On July 2, 2015, a video was uploaded to YouTube that began with a teen-age girl in a gym wrapping a weightlifting belt around her waist. Her hair was nested atop her head in a messy bun, and headphones covered her ears. A straight bar with six plates on each side, totalling four hundred and twenty pounds, rested on the ground next to her. She huffed and puffed, paced from one end of the gym to the other, and clapped her hands. Small clouds of chalk wafted from her palms. Then she walked up to the bar, howled, bent down, and lifted the weight to her mid-thigh, in what is called a deadlift. She exhaled, arched her back, and dropped the bar and the plates to the floor. “Yes!” she screamed. “Fucking shit! I did it!”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com