I spent years wishing I was smaller before learning the power of being a ‘jacked beast’

July 12, 2026 — 5:00am

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For the past few months, I have felt the need to rebel by doing three obscenely controversial things: eating, exercising and wearing less make-up.

What am I rebelling against? I’m not exactly sure.

A few weeks ago, I was mindlessly scrolling on TikTok, rocking back and forth in a hammock on the island of Koh Phangan, Thailand, where I’d gone for a week-long Muay Thai camp. It was a humid 37-degree day and I was cooling off between training sessions, keeping half an eye on two hornets buzzing around in circles at the corner of my bamboo hut. A video of Hilary Duff’s latest campaign with the fitness app Ladder, called “Stronger, Not Smaller”, appeared on my feed.

“Strength isn’t optional for me,” Duff says at the start of her campaign video. “Being able to carry my kids and give my best on stage, all while feeling confident in my body, is everything.”

Next, I watched a red-carpet interview she did with a Time magazine reporter, who asked her about the meaning behind the campaign. She said she felt pressure to conform to the thinness culture of the early 2000s despite spending years as a child doing gymnastics and building natural strength.

“That’s not natural for my body, and for most of our bodies,” she said on the red carpet. “I used to be embarrassed [by] my strength, and I just don’t need to be any more. I … grew up during that time where all of us were trying to, like, disappear and be........

© The Sydney Morning Herald