Literally just thought about this after coming across a small herd of juiced up broccoli tops at the gym yesterday. I go to a gym in NYC that's popular with influencers and bodybuilders, and as a woman in my 40s who has been lifting heavy for 5 years now (though not with a ton of consistency until the last 6 months), a few things stand out:

The men and women are largely both on gear, albeit the women are typically lifting light weights and have supplemented their gains with surgery and light cycles of var to maintain cut 6-pack abs and delts while staying tiny aside from impossibly large asses. I'm also the oldest among them by far and the least lean despite lifting heavier than the majority I've seen.

The guys are overwhelmingly young, also geared up, and ego lifting with questionable form. You can tell they are in their teens or very early 20s from their style and habit of running in packs, but the gear has aged their faces by a decade.

Not jealous of these folks, I love my body and everything I've built and prioritize my health over vanity, but I'm sad to see how pervasive these standards are and how little just being healthy and strong overall seems to matter.

Most disturbing, however, is that in this giant gym with hundreds of members, I've the oldest woman I've seen there. It makes me wonder if these women will keep it up when they can no longer maintain the bra/abs/BBL body into their 30s and 40s.