Around the same time, Ronda Rousey was being teased by her peers in school for being as muscular as she was. She detailed in her book, “Our Fight,” that she was called “Miss Man” by her classmates, and poked and prodded routinely. That turmoil pushed her to try to cover up her appearance as best she could.

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“It wasn’t cool for little girls to be muscular back then,” Rousey explained. “Before I dropped out at 16, I was really muscular and people would grab at my arms and make fun of me all the time to the point that I would just wear a zip-up hoodie no matter how hot it was.”

The trauma stuck with Rousey for years but she aimed to turn these negatives into positives, becoming a role model for young women to be proud of their muscular bodies.

“When I got older, trying to fight that idea that being muscular is masculine was something that became important to me,” she said. “If you were a teenage girl in the early 2000s, it was a pretty unhealthy standard that was presented to us. I didn’t fit the very narrow scope of what was considered attractive at the time.”

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Rousey is proud that such a perception seems to have changed, which makes the hardships she and others like her endured worth it.

“Now it’s considered really cool for women to have muscles,” she exclaimed. “Now all of the models have stomach definition and are doing boxing and all this stuff and want to look toned but that wasn’t the case back then.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The Diary Of A CEO and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.