Isn't It Iconic, Don't You Think?

One of you lovely readers, responding to the Women of the Year 2013 post from just before Christmas, commented that 'that first pic [of Alina Popa] could be iconic'.



For some reason, these words stuck in my head. I looked at the pic again, closely. And, yes, I thought to myself, absolutely, it is, indeed 'iconic'. What bothered me though was why. What makes this image, more than the others of Alina in the post, more than all the other countless images of Alina (excepting a handful perhaps), 'iconic' exactly? What, precisely, is an 'iconic' image?

The first port of call was the dictionary, which defined 'iconic' as relating to or of the nature of an icon. OK... So let's look up 'icon' then: 1. An image; a representation. 2. An important and enduring symbol. 3. One who is the object of great attention and devotion; an idol. 4. Computer Science A picture on a screen that represents a specific file, directory, window, option, or program.

Alina is many things, but she's definitely not meaning number four. The other three though, all seemed to fit. But although I felt I now had a better handle on the meaning of the word 'iconic', I still wasn't really any clearer on what makes an 'iconic image'.

I dug a bit deeper.

What I found was that it is generally agreed that to be 'iconic', an image has come to have a symbolic meaning that is readily understood. The image causes people to think about what it represents, rather than what it is. So, when you see Che Guevara, it's violent revolution. Gandhi, and it's peaceful revolution. Einstein with his tongue sticking out is madness and genius in the same place. The Stars and Stripes is whatever the USA means to you. In religion, there's the cross, the crescent, the star of David...

I see...

But now I had a new doubt nagging away at me. Just for the sake of argument, let's say the image of Alina represents something like 'the beauty and strength of the muscular woman'. Well, then isn't it the case that any image of Alina does the same? Isn't it the case then that any image of any muscular woman represents the same thing?

The answer is obviously 'No'. So I'm back to square 1, not really any clearer on why this image strikes us as 'iconic' while others don't. I decided to take a different approach, starting with the image itself. I looked at Chris Zimmerman's image of Alina again (hard though looking at Alina so much was, I really had the bit between my teeth now...)



What I came up with was: 1. It's an image of a woman who, by general consensus is something approaching the epitome of a female bodybuilder, and what's more, she's in absolutely prime condition; 2. The subject, though a female bodybuilder, is not hitting any conventional bodybuilding pose, nor is she wearing the conventional 'uniform' of a female bodybuilder - the posing suit; 3. Zimmerman's style is, it seems to me, (and I say this with no specialised knowledge of photography at all, so I may be completely wrong) all his own - nobody shoots these women quite like he does.

OK, now to test the theory!

1. Does the female bodybuilder in the image have to be at the top of the sport, and does she have to be in prime condition?



When I thought about other iconic images of female bodybuilders, these two sprang to mind immediately. I imagine Bev Francis and her most muscular in her orange posing suit at her biggest and best seems to answer the question in the affirmative. This image of Kim Chizevsky will, I imagine, be a little more controversial, but to me, this is the image of Kim. I don't know why I associate this pose and the black posing suit with her more than any other of the FBB 'icons', but I do.



Having dealt with one era of female bodybuilding, I moved on to Lenda Murray. Choosing one image of her as iconic was, I found, much more challenging because there were so many more candidates. Nevertheless, as I searched through my (not inconsiderable) Lenda archive, for me, this image stood out.

Who else? I thought. Iris, sure, but it's hardly the case that only Ms Olympias or should-have-been Ms Olympias can qualify as icons. I doubt I'll get too much stick if I say I think the two images below are iconic, and Cathey Palyo and Melinda McNabb never came anywhere near being crowned Ms Olympia.



And so I broadened the search to two of my all-time favourites, and, as with Lenda, found myself struggling to find the defining iconic image of either of them!

With Denise Hoshor, I found I could narrow it down to one set of photos, but when trying to pick one from the set as the iconic image of Denise, it proved impossible. And furthermore, as with Lenda, I was aware that other fans might well put forward other sets or shots of Denise as more apt to represent her at her iconic best.




