The Forgotten Victorian Strongwomen: When Weight Meant Strength and Beauty
The modern ideal of slenderness is only around a hundred years old. In the Victorian era, circus strongwomen weighing two hundred pounds were called ‘the strongest and most beautiful women in the world’.
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Record holder got no toast at her own celebration
Jan Todd traveled to Scotland to set a record lifting the Denny Stones. At the celebration dinner, the local mayor poured whisky only for the two male weightlifters who'd accompanied her—nothing for Jan. She swallowed her anger that night and attempted twice, failing both times. When she stepped away to collect herself, her husband Terry said, ‘Do this one for the whisky guy.’ She returned and lifted both stones successfully. The pattern was clear: even when a woman set the record, the recognition and toasts went to the men around her.
— Jan ToddPseudoscience measured strength by race, not body alone
In the 1890s, American medicine promoted false theory: women's body energy was finite, reserved for reproduction. Any exertion—exercise, reading, even politics—would drain reproductive energy and cause ‘hysteria’. On its surface, medical concern; in practice, it enshrined women's weakness as natural law. But this theory applied only to white, affluent women. Black women, assigned generations of heavy physical labor, were described by the same pseudoscience as ‘naturally tireless and pain-free,’ making their strength not a violation of nature but a justification for exploitation. The boundary of feminine frailty shifted by race.
— Bonnie TsuiFitness marketed to women only as marriage maintenance
In the 1950s, Jack LaLanne opened one of America's first public gyms and trained people with disabilities and seniors in weightlifting—genuinely progressive for the era. But on television, facing stay-at-home mothers as his daytime audience, his pitch changed. He aired a ‘fan letter’ from a woman whose body had changed: her husband wanted divorce, her children were ashamed to bring friends home, her friends had abandoned her. The show reframed exercise as a tool to save marriages and restore dignity—not as a woman's own path to strength. For women, fitness had only one permitted entrance: looking good enough not to be abandoned.
No women's sport existed, so she invented it
Jan's first time in a gym, she casually tried 225 pounds and lifted it easily. Her husband Terry, a former national champion in both weightlifting and powerlifting, recognized immediately that she was ‘perfectly leveraged for the squat’—he proposed she chase world records. The idea was almost absurd, but not because she lacked strength. The infrastructure didn't exist: no women's bodybuilding, no women's weightlifting, no women's Olympic lifting competitions. Every record Jan would later break had no precedent, no rules, no judging standards—she and Terry had to invent each one from zero. She didn't race down an existing track; she built it first.
— Jan ToddCircus strongwomen were already breaking records before Jan was born
A deceased circus strongman named Otley Coulter left 380 boxes of personal archives. When Jan and Terry bought and sorted through them, they found magazines and letters from the late 1800s onward, documenting female circus performers named Sandwina and Vulcana lifting anvils, horses, even their own husbands. Jan had believed she was the first woman to lift heavy objects; the media reported it that way. But the archives revealed a different history: decades before Jan's birth, professional women strongmen called ‘the strongest and most beautiful women in the world’ made their living from strength and lived with economic security. They weren't forgotten by history; they were erased from it.
— Jan ToddThinness as beauty is barely a hundred years old
Jan kept returning to a puzzle: Victorian-era doctors warned women that bicycling would scar their faces and prolapse their uteruses, yet those same-era circus strongwomen were simultaneously celebrated as both ‘the strongest’ and ‘the most beautiful.’ Her conclusion: the aesthetic standard itself was different then. People didn't consider thinness beautiful; greater weight signaled health and prosperity, not excess. Strength and beauty weren't competing qualities in that era—they only became opposed after slenderness culture took hold and redefined what counts as strong and what counts as feminine as opposites.
— Jan ToddThe same drive that breaks records also beats cancer
At 36, Jan was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The doctor was direct: survival rates at that stage were roughly 25 percent. Driving home, Terry told her, ‘When have you ever been outside the top 25%?’ That sentence, Jan says, sustained her through treatment. She survived. The price was that she and Terry would never have biological children—that possibility was gone. They redirected the energy they'd set aside for raising a next generation into building an archive. That archive became the Stark Center, now the world's largest repository of weightlifting and sports culture history.
— Jan ToddWe still don't know how strong women can be
At the episode's end, Jan distills strength training to one principle: progressive overload—find a weight that genuinely challenges you, train until it no longer does, then add more. The body grows stronger by repeatedly facing what it cannot yet do. The specific number is irrelevant; what counts as heavy is relative to the lifter. She adds a historical perspective: men have always had the unquestioned default right to be strong. Women have had explicit permission to run fast or become strong for perhaps 50 years. So when asked what women's ceiling for strength is, her standard answer is: we don't yet know.
— Jan ToddIn their own words · checked verbatim
Um, I want you to do this one for the whiskey man.
Terry Todd3:06
Since Hercules strangled a lion with his bare hands, strength has always been a kind of currency.
Bonnie Tsui5:08
I'm so many pounds overweight that my husband wants to divorce me. He's so ashamed of me.
Jack LaLanne10:12
he actually thought that ballerinas had too much muscle in their legs.
Jan Todd12:16
He said she was quote perfectly leveraged for the squat.
Delaney Hall19:21
People don't want to be smaller, they want to be bigger. They think it's better for them to weigh more.
Jan Todd27:24
When have you not been in the top 25% at anything?
Terry Todd28:24
Figures
| Denny Stones combined weight | over 700 lbs | 1:04 |
| Denny Stones smaller stone weight | 318 lbs | 1:04 |
| Years between Jan's lift and next woman's lift | 39 | 3:06 |
| French women's deadlift record (1926) | 392 lbs | 20:22 |
| Jan's deadlift record | approx. 395 lbs | 20:22 |
| Jan's total progression | 1000 lbs → 1100 lbs → 1200 lbs | 20:22 |
| Ovarian cancer survival rate at Jan's diagnosis | approx. 25% | 28:24 |
| Otley Coulter collection boxes | 380 | 24:23 |
| David Webster collection boxes currently | 250+ | 30:24 |
Glossary
- progressive overload
- Repeatedly increasing training weight to force the body to adapt to greater stress and build strength.
- majestic womanhood
- The concept that strength and vigor are central to femininity, not deviations from it.
- manhood stones
- Stones in Scottish tradition lifted by men in public contests to demonstrate strength and prove manhood.
- Title IX
- 1972 U.S. law banning sex discrimination in federally funded schools, which opened women's athletics programs.
How to listen
Listeners interested in women's sports history, the evolution of fitness culture, or where the modern ideal of slenderness originated.
After 31:26, the host reflects on personal experiences: sincere but information-light; skip if you're short on time.