Tanned, toned and striking a confident pose, Elizabeth Smart beamed with pride in her tiny navy bikini and lucite heels.
Flexing her hard-earned muscles, it was a very different version of the woman who has spent the past two decades sharing her harrowing abduction ordeal with the world.
The child safety advocate – who was abducted as a teen and put through months of brutal sexual and physical abuse – revealed she has quietly been competing in and winning bodybuilding contests, having recently placed first in a Salt Lake City competition last weekend.
The 38-year-old shared images of herself on Instagram, writing: ‘When I posted the pictures in my story of me standing on stage in a bikini it probably shocked many of you, and I understand the shock because had you asked me if I would ever compete in a bodybuilding show a couple of years ago I would have said, “Absolutely not! Never in 100 years!”‘
Even more shocking, she explained it was actually her fourth time competing. ‘I am so proud of myself for doing this. I am so proud of my body, and I want to celebrate it,’ she wrote.
The remarkable photos signaled a new era for Smart, who was just 14 when she was abducted from bed in her family home in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2002 at knifepoint before being subjected to months of horrifying physical and sexual abuse. But the mother-of-three also unwittingly exposed a coping mechanism that she and other women have turned to following traumatic life experiences.
She wrote: ‘My body has carried me through every worst day, every hellish grueling experience, it’s created and nurtured three beautiful children, my body has risen to every single challenge life has presented it with, and carried me through so I refuse to be ashamed of it.’
Weightlifting has seen an explosion in America, with roughly one in three adults regularly pumping iron thanks to research touting its benefits for overall health and longevity. There are also mental health benefits to strength training, proven to reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, which may account for the uptick in women’s competitive weightlifting over the past few years.

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The remarkable photos signaled a new era for Smart (center)

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Smart, pictured with her husband and three children, revealed she has been competing in bodybuilding competitions and recently shared photos from her events

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Smart was a child when she was abducted from her home in June 2002

Erica Hepperle, 33, first turned to bodybuilding as a fitness route after graduating college, where she was drinking heavily, and wanted to ‘get [her] stuff together.’
But bodybuilding, she told the Daily Mail, was also an act of her subconscious: ‘I actually didn’t know that I went into it to mask a trauma.’
‘I had been sexually violated in college twice,’ she said. ‘[I thought] well, if I’m strong, if I look physically fit and people think that I could beat them up, ultimately, then I’m never going to be screwed with. No one’s ever going to violate me, no one’s ever going to cross my boundaries.’
Hepperle was a bodybuilder from 2014 to 2019 and lives in Los Angeles, ‘the mecca of bodybuilding,’ she said. She is now a somatic practitioner and ceremonial pelvic care specialist who works with women who have been through trauma.
Having put her bodybuilding hobby aside due to its ‘obsessive’ qualities, she now recognizes it as a ‘protective strategy’ used as a ‘coping mechanism or coping pattern.’
‘There’s typically people in bodybuilding are rooted in some sort of trauma that they then take their bodies to the extreme for some reason within themselves,’ she said, adding that someone who has been through ‘big trauma’ like Elizabeth Smart likely have ‘this survival pattern imprinted in her nervous system.’
Hepperle said: ‘She could be doing this because, well, unconsciously, she, you know, was taken and she never got to fight for herself or fight for her body or fight for her sovereignty. It could be just like her survival patterns of not being able to do the things that she wanted to do at that age, and she’s kind of now going after and accomplishing goals.’
‘Ultimately it comes down to most humans live their lives in survival, and we’re operating off of those survival strategies.’
Having endured one of the most terrifying ordeals that one could fathom, Smart was held captive and repeatedly sexually assaulted for nine months by Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, until she was found in 2003.
Even in her darkest moments, Smart recently said she never lost hope of being rescued, fighting back against her captors’ brutal abuse.

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