Women sometimes struggle with a healthy approach to competition. Embracing physical strength and the physique that comes with it is often even more fraught. This blog is about helping women to welcome the spirit of competition and reminding them that we should feel wonderful in our bodies — not because of the pleasure they bring to others but because of the power, satisfaction, and goals that our bodies help us to achieve. It is about learning to be our own best advocates and embracing the iron within all of us.

The Iron Empress explores competition through the lens of one woman who was a collegiate athlete and, in her mid-40s, after 20 years of being a normal-ish adult, had the opportunity to once again be a competitive athlete. It’s about bringing wisdom to competition that we wish we had when we were 20 and indestructible but still had many fears, were still developing confidence and a sense of self, and working to make sense of the world. It is also about bringing a different perspective to the issue of what it means to have an athletic body as a woman — particularly having a body that, as a strength athlete, does not fit within normative standards of female ideals. These are questions that young athletes grapple with and, while they don’t go away, may come into a new light as we age.

The Iron Empress is the strong woman within all of us. She reminds us that we need not be smaller than the expanse of our power, less than our drive would make us, or more silent than our voices can resonate. She reminds us that our individuality defines us as women and that individuality is the source of our strength. She reminds us that demands that we take up less space, possess less power, and just be good, quiet little girls should be crushed beneath the iron of our will.

Joah G. Iannotta, Ph.D.

After completing her doctorate in Kinesiology and working as a research assistant at the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sports at the University of Minnesota, Joah should be teaching sport sociology, psychology, and exercise physiology in a quiet college town in the middle of nowhere. Her career took a different twist. Upon discovering that she liked research more than teaching, she stumbled into a job at D.C. think tank. From there, Joah began leading data analytics programs for the federal government, always with the goal of making government as good as it can be. Most recently, Joah has taken a break from federal civil service, joining a private company committed to development in her hometown of Pittsburgh. Joah was an All-American in the heptathlon at Wesleyan University and was the back-to-back 72kg masters-1 national champion of USA Powerlifting in 2018 and 2019.

Sam Young

Sam Young never expected to compete in powerlifting, but went along with it when his wife decided she needed a new athletic challenge, and he surprised himself by placing fifth in 2018 and fourth in 2019 at USA Powerlifting’s National Championship as a 93kg masters-1 lifter. In college he earned Division III All-America status as the lead-off runner on a 4x100 meter relay team. He has too many degrees, and when not at the gym or serving the whims of a 18-year-old water-obsessed cat, he turns words into sentences and volunteers with the Humane Animal Rescue Wildlife Center.

Princess Nostalgia

Hailing from three generations of women in the arts, Princess Nostalgia, the artist behind the Iron Empress, was raised to create. Born on Tiber Island in the heart of Rome, her childhood unfolded amongst the ruins of an ancient world. This bittersweet sense of the past has informed her art ever since. At eight years old, she moved with her mother and brother to Pittsburgh. Today, Princess Nostalgia produces her own music, works as a freelance graphic designer, and studies philosophy at the University of Vermont.

About the Pseudonyms

Joah is a nerd who grew up collecting Marvel comic books with her Dad, in yet another example of being a rare female in a very male space. The pseudonyms used here are largely drawn from Marvel and DC characters. Rampage, for example, is a towering beast with orange hair who, as her name suggests, is hot-tempered, aggressive, and uninhibited — the complete opposite of her mild-mannered alter ego, Kitty Faulkner. She is much like Joah’s incredibly kind and and calm friend, who is a data nerd by day but a crushing beast of a powerlifting competitor when you put an iron bar in her hand.