Hello beautiful Monster,
As I read through the comments inside the Monsters of Wonderland Society, I keep thinking about why this space exists in the first place. I certainly do not think us women need one more place to be told that we should eat better, train, regulate ourselves more perfectly, or somehow become less affected by the bodies we live in. We are here because so many of us have spent years trying to understand things that can feel confusing and overwhelming. All those changes we experience throughout our entire lives and a nervous system that eventually says, “I cannot keep carrying all of this the same way.”
We come to the group and talk about it because it helps to realize that we are not the only ones. There is relief in seeing another woman describe something you thought only happened to you. There is relief in realizing that your body may not be failing you, even when it feels difficult to live in it.
Society has spent a very long time telling us that female physiology is inconvenient. That it is unstable, unpredictable, overly emotional, too hormonal, too sensitive, and so on. We hear it so often that many of us begin to live inside that story, we start expecting our bodies to interrupt our lives.
There are mornings when I wake up at 3:00 OR 4:00 in the morning and look over at my husband, still sleeping peacefully beside me. He is not tossing around, thinking about a thousand things, wondering why he woke up again, feeling the shift of hormones, stress, pain, or whatever else my body decided to bring to the party that night… And I get a little resentful, he gets to wake up with more energy, he gets to move through his day without having to think about whether his cycle is changing, whether his body is holding water, whether his sleep is going to affect his hunger, whether stress is going to make everything feel heavier, or whether he is suddenly going to feel emotionally raw for reasons he cannot fully explain.
There are moments when being a woman feels like a BAD DEAL!
I am not saying men have easy lives, and I am not saying female physiology does not come with real challenges. It does. But I also started wondering whether we have been looking at the female body through a very narrow lens for too long.
A few days ago, I came across a reel saying that female physiology has real advantages over male physiology. My first reaction was, “Okay, this sounds like it was made to get likes and shares.” You all know the kind of reel I mean. The one that makes us feel better for five seconds and then leaves us with nothing but a nice quote.
But I did not want to dismiss it without looking into it. I wanted to know whether there was something real there, because we hear constantly about the disadvantages of being female.
I wanted to see what happens when we stop comparing female physiology only to the things male bodies tend to do best, because of course, if we define strength only through maximal muscle mass, absolute force, speed, and explosive power, men will usually look superior. Those are real advantages of male physiology… but they are not the only ways a body can be powerful.
A review by exercise physiologist Sandra Hunter found that women are often less fatigable during certain sustained and submaximal tasks, especially isometric contractions and some lower-load repeated efforts. That does not mean every woman can outlast every man in every situation. It means that when the work involves holding effort, repeating effort, or staying with something for longer, women often have an advantage that is rarely treated as impressive because it does not always look dramatic. But the ability to keep going without burning through your capacity as quickly is its own kind of strength and it is still strength.
I also found research on how women use energy during exercise. In many studies of moderate endurance work, women tend to rely more on fat and preserve more carbohydrate than men at the same relative intensity. I do not want anybody reading this to turn it into another reason to eat less or fear carbs. Please do not do that to yourself. Women need carbohydrates, especially when we are active, stressed, under-recovered, or trying to build muscle. But it does tell us something interesting. The female body may be more economical with energy in certain conditions. It does not always burn through fuel in the same way. There is a kind of intelligence in conservation, in making energy last, in being able to sustain. That one made me think about the way women have had to survive life in general. We have often had to stretch what we have. Our time, our patience, our emotional capacity, our physical energy. I am not romanticizing that. I do not think women should continue being asked to carry more than is fair. But I do think there is something powerful about realizing that our body may have capacities we have been taught to dismiss because they do not look like the kind of strength we were told to admire.
