-field competitors has grown sixfold. By 1989 there were 130,000 women competing in collegiate sports throughout the U.S., in contrast to 32,000 in 1972.

Encouraging as that sounds, there are some troubling gaps in the fitness boom. Exercise continues to be primarily a concern of the well off and well educated. A federal study this past summer reported that only 7% of low-income Americans exercise regularly. Nor have the workouts trimmed the obesity rate: 1 in 4 U.S. women age 35 to 64 is obese. And as much as the ideal body image has changed, there is still a lingering fear that women will begin to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sports columnist Ira Berkow, for instance, wrote approvingly in the New York Times that tennis star Jennifer Capriati is "ladylike" and "nicely toned without looking muscular."

Such antiquated ideas are going the way of the vibrating-band contraption our mothers once used to battle the bulge. Women are working those bodies as never before, and not so much to impress a man as to impress the person flexing in the mirror. "Working out is a way of life for me," says Lorri Sparks, 37, athletic director of New York City's Downtown Athletic Club. "Sometimes I'd rather work out with a man than even have sex." Not everyone adopts that hard-core approach, but many are sympathetic: they are women; they are getting strong; and they feel damn near invincible.

With reporting by Janice M. Horowitz/New York and Elaine Lafferty/Los Angeles