our story

Girls Lift Girls: Our Origin Story

May 16th 2024
"How about we start a community for women? Get like-minded girls together who love the gym, want to play sports, and just want to be active and strong together?"
"Yes. Love that. How about we call it Girls Lift Girls?"

At its core, it came from something simple: Building Strength in Community.

It started with the two of us, Sofie and Gem, training at CrossFit together. We’d talk between sessions about our shared background in dance and the messages we heard growing up. Even though we come from different cultures, the message was the same: beauty is to be small, take up less space, and don’t get too muscular. Strength didn’t really fit into that version of femininity.

When training together, we’d push each other to add more weight, challenge each other when it was tough and surround ourselves with other strong women that made wanting to be strong the norm. It helped appreciate what our bodies could actually do, rather than the associated aesthetic.

As we kept having these conversations with other women, we realised we weren’t alone. A lot of us had been feeling the same thing and we knew we could build something meaningful out of that. Build a community where we can redefine beauty standards norms, encourage women to become strong and create a community built on this shared value. 

Girls Lift Girls is now a growing community where women support, challenge, and learn from each other. We're here to shift the narrative around beauty and femininity, and to celebrate what our bodies are capable of. It’s about choosing strength in all forms and building it together.

co-founders

  • Co-Founder of Girls Lift Girls

    Gem was always involved with sports and dance growing up. She always felt too big at dance despite wanting to become more athletic to persue her netball career.

    In 2023, after knee surgery, she found CrossFit, a sport that encouraged her to learn new skills, lift heavy and celebrate what her body could do.

    She also met other strong women who inspired her to embrace her own strength.

    Now, Gemma is focused on performance and growth rather than trying to fit an image.

    She appreciates her body for its capabilities and enjoys challenging herself. Her journey is about finding confidence and strength in being exactly who she is.

  • Co-Founder

    Sofie is a Chinese-German rugby player who grew up in Shanghai speaking a mix of Chinese, English, and German. She spent most of her childhood trying to be smaller because as a dancer, she was told she was too big, too muscular, too manly. When she found rugby, things started to shift. On the field, she felt strong, fast, & powerful. And for the first time, she started to value her body not for how it looked, but for what it could do. That shift took her places she never imagined — from Harvard, to playing international rugby, to building passion projects focused on women’s sport and normalizing strength.

    Sofie started Girls Lift Girls because she wanted to create a space where strong feels normal, and celebrated. For many women (especially in Asia) our environment has told us being small and delicate is the only way to be beautiful. Girls Lift Girls is about rewriting that story. It’s about surrounding women with others who play sport, lift heavy, take up space, & celebrate their bodies. Sofie wants young girls to grow up seeing strong women and think, “I want to be like that.”