Muscle.

I often look at women.

I know that sounds terribly creepy.

There is always something unique about women and the way they walk and carry themselves as they go about their day...

...it might sound voyeuristic, but I always try to guess what these women are thinking or where they might be going or coming from...

...as they scramble through the city to catch the subway ...

While I think that Korean women have their own special features and tendencies...

...one thing that I constantly see missing from the vast cross-section of Korean women is the perceived lack of muscle...

...there just don't seem to be any muscular Korean women...

...this is also reflected in how women are presented by the Korean media...

...where muscle is seemingly lacking from all Korean female images...

...this has been brought to my attention once again over the last couple of months...

...as we experience the exciting build-up to the London Olympics... 

V-Magazine ran with the theme of 'the beauty of athletics' for their March issue...

... and they used a bronzed and oiled female body builder as their model for one of the editorial shoots...

... I am somewhat familiar with the image of muscular women...

... while I lack any athletic talent...

...my mother is a trainer and she frequently flies around Australia organizing swimming tournaments and attending fitness conferences...

...she is a self-confessed fitness-junkie and she teaches spin, yoga, body balance, pump etc etc...

...as well as being an almost full-time professional swimming coach...

...many women in Australia lift weights.

...while many women in Korea appear to avoid developing muscle...

...(at least my female Korean friends expressed their concern about developing upper body strength...which I found interesting...)

...I think this perhaps demonstrates a potential cultural difference between Australia and Korea.

... the ideal of Korean beauty is perhaps best demonstrated at the moment by the high-school aged singer IU;

IU represents the soft and feather-light appearance of a young Korean female...

...which is perhaps an image that many women in Korea aspire to emulate...

...in contrast with the perhaps defensive and body-asserting attitude of many Australian women...

Photo Source: www.mrblasberg.com

I do not necessarily advocate a soft or hard approach to body shaping...

...but perspectives on strength and muscle are certainly shaped by culture and social politics...

...and regional differences are sometimes easy to identify...