This article is funny.

It walks like an advertorial and talks like an advertorial.

So it’s an advertorial: “women leaders” getting free publicity voguing as having the time to lift some weights in a gym. Okay, whatever.

With coiffed hair and full make-up, you know, because you don’t get sweaty or anything.

Lifting weights isn’t proof of being strong. It’s fitness, sure. It’s posing and bragging that you have the mastery of bulking up in more than one sphere. It is one of those activities that give you shallow bragging rights.

But if you are serious about fusing physical literacy with the job, you box.

I boxed for years. I had trainers who knew why I did this: to think in terms of strategy. One of my trainers was in the military and he and I would talk as we sparred, discussing how The Art of War, chess (or, better yet, go), and boxing were linked and how.

Reading the book gave you the weakest understanding of strategy. You’re still just a spectator. Go was better, but it is tethered by rules and it only represents problems in terms of a board and pieces. Boxing, on the other hand, was less predictable, active, and you deal with a physical representation of a threat where you have real skin in the game.

I could map out my theories in journalism, propaganda, and elite thinking with actually doing the boxing.

So this little piece of puffery isn’t at all impressive. This isn’t a trend: this is a couple of followers looking for an easy way to project an image, miss their mark, and then grab the attention of a publication looking for cheap filler.

You know it’s a pad piece when you have opening paragraphs of pure color, which is just cheap filler. This isn’t some sort of think piece: it’s a participation trophy, and the market is flooded with those.