With another of my all-time favourites, Gina Davis, I couldn't even narrow it down to a single set. There are so many top top photos of Gina (I looked at so many goodies while I was trying to choose I did begin to wonder if there was a bad photo of her out there) that the best I could do was make a short list that never got any shorter than the wonderful images below.





So confused had I become that I'd forgotten what the immediate question had been!

Ah! Does the female bodybuilder have to be at her peak and at the top of her sport? From the selection above, I could only surmise the answer was 'yes... maybe'. Bev was a yes, as was Kim. Lenda, it seems to me, had a few peaks at least, and in my iconic image of her, 'The Naked Sleeping Lenda', she certainly wasn't in her contest prime. Neither Palyo nor McNabb were ever at the 'top' of female bodybuilding and in the image I selected Palyo wasn't in prime condition, McNabb absolutely was.

What about the second conclusion I'd drawn from Zimmerman's Alina pic, the point about her not being in a posing suit and not hitting a regulation pose? Again, you can see that, based on the above selections the answer was a rather unsatisfactory 'sometimes, but not always'.

ARRRRRRGH!

Perhaps the third point would prove more fruitful, the point about Zimmerman's style? I perused his Facebook offerings and other pictures of his in my collection. I had to agree with his assertion that he can 'light the shit out of muscular women'. His style is certainly unique among FBB photographers, and there are many many fantastic shots among his body of work.

Are there some female muscle photographers more iconic in their style than others?

Bill Dobbins sprang to mind immediately. Like the image of Bev Francis' most muscular above, one other image I am absolutely certain no one will argue is iconic is the one that adorns the cover of his finest achievement, The Women: Photographs of the Top Female Bodybuilders.



Yes! I thought. Dobbins and Zimmerman, photographers with an 'iconic style', photographers who, through their work, create the iconography of female muscle...

Perhaps there is something there, but at the same time I was sure that it was Women's Physique World that had given us more iconic images than any other source, and neither Dobbins nor Zimmerman had anything to do with that. In fact, I realised that images I would call iconic had been made by a wide variety of photographers and in a wide variety of styles. Square 1 again!

Have you reached any conclusions at all?! I hear you cry.

Well, yes. Sort of. Just bear with me...

The fact that Bill Dobbins' image of Nikki Fuller was a cover made me wonder if that was something that could make an image more likely to become iconic.

Check out these ones of Diana Dennis and Juliette Bergaman...



They're familiar, aren't they?

Well maybe, just maybe, that's because both of them were WPW covers...



And the other thing that did occur to me was that so many of the images I thought of when I tried to conjure up 'iconic images' in my mind were images I had first seen in the magazines in my early female muscle lovin' years. Perhaps it is the case that an image from those days when there were so many fewer images around is so much more likely to be thought of as 'iconic' because almost all female muscle heads of the same generation had almost identical experiences of first seeing them?

Having said that though (he said, indicating the imminent arrival of another unsatisfying conclusion), as with Chris Zimmerman's image of Alina, there are, it seems to me anyway, images that, as the reader who started this whole sorry thought process off said 'could be iconic' being produced now.


Cindy's glistening abs; Anne Freitas' freaky 'Christmas tree'


Gabriela Bankuti by Zoltan Vegh of Fitness Exposure (now there's another female muscle photographer with an 'iconic style'...)

Sorry I haven't really got to the bottom of anything. It might have something to do with the goddess being photographed, the point she's at in her career or her conditioning. It might have something to do with the pose or lack of it, and/or what she's wearing (or not wearing). It might have something to do with the style of the photographer, or how old the image is, or when and where you first came across it...

Perhaps the only conclusion I can reach is that you know an iconic image when you see one! But even so, they are GREAT pictures, aren't they?!

Man, you're probably saying to yourself, this guy has far too much time on his hands! Well, in my defence, I was on holiday. But, yes, OK, I should probably go and get something to eat now.

Enjoy! And I'd love to hear what you think the 'iconic images' of female bodybuilding are. Comment box or 6ft1swell@gmail.com, as always.