You mean dehydration is good for looking strong/ripped? Having to do a water cut with 2 hour weigh-ins is the bane of my powerlifting existence. It's hard to rehydrate enough before squats start and not be bloated. But that said trying to walk around always looking your best is going to be fucking tough. Not having glycogen to run off of like you said is going to hinder any sort of strength you have but damn you'll probably look good doing it. I think this is where a pretty good distinction between instagrammer and athlete can come in. Look at Sadik right now. He's big, puffy, definitely not looking his best but he's showing there is a process to get to where he is going. (The new classic physique division) Now the guy in the article if he wants to get stronger and keep the same body composition its going to take a long time. Not having a calorie surplus makes it near impossible. And if you want them to help move a couch they'll be so drained they won't be any better help than a normal person. Hopefully my point came across there between the vanity instagrammers and athletes who can seem similar. But that is Zydrunas Savickas one of the better strongmen around right now next to Brian Shaw and Hafthor Bjornsson (The Mountain in GoT). I lift with a strongman at my gym and it is so much fun when I do some of their workouts. If you need someone to help you move they're the ones, if they can lift a few hundred pound atlas stone, they can lift an armchair for you!
Girlfriend's sister decided she was going to the gym to get strong. She did; chick could do more pull-ups than her dad and could squat like a Marine. But she also got heavy because she needed the reserves to actually move the metal. She spent probably 2 years like that and gained maybe 4 dress sizes. Then she decided that she'd wandered a bit outside the normal dating parameters of young adult females and started focusing on being trim. Six months later she was a lithe little thing and got a lot more dates... but she couldn't lift a fraction of what she'd been training at. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish my tamale.
Not to get too far off topic but it is a bit of a shame that was the case with your girlfriend's sister. If she wanted to be big and strong, fuck it. Who is anyone to judge. It's been awesome to see powerlifting getting more popular with women and having more women compete! But I digress, tamales sound great for lunch today.
Not off topic at all. The whole discussion is about shifting norms and ideals for socialization. She was uncomfortable deviating from the recognized social norm for young women, but not until she'd experienced life beyond the curve. Should those social norms begin favoring female strength, more young women will walk her path.