I'm an avid gym-goer and hobby powerlifter. I top out at 5 feet tall and look as threatening as a Monchhichi in a baby bib, so a passerby might not realize my bench press is 110 pounds, squat 170, deadlift 195. I'm looking forward to breaking 200 on some lifts soon, but it's not for the reasons you'd expect.

I don't train because it's fun and challenging. It's not to build strength, bone density and balance, not for regulating metabolism, sleep and anxiety in my 40s. It's not for warding off the heart disease that weaves through my bloodline. It's not so I can rise from the couch without wiggling and grunting. It's not for any of the well-documented studies showing how weight training helps people, especially women, live a long and healthy life.

No, sillies. It's for men!

Everything we girlies do is for the pleasure and approval of men, duh. Or at least it should be. If you watched "Saturday Night Live" last weekend and caught the monologue by comedian Shane Gillis, you'd understand that. Gillis got onstage and said:

"I haven't been to the gym in so long. I didn't know women just dressed like whores now. Look, I'm sorry, there's no other way to describe ... Have you seen it? I've seen it. The shorts. Have you seen the shorts?"

He went on to use descriptors that prove he's paying close attention to the most intimate parts of our anatomy, as he has every right to do when we are quietly repping out preacher curls heavy enough to crush a beer can.

It's soooooo helpful that Gillis set us straight. We needed this gentle correction from a strong leader in a T-shirt extruded from a Hanes three-pack. After 300,000 years of existence, we still haven't quite nailed the precise nadir at which we cross from hag to whore. We need to lock in on satisfying Adonises such as Gillis rather than learning the functional difference between a Romanian (eccentric) and stiff-legged (concentric) deadlift. We must refocus our attention on attire to soothe all men who might be breathing behind us at the squat rack like Stanley Tucci in "The Lovely Bones."

I have worn the very shorts Gillis describes to lift the equivalent of a queen-sized mattress raw, and for that I am sorry. I thought they were comfortable, secure, flexible, temperate and — this is the most egregious part of all — kind of cool-looking. I forgot the stress put upon men like Gillis who can't step foot in a YMCA without losing grasp on the oily reins of self-control.

Men have enough on their minds, producing progeny to increase population statistics, rearing boys who will grow up with an inexplicable predilection toward anger, running storied institutions where they fine-tune the art of treating predatory male abusers with kid gloves.

They should not be subjected to the extra labor of developing discretion. It is our duty as women — not theirs — to understand Freud's concept of the Madonna-whore complex.

Two categories are available to us: the mother and the sexual object. One, prudish and sexually neutered, is worthy of love and respect. The other is a disgusting trollop in short-shorts ripping Bulgarian split squats with 45s in each hand. The former must be protected, best achieved by being invisible, while the latter must be ogled but also shamed.

In order to tip the scales closer to Madonna than whore, we must sculpt our bodies into desirable specimens — no waist, tiny arms, huge booty — to be revealed only in private. In practical pursuit of that goddess contour, we must obscure any hint of shape whatsoever.

I know. It will be harder to check form and detect muscle activation while wearing a turtleneck and khaki culottes. It will be considerably sweatier to perform heel-elevated goblet squats with a three-second negative descent to increase time under tension in a full sweatsuit. It will be a little sad not to flex and pose in the mirror after a full-body pump the way men do, blocking an entire row of heavy dumbbells, but this is the higher calling. This is the work of being a woman. The pursuit of modesty — not mastering hip drive and latissimus dorsi engagement with a mixed-grip to ascend to full lockout at 200 pounds — is how we babes get stronger.

Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. Follow her at @stephrhayes on Instagram.

Photo credit: Land O'Lakes, Inc. at Unsplash