In Keerthana Kunnath’s photo series “Not What You Saw,” groups of brawny bodybuilders gaze potently into the lens as they bend and flex their muscles. But these depictions aren’t what you might expect of the physically demanding sport. Soaked in the golden southern Indian sun, wrapped in ornately embellished fabric, glittering jewelry, and flowers, these bodybuilders are powerful young women from Kerala.
Bodybuilding is an art form as well as a sport, celebrating shape and presentation as well as brute strength. These muscular celebrations, in art history, have usually been of men: from Frederic Leighton’s mighty and undeniably phallic 1877 sculpture An Athlete Wrestling with a Python to Michaelangelo’s towering 16th-century marble masterpiece David. Today, the gym bro aesthetic is a key part of the “manosphere,” as it’s often called, with male politicians such as Pete Hegseth showing themselves working out on social media to prove their masculinity.
In this cultural climate, contemporary artists are looking to women bodybuilders to reimagine gender and beauty stereotypes, allowing their mighty female protagonists to be variously brave, monstrous, beautiful, and always in control. Rather than portraying women as meek and mild, these artists capture the glamour and sexuality of their women bodybuilder subjects, as well as their physical potency.
Pin Up from the Magazine Lady Face Man Body, No. 3, 2011
Cassils
Human Rights Campaign Benefit Auction
It’s not the first time that the gender implications of bodybuilding have been the subject of contemporary art. In Cassils’s 2011 project CUTS, the Canadian performance artist used bodybuilding techniques and steroids to put on 23 pounds of muscle in 23 weeks, resulting in a photo series that depicts the transgender artist as a masculine, yet glamorous, figure.
Kunnath likewise decided to focus on bodybuilding to explore the gendered standards of her childhood. She started her career in fashion photography in London. When she began photographing bodybuilders in southern India in 2024, she wanted to do something different: confront traditional expectations of how a woman should look and behave.
“Growing up, there were always so many ideas around what a woman should be and how much space she was allowed to take up,” the photographer told Artsy ahead of her first solo museum exhibition opening at Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam on September 18th. “I was drawn to the women themselves; their individuality, confidence, and the fact that they had chosen a path so different from what we typically see women pursue from the region.”
Kiss of Fire, 2022
Ana Benaroya
Two Palms
Her subjects are photographed against a southern Indian landscape, dressed in a blend of traditional outfits from the region to create a juxtaposition with their built physiques. The images are also inspired by posters for vintage Malayalam films, where actresses would be shown as coquettish and pliable. “I wanted to borrow some of that visual language but turn it on its head,” she said. “I wanted the women to feel glamorous and powerful, but without taking away from their strength.”
Glamour is also a key part of the 2022 series “Core” by London-based photographer Celia Croft and art director Kate Kidney Bishop. In one image, a muscular woman stretches a pair of diamanté-encrusted bikini bottoms across her firmly toned glutes. Another photo is reminiscent of a devotional painting as it shows a woman gazing up into the light, her eyelids covered in icy blue eyeshadow, as her long acrylic nails stroke her clavicle.
Across the series, these women are physically powerful and enticingly glamorous. “The whole bodybuilding industry is about muscle, strength, power—and these women are redefining femininity and gender and finding a new space within that,” the pair said in an interview.
In this sense, women bodybuilders capture high femme sexuality as well as the physical strength usually associated with men. American painter Ana Benaroya revels in these two distinct aesthetics in her paintings of physically commanding women. Inspired by Michelangelo’s depictions of the body and contemporary photographs of bodybuilders, her female figures are flamboyant and frenzied, depicted in a palette of acid green, bright purple, electric blue, and hot pink. Their undulating muscles are enormous, creating the appearance of brawny goddesses.
They also have flowing hair, enormous breasts, and talon-like nails. In Spirit Colossal (2025), for example, two women are painted in vibrant red and blue, flexing against a natural backdrop of wildflowers and glittering night sky. “I love creating a balance between perceived opposites within my paintings,” the artist told Artsy. “I never want the women in my work to seem like one thing.”
Her works are also inspired by art historical depictions of women, where their sexuality is foremost. “Women’s bodies as objects of desire is something that is almost impossible to escape, but I am interested in harnessing that to my own end,” she said. “Yes, they can be ripped but they can also be voluptuous and do their hair and nails….They are powerful and monstrous, alluring and beautiful.”
Bodybuilder Beauty, 2023
Elsa Rouy
Larsen Warner
Spirit Colossal, 2025
Ana Benaroya
KOSAKU KANECHIKA
That ambiguity is also on view in the work of British artist Elsa Rouy. Her painted bodies merge together, variously muscular, bony, and bendy. In her 2023 painting Bodybuilder Beauty, a bald figure proudly holds their arms above their head. Their biceps ripple, ribcage flares, and breasts are pulled up near their chin.
“There’s an ambiguity and strength with the bodybuilder physique that I found interesting and wanted to explore,” Rouy told Artsy. “There’s a ferocity to it. I’m constantly trying to look into the push and pull of the body at breaking points and moments of intensity.”
For Bodybuilder Beauty, she was also inspired by a drawing by Jusepe de Ribera, who was known for his sinewy subjects. “Translating the contorted male body into one of a bold and confronting ambiguous figure was fun to do and a way of expressing my own ideas about alternate femininity.”
These vibrant depictions of physically extreme women create a new vision for preconceived notions of gendered behavior and appearance. As Kunnath told Artsy about the people in her photographs, “There is something really beautiful about seeing these women inhabit their bodies on their own terms, without trying to make themselves smaller or more conventionally feminine.”
