Meet the strongest woman in Australia

Circus performer Simi Genziuk can lift a 75kg washing machine — with just her hair. Who said women were the weaker sex?

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Circus performer Simi Genziuk can lift a 75kg washing machine — with her hair. Who said women were the weaker sex?

I can lift a 75kg washing machine with my hair. Why on earth would I do that, you ask?

Well, I work in a circus, and one day my fellow performers and I were throwing around some ideas for a new show and I said I would really like to do a “hair-hang”.

This normally involves being lifted up into the air by your hair. But we decided to flip it on its head, so to speak, and instead lift things up with my hair.

Someone said, “Well, I’ve got a washing machine out the back. That would be perfect.” And that was that.

Wow. (Photography: Nathan Edwards)

It didn’t happen right away, of course. I started out hanging from a trapeze with about a 4kg weight tied to my hair.

It was so painful. It felt as though my scalp was burning, like there were pins and needles in my forehead and head. I’ve had a few injuries.

I remember thinking, “Oh my god, how am I ever going to lift something so heavy?” It took four years of training my scalp and progressively upping the weights for me to be able to lift the washing machine with my hair for up to a minute.

Most kids dream of running away to join the circus, but I actually made my dream a reality, and that is something I have always been grateful for.

For the past 20 years, I’ve been a trapeze artist. My husband, Shep Huntly, is also a circus performer.

Genziuk is the real-lfe Captain Marvel. (Picture: Marvel Studios)

While I might be called Australia’s Strongest Woman, he is known as the Man with the Iron Skin because he is able to — and this is a bit R-rated, I’m sorry — lift a car battery with his nipples. He also does an act where he lies on a bed of nails.

My daughter Goldie, who is eight, may want to be an actor now, but she also used to perform in the circus when she was younger.

Goldie is actually the inspiration behind the book I recently wrote called So She Did, which is about Australian circus performer May Wirth, the best trick rider of her time.

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I wanted my daughter to be exposed to books as soon as possible, but when I went to the library and bookshops, I was overwhelmed with stories about fairies or princesses.

That seemed to be the only character a girl could be. It was really uninspiring. So I decided I would have to write the stories about strong women that go untold.

I really admire trailblazers. I love watching women succeed against all the odds because the odds are stacked against us. We are so much stronger physically than we think.

Simi Genziuk features in this Sunday’s Stellar.

It has a lot to do with perception and having a particular mindset. To make sure I am the strongest I can be, I focus heavily on my health (I’ve been a vegetarian for 20 years) and my hair, which I wash with chemical-free shampoo.

When I was training to lift the washing machine with my hair, being mentally strong gave me the physical strength I needed to succeed.

Like any other woman, I have experienced gender inequality. That is why it’s important to champion girls and women and to not put each other down, but build one another up. Together, we are so much stronger.

So She Did by Simi Genziuk and Renée Treml (Affirm Press, $24.99) is out Tuesday.

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Originally published as Meet the strongest woman in Australia