Female athletes rock muscles and bruises on the red carpet. A new aesthetic explained

Expert anthropologists Abigail Posner and Tom Maschio have observed a new aesthetic of influence inspired by the growing presence of female athletes in fashion and beauty spaces. Here’s how brands can contribute.

My 19-year-old daughter came home from the New York Liberty v Indiana Fever game at Barclays Center last week, buzzing with excitement, and not just about the final score. As a brand leader who’s spent years observing cultural shifts alongside my co-writer Tom Maschio, it is clear that female athletes have become the new influencers.

And they’re doing something interesting: they’re not choosing between strength and style, power and prettiness, muscle and mystique. They’re creating a new paradigm that brands and marketers would be foolish to ignore.

What’s this focus on female athleticism and fashion all about?

What does it say about femininity today?

The truth behind the beauty

Olympic gold medalist sprinter Gabby Thomas offers a telling insight: “There is so much truth in what we do”.

In an oversaturated landscape of manufactured online personas, female athletes represent something increasingly rare: authentic achievement paired with authentic self-expression. While Instagram influencers curate fictional lives (and somehow all vacation in Santorini), these women are breaking records, winning championships, and then showing up to galas in custom gowns that celebrate both their victories and their femininity.

Articles highlighting the beauty and fashion sense of female athletes have increased by 275% over five years, mirroring the broader explosion in women’s sports media coverage, from 5% in 2019 to 15% in 2022, with projections hitting 20% by 2025.

For decades, it seemed that female athleticism existed in cultural purgatory. They appeared to be expected to prove themselves against male standards while simultaneously downplaying anything perceived as “too feminine.”

Those days are dead and buried.

Today’s female athletes are brand architects, cultural tastemakers, and revenue drivers who refuse to compartmentalize their identities. Consider the 2025 Met Gala, where female athletes dominated the red carpet with a new kind of glamor. Fashion writer Amanda Lucci captured it perfectly when she observed that “the stadium is on the runway.”

But here’s what makes this trend so compelling: form-fitting designs emphasize sculpted musculature. As Vogue’s Maya Singer noted about Gabby Thomas’s fashion choices, they represent “the sleek precision and power of track and field” fashion that aligns with bodies actually sculpted by athletic routines, not just Pilates selfies.

The new pantheon

These athletes are becoming celebrity personalities whose bodies, fashion choices, and lifestyles possess qualities that women, young women especially, find magnetic. England’s football phenom Alessia Russo fronts magazine covers as comfortably as she scores goals. Italian sprinter Dalia Kaddari and French climber Oriane Bertone now star in luxury fashion campaigns. British sprinter Daryll Neita pairs record-setting speed with runway-ready styling. Their lives unfold in an elevated world, where life is lived at a more intense pitch, more experience-rich, more authentically powerful.

Connecticut Sun’s Aneesah Morrow explained: “I wanted to be bold about my outfit… the cropped jacket shows a little bit more of my figure, and I like that”.

Because apparently, being 6’1” with more than 100 career double-doubles wasn’t bold enough, the outfit had to step up too.

These aren’t women apologizing for their bodies or achievements; they celebrate both simultaneously, like a victory lap in Louboutins.

The brand shift

As we have observed across multiple campaigns, this cultural moment opens doors to provocative new market segments, products that celebrate what female athletic bodies represent symbolically (an enhanced, enlarged sense of womanhood), including:

The authenticity-first beauty approach: Van Lith’s willingness to showcase her bruised thighs signals an opportunity for beauty brands to embrace realness over retouching. Instead of airbrushing away the physical evidence of athletic achievement, brands could feature unfiltered campaigns showing athletes’ actual bodies, callused hands, muscle definition, and yes, the occasional bruise. This isn’t about glorifying injuries, but about recognizing and normalizing the authentic athletic form.

The resilience market: These athletes show strength by openly facing failures and bouncing back. Brands can tap into this by celebrating setbacks as something valuable and inspiring, creating fashion inspired by worn-out gear or turning challenges into stylish statements.

Wearable beauty technology: Integrating beauty and athletic tracking opens entirely new possibilities. Think smart makeup that monitors sun exposure during outdoor athletics and adjusts SPF accordingly, or recovery-accelerating skincare with ingredients used by professional athletes, positioned as luxury wellness. Technology finally serves both performance and aesthetics simultaneously.

Femininity 2.0: the cultural impact

These athletes are showing us that the most compelling version of womanhood comes from embracing both your physical power and your allure without apology.

While not every woman will be an Olympic champion, we can all participate in this evolution by embracing our own physical achievements while simultaneously celebrating our love of fashion, beauty, and traditionally feminine pursuits.

Brands that understand this evolution and recognize female athletes not as outliers but as the boldest expression of what all women can aspire to will capture not just market share but cultural relevance. The beauty of this trend is that you don’t need a championship ring to participate, just the willingness to embrace both your strength and your femininity in whatever powerful combination feels most authentically you.

Abigail bridges the worlds of anthropology, marketing, technology and creativity, first as a brand/communications strategist in the creative advertising space and later at Google, where she led strategy and creative teams for over a decade. Catch her on her podcast, Human Code, or connect on LinkedIn. Get her on abigailposner.com.

Tom has led two anthropological lives. In the first, he studied an ethnic group in Papua New Guinea. The second has been spent analyzing the rituals, routines and beliefs that power American and International consumer culture. He is the author of many academic and business articles and books. You can continue the conversation on LinkedIn.