Wait... Are you actually arguing that men aren't naturally stronger than women? Culture encourages us to exaggerate that difference, sure, but...

Look at these standards for untrained and trained athletes at the same weight and tell me it's all culture...

http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/BenchStandards.html

The "intermediate" level of results and gains is something that any healthy young person can achieve with a year of training. Why then does a male with a year of training still out lift most women who have been strength training professionally for years?

You could at least argue that culture differences account for the gap in "novice" lifters, although I'm not sure how you'd go about proving it, especially when there is strong evidence against it in the fact that this difference only appears after puberty.

Testosterone has a real effect on muscle growth. This is why steroids are such a big deal. Women need a certain level of body fat to remain healthy or their body shuts down their reproductive systems. This is hard science, not a traditionalist agenda...

To label losing and gaining 15 pounds as "incredibly hard work" is a highly subjective assessment, which I personally find ridiculous. But even if it were objectively extremely hard work, it doesn't negate the biological fact that men have more muscle mass and are able gain more muscle, and faster than women.

I don't get what you think you're disproved here, or even what you're trying to disprove. How different do we think we are? Where are these extremist people who truly believe men and women have very little shared ground in biology, including physicality? I've never encountered people like that, yet I often come across the other extreme on this blog, which has published numerous articles entirely obscuring men and women's physical differences.

And what you mean by "natural body"? The magazines don't even mention that in the headings. Our musculoskeletal system does not have a "natural" state; our body responds to whatever motions (and other factors, like diet and various enviromental conditions) that we put it through. If you think our "natural" bodies would have muscles in a state of atrophy where the differences between men and women would be barely perceptible, that's not only false, but a truly disturbing view of the body in and of itself, like thinking our "natural" vaginas are dirty blood-and-secretion hoarding vessels.

I wish a magazine labeled "Women's Health" would mention on its cover that muscle on women is awesome, especially in its "Get Back in Shape" issue. I was healthiest (though not skinniest) when I was lifting weights. It's a great feeling when your deadlift weight is the same as your body weight. And getting your weight numbers higher and higher means sleeping and eating right. This cover looks like it could be mistaken for a Cosmo cover.

A favorite article of mine is this one:
Gough, Brendan. 2006. “Try to Be Healthy, But Don’t Forgo Your Masculinity: Deconstructing Men's Health Discourse in the Media.” Social Science & Medicine 63(9):2476–88.

A fascinating look at men's attitudes towards health and their bodies, but also healthist discourses.

Biology is a reality. Men, on average, do gain muscle more easily than do women. Women, on average carry more fat than men to protect their reproductive ability.

Of course, the body type that attracts the opposite sex changes with society. But generally, men look for indicators of fertility, and women look for ability to secure resources. It's unsurprising that people in search of a mate would pursue those indicators to improve their chances.

On average, men are more muscular and physically intimidating than women, but not by much. Those who work, work incredibly hard to be above average specimens of their sex and the gap between the biggest men and the slightest women is huge.

She is absolutely right. The fact that men are, on the average, taller than women is a sociological fact. It is culture not nature. The fact that women bear children, not men, is also a sociological fact. Right ? Heard of Orwell ?

Is human height really bimodal? Interesting paper on this: http://www.biostat.jhsph.edu/bstcourse/bio751/papers/bimodalHeight.pdf

no, it wouldn't have to be so hard if it wasn't for the lifestyle most people live today: sitting all day, eating junk, not getting any fresh air.

I'm curious what people's reactions are to this study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17186303

In a nutshell, strength of ordinary men, ordinary women, and elite female athletes were compared. The female athletes were obviously stronger than ordinary women, but ordinary men were still, on average, stronger than elite female athletes. Even if women have had physical training and men have not,

men are still stronger on average.