Dena: A Retrospective (Day 1)

Perhaps one day there will be a Female Muscle Film Festival.

I dreamed about it. It took place someplace warm as I recall. There were screenings of the Nemesis films and Pumping Iron II going on 24 hours a day, and an illustrated lecture by an academic about the portrayal of female bodybuilders in cinema. And websites like HerBiceps and Muscle Angels had screening rooms where forthcoming work was being premiered, introduced by the women themselves, and the queues of female muscle lovers for these stretched round the block. A group of older female muscle heads had taken over a cinema and were showing old WPW and Ray Martin videos in full on a thirty-foot screen, the long- retired stars in attendance for Q&A sessions, still adored by the fans. And just as a film festival might pay tribute to a great director or an actor, programmers had put together retrospectives of clips by long-gone websites like World of Muscle and much-loved female bodybuilders.

I spent much of the following day unable to forget my dream. I couldn’t help wondering which of my favourite female bodybuilders I’d like to curate a retrospective of. It would have to be a woman with a large body of work to choose from, and a woman whose performances were consistently good enough to merit reviewing and analysing.

One name kept coming to mind again and again: Dena Westerfield.

And so this week, on FMS, inspired by my dream, a week of posts amounting to an imagined programme booklet for an imagined Dena Westerfield retrospective at my imagined Female Muscle Film Festival.

I know that’s a lot of imagining, but if you are still with me, I’ll begin…


Dr Sexy: A Retrospective of the Work of Dr Dena Westerfield on Video

Introduction

Neither the biggest nor the most successful female bodybuilder of her generation, Dena Westerfield nevertheless holds a special place in the hearts of many female muscle heads for her uniquely captivating performance style in the hundreds of video clips she appeared in during her career.

This retrospective will consist of what I consider to be some of her very best work, and will include clips she made for Awefilms, Tom Nine (available from The Valkyrie), and Muscle Angels  The notes accompanying each screening will attempt to explain why I have selected it, and what exactly made Dena such a noteworthy performer.

In addition, at each screening there will also be a shorter clip of Dena, which, with the exception of this evening’s clip, will be something more candid, something to remind us that Dena was often at her most charismatic when she was at her most natural.

Screening 1: Being Dr Sexy

Ms Olympia 2006 routine (3.12)
Awefilms: 'Red Dress' (5.52)

We begin our retrospective with a clip of Dena’s performance at the 2006 Ms Olympia evening show. Unlike the other short clips selected for our screenings this week, here we see Dena professionally shot and doing exactly what competitive female bodybuilders train for – the show. Indeed, this is the show of shows, the pinnacle of any professional female bodybuilders career.



An excellent routine, I think you will agree. But, and this is my point tonight, I think you will also agree that despite giving us some glimpses (the glute shaking, for example) of the Dena we know and love from her video work, the performer on stage that night was still very much Dena Westerfield.

Contrast Dena on stage with Dena in tonight’s extended clip from Awefilms  made around the same time as the Olympia performance we have just seen. Granted, the kind of posing Dena exhibits in the clip would not have won her many points with the Olympia judges, though it most certainly would have been popular with the fans. Nevertheless, in the Awefilms clip I would argue that we are not so much watching Dena Westerfield as watching her alter ego, the alter ego she herself dubbed ‘Dr Sexy’.

And furthermore, I would say that a large part of what made Dena such a special and unique performer in clips like the one we shall see tonight and the others that will follow in this retrospective, was her ability to ‘become’ this other person, this Dr Sexy, in front of the camera.

[Obviously, this is where you really have to use your imagination. Picture yourself in the screening room, seated among your fellow female muscle heads. The anticipation is palpable. The lights go down, and the clip begins…]




In today’s clip, we can see many of the features of Dena’s performances that will come up again and again during the week. Firstly, the slow start, very little movement, which gradually builds to a joyous crescendo of muscle display.



Secondly, note the way she pulls her dress around, manipulating it first to run a suggestive finger over her belly button, and then showing off her magnificent external obliques.



And following that, she lifts the whole dress up to reveal her abs in their glory, and at this point she seems to enter a trance-like state, half-dancing, half-writhing, giving us a feast of muscle movement across her midsection.



Finally, she aggressively flexes her arms, sneering, pouting. Her eyes move between the muscle and the viewer as she stretches her arm out further and further to highlight her triceps before snapping back faster and faster, her bicep peak ever rising, her delts growing ever bigger. One, two, three and… snap!



Finally, she gazes at the muscle on her arm as if for the first time, and does exactly what every viewer has been thinking about, she longingly, lovingly, runs her finger along her big, beautiful fully-pumped bicep.


[…lights up. We all show our appreciation as best we can, perhaps a little applause from those who have both hands unoccupied, perhaps just one big roar of approval after another (!). Once we’ve straightened ourselves out, it’s time to file out of the screening room. And as the evening wears on, female muscle heads gather in bars and restaurants to talk about how the festival has been for them on this, its very first day…]


Our Dena retrospective continues tomorrow.


And if you haven’t experienced today’s clip (or any of the other clips this week) in its entirety, FMS would be delighted to point you in the direction of a place where it can be found for download. Just get in touch.