Muscles of the Week: Dressed Up Muscles

Any muscles will do this week, as long as they're dressed up...




I know we all like to think that in their private lives female bodybuilders wear the kind of figure hugging mini-dresses that FBB photographers are so partial to shooting them in. We (well, I do anyway) fantasise that having worked so hard to build such impressive physiques, the last thing on their minds is covering it up.





The truth, however, may be a little more complex. Tanya Bunsell, in her book Strong and Hard Women (see FMS passim) writes that in the public sphere, the female bodybuilder is under constant interrogation from the 'gaze' (and actions) of others.



Other research studies, Bunsell notes, report that muscular women felt that their bodies were no longer allowed to be their own but became objects of public property, and she found evidence of this during her own research. Alice, a bodybuilder of 18 months, recalls an incident in a pub where a stranger walked straight up to her and wanted to arm-wrestle her. On another occasion, at a local nightclub, a man came up to her and grabbed her bicep, declaring in abject fascination that she had the biggest arms he had ever seen on a woman. Hardly surprising then that it's not unusual for an FBB to cover up in public, if only to avoid unwelcome attention.



On the other hand, while some of the images chosen today are the more typical FBB glamour photography style, many of them are not. Many of them are candids or selfies, and many of these show muscular women proudly displaying their sculpted bodies in outfits that are far from modest - sometimes VERY far from it!



In shots such as these, the women appear to be getting ready for a night out without any concern for the "constant interrogation" their bodies will have to face. Quite the opposite in fact, they seem to be inviting it. After all, the majority of these images are taken in order to share them with fans like us via social media. Are these women then somehow different from the women Dr Bunsell and other female muscle researchers have interviewed? Are they the exceptions, or is it the other way around?




I doubt there's a simple answer to those questions. The truth, as I said before, is always more complex than that. I'm not claiming to have any blinding insight into this, but it seems to me that the amount of unwanted attention a muscular woman can expect must vary greatly. There's a difference between going to a house party with friends and going to a night club in the middle of a small provincial town, after all. I also reckon a lot has to do with how much of her femininity a woman retains despite her "masculine" muscles. The more she works at keeping these feminine traits (by keeping her hair long, for example, or by compensating for her loss of breast tissue by having implants), the less likely she is to receive negative attention and consequently feel it's necessary to cover up the cause of the attention.



But for whatever reason these magnificent women have for choosing not to hide their beautiful bodies in conservative dress, I, for one, am glad that they don't!

Enjoy!