Girl Power Lifters: Junior Claire Schudy, Senior Piper Benjamin and Sophomore Rachel Condon created the Instagram account “buff.beautiesi4” in order to show that girls too can lift and to show their progress and bond over time

While signing up for classes in spring of 2021, future rack partners, then-junior Piper Benjamin and then-sophomore Claire Schudy, knew that with taking the girls’ weight class comes with misrepresentation. 

Once the class started the following fall, now-senior Benjamin noticed that only a small percentage of girls take the weights class to seriously work out. Benjamin watched other girls as they went through the motions of the exercises, knowing that they weren’t intending to build any sort of muscle. This created a reputation throughout the class that the girls didn’t enjoy lifting compared to the guys.

When the girls discussed this with their teacher Coach Douglas Archer, the solution popped into Benjamin’s head.

“We should start an Instagram account.”

Benjamin and now-junior Schudy immediately started filming each other and posting photos on their new account proudly named @buff.beautiesi4 — inspired by the name they gave themselves, “Buff Beauties.” Whether it was a new personal record or just a silly 0.5 picture during their workout, the girls had their phone at hand in order to alert their followers of their progress. 

Amassing now 98 followers and 15 posts as of the new year, the account grew to involve girls in all different weights classes and after school lifting groups, with Benjamin, Schudy, senior Avery Kim and sophomore Rachel Condon leading the account. These original Buff Beauties had one goal for the account — representation.

“I think [the Instagram account] shows that girls can take [lifting] seriously too,” Kim said. “When we do max days, that shows that girls can lift heavy too… it’s women empowerment.”

Although Buff Beauties is filled with pictures of their Baby Yoda figurine and ten emojis following every caption, it also gives insight to the behind the scenes of the girls’ weight class, such as their winter break lifts. 

The Buff Beauties showed up to their Christmas Eve lift while other students were celebrating the holidays over winter break. This was documented on the account, featuring videos of various girls back squatting. The background of the videos were filled with shouts of “You got it!” and “Up, up, up!”

They celebrated the holidays together again at their New Year’s lift, with that day’s post filled with timer photos, mid-air squat jumps and the caption “New year, same buff beauties.”

“[It’s] a really positive environment and everybody’s hyping you up,” junior Margot Beaver said. “It makes it more fun. But also it’s easier to get the weight up when you have 20 people watching.”

This positive environment has made Beaver and other lifters not see taking weights class as a dreaded, required P.E. course, but rather a class they look forward to taking for multiple semesters in their high school career.

Schudy has decided that the Buff Beauties will continue past her time in weights class at East. She will pass the account password down to an underclassmen, freshman Fina Kessler, to keep the Buff Beauties name relevant in the next generation of students.

“I think that the people that are taking [weights] classes have really been able to change or see a difference in themselves,” Schudy said. “I know that there have been a lot of girls in our weights that have started to take it more seriously. I see them after school [and] I think it’s great how much the program has developed.”