Young women are hitting the gym to become muscly, strong and build big butts and thighs

Willowy limbs are no longer the goal of many young women, with the rise of big, muscular butts, thighs and arms. Hitting the gym is now about being strong, not thin.

Melanie de Laine says it’s all about strength for women these days. Picture: Supplied.

Stick thin is no longer the goal for many young women with the rise of the ‘power booty’.

Big, well-rounded butts, which do not lie about the amount of time and effort which have gone into boosting and sculpting them, are now du jour.

Large, muscular thighs, shoulders and arms are also in; replacing the willowy limb look of recent years.

And it’s all being shown off in ruched-back, tight active wear, designed to highlight the hindquarters, and fitted sports tops showing off muscles.

While the Kardashians, with their trademark curves, are credited to some extent with the rise and rise of the big booty, the move to muscle among many young Australian women is about strength and fitness, not about ‘fake’ cosmetic enhancement.

Women’s coach at Evolve Performance Method (EPM) Melanie De Laine said the majority of her clients were women in their early 20s and came to her with goals of gaining muscle and strength rather than losing weight and getting thin.

Stephanie Sanzo is a Victorian fitness influencer who knows all about building the booty. Picture: Supplied

“It’s really great seeing that women are getting on-board with weight training,” Ms De Laine said.

“Training to be skinny can only get you so far; there’s a limit to how small you can get before you die.

“But strength training is limitless – you can always keep working, keep improving and getting stronger and I think women are recognising how much more empowering and sustainable that is.”

Despite the tenuous relationship with body image many women still wrestled with, the rise of the ‘power booty’ had undoubtedly opened more space for celebration of a range of diverse body sizes, she said.

“A lot of body ideals stem from Instagram, because you’re exposed to so many more body types and are shown that, actually, everyone can be attractive no matter your size,” Ms De Laine said.

Train and Transform is an Instagram platform helping women get stronger, not skinnier. Picture: Supplied.

She explained how a key factor of this butt-centric movement was the fact that building and shaping muscles required a lot of fuelling up.

“Most women think they eat too much, but the reality is that most women are chronically under eating – the number one thing to prevent progress or kill gains is to not eat,” she said.

“Depending on demographic, some women are super conditioned from the Kate Moss era to only desire a skinny body, which is simply unrealistic for the vast majority of the population.”

As with all trends, however, they are nebulous and impermanent.

Ms De Laine said because all trends changed so quickly, hitting the gym for aesthetic purposes would only provide validation as long as the trend lasted.

“If your only goal is to be skinny, which is a moving target anyway, you’ll simply never be satisfied,” she said.

“Women are understanding that training for strength and confidence purposes doesn’t just change your body, it changes your whole mindset for the better.”