Jaime Seeman

I also loved painting my fingernails and parading around my mother's house in her high-heeled shoes.

From the beginning of time, I have lived in contrasting worlds, contrasting and often conflicting ideas about what women should and shouldn't do, or maybe how we should and shouldn't look.

A pivotal moment came for me when I was a sophomore in high school.

My mother took me to an audition for a modeling agency.

And I can't tell you how nervous I was that day or even what I was wearing, but I will never forget the way I felt the next morning.

As I was walking into school, I got a phone call.

They wanted to sign me as a plus-size model.

I was a size 10, by the way.

If I could go back and talk to that 16-year-old version of myself, I would tell her exactly what my own mother told me that day.

You were built for bigger and better things.

So I turned down their offer, and I went on to play NCAA college softball, where I was a weightlifter of the year twice.

I loved being in the gym, and I loved throwing those heavy weights around, but what I really loved the most was the confidence that my physical strength instilled in me.

But there was always this nagging feeling, this sort of whisper in the back of my mind, and it sounded a lot like the voice on the phone that day, telling me that I was different, somehow not ideal, because I would shrink inside every time somebody commented on my muscular body.

You see, at the time, the only social media we had was something called Cosmopolitan Magazine.

And those Cosmo cover girls, well, they didn't have a lot of muscles.

Frankly, they looked kind of frail, somewhat unhealthy.

But to the world, they were beautiful, and they were idolized.

And as a young girl, I let that frame the way that I looked and thought about myself.

And this is the problem.

Even though something like weightlifting has a multitude of proven health benefits, there continues to be a stigma for women based on cultural and societal myths about what women should and shouldn't do.