When sophomore Emily Rose completed her squats in front of her advanced weight training class, plenty of heads turned. Her goal was to accomplish squatting 265 pounds, but Rose’s final number ended up to be 315 pounds after she was encouraged by classmates to keep going.

The average high school female squats approximately 180 pounds, compared to 208 of boys. So this astoundment has led to both classmates and friends taking the opportunity to tease Rose of being manly whenever and wherever they have the chance.

Despite the biased opinions, girls are able to be strong. However, to be athletic, it may take a bit of work ethic. Weight-training teacher Chris Koenig believed in Rose while she persisted in never giving up on her goal.

“Of course I was proud of her. I mean, she is number five on our list and she has been working at it for over two years, now. She finally made it,” weight-training teacher Chris Koenig comments on Rose’s accomplishment.

Girls are typically stereotyped to be frilly, weak and fragile. However, according to Rose, she has always been athletically built. Her strength has motivated her to increase her ability by setting goals in her weight training class frequently.

    Rose’s situation is not the only one of her kind. The Portland Shockwave are a professional female-based full-contact football team. Their 2011 regular season ended with a 6-2 record, impressing plenty of people around the area.

There are some football games for females throughout their school years, but many people call it “powderpuff football” because the game requires the use of a soft football instead of the regular one. This, in some ways, insinuates that girls cannot be tough. However, the players on the Portland Shockwave prove that women can handle what seems to be the extreme because of their passion to do what they love to do. According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, the women state that it should not be about whether or not they are women, but rather how well they play.

    The same could be said for Rose. According to Rose, girls should be able to be who they are even if that means that they are stronger than guys.

    Rose has dealt with a few guys pushing her away because of her impressive ability to squat abundance. According to Rose, the reason why some boys get angry with her is because she serves as a threat to their “manhood”. In the end, she deals with these small encounters with a shrug and keeps moving forward because she does not let what other people say bother her. She is simply happy to be herself.

Rose can squat around 100 pounds more than most boys in her advanced weight training class, but that does not mean that she is any less of a girl.

Rose models exactly what everyone should persevere to do as they stroll along through high school: be who you are despite the stereotypes, the name-calling and the cliques. If being you makes you happy, then go on and be it.

It is all a matter of accepting each other for who we are, even if the person we are breaks a not-so-simple stereotype.