The immune system is another example, although this one comes with a real trade-off. Women generally mount stronger immune responses than men. We often create more robust responses to infections and vaccines, but that same immune vigilance may also be part of why women are more likely to develop autoimmune conditions. :( That does not make autoimmune disease a gift, it is not cute and certantly is not a superpower. I know too many women whose bodies feel like they are reacting to everything, and I know how exhausting that can be. Still, a highly responsive system is not the same as a weak one. The female immune system can be incredibly watchful and protective. Sometimes that response becomes dysregulated, and that deserves care, research, support, and better treatment. But I do not want us to keep describing female biology as fragile when sometimes it is simply doing a lot.
Then there is survival.
Women live longer than men in nearly every population that has been studied. Researchers have found a female survival advantage even under devastating historical conditions, including famine, epidemics, and slavery. Of course, social conditions and care matter. Violence, risk-taking, work, poverty, and culture all matter. But even after accounting for some of those things, the pattern is still there.
We are used to thinking about physical strength as performance. Who can run faster, lift more, dominate a competition. But girlfriend, survival is performance too! The body that lasts is not always the body that looks strongest from the outside.
And then there is pregnancy. I want to be careful here because pregnancy is not the purpose of every woman’s life, and it is not the measure of womanhood. Some women do not want children or cannot have them. Some have painful or complicated experiences with pregnancy. None of that changes their value or their womanhood. But from a physiological perspective, pregnancy is still one of the most extraordinary examples of human adaptation. The body builds and maintains a placenta, a whole temporary organ, while continuing to keep the woman alive and functioning. And then, somehow, women are often still expected to work, care for other people, keep up with the house, manage emotions, remember everything, and apologize for needing rest.
The difficult parts of being female are real, aaaaaall those moments when your body feels like it needs more care than you have time or energy to give it are real. But female physiology is not only a list of inconveniences.
It is a system built for adaptation, it can conserve energy, sustain effort, mount powerful immune responses, survive conditions that would break other systems, reorganize itself in profound ways throughout a lifetime.
We have been taught to see the female body mostly through its costs. Then we internalize that story, and every normal fluctuation begins to feel like proof that something is wrong with us. That is not always biology, it is the meaning we have learned to attach to biology.
More Physiology, Less Willpower.
Not Personal, Structural.
And before somebody says it, yes, people often say that women tolerate more pain or that we are better multitaskers. The research is not simple enough to say either one as a universal truth. Women are not necessarily less affected by pain, and many painful conditions are more common in women. The fact that women keep functioning through pain does not mean it hurts less. It may mean women have learned to carry pain while still being expected to show up.
The multitasking thing is similar. We may not be biologically built to do ten things at once better than men. But many women become incredibly skilled at holding invisible details in their heads because life keeps handing them to us. We remember the appointment, the meal, the birthday, the mood in the room, the thing our child said three days ago, the groceries that are running out, the person who needs support, and the task nobody else noticed. That is not proof that we should keep carrying all of it alone, but it is proof that women have developed capacities that deserve more respect than they usually receive.
Sunday Reset
Reflection: Think about one thing your body does that you normally describe as inconvenient. Maybe it is hunger, sleep changes, a shifting cycle, the need for recovery, sensitivity to stress, or the way your energy changes throughout the month. Instead of immediately asking how to control it, sit with the question of what it may be responding to.
Practical step: Choose one small way to support your body this week before it reaches the point of screaming for help. That may mean eating a proper meal instead of grazing all day, going to bed a little earlier, taking a walk, asking for help, or simply giving yourself permission to be tired without turning it into a moral failure.
Pay attention to: The language you use about your body. Notice how often you call it difficult, dramatic, broken, inconvenient, or unreliable. Then ask yourself whether that language is coming from your actual experience, or from everything you have been taught to expect from being a woman.
We have conversations like this inside my private women’s group, where we can talk openly about hormones, fat loss, food noise, stress, muscle, body changes, and all the life that is shaping our health.
It is free to join, and it is a space to learn, ask questions, and hear from other women who may be navigating similar struggles without judgment or shame. Come join us. Link below...💖
I’m glad you’re here.
With love,
Fran
