It is (I imagine) unlikely that news of FMS heartthrob Dani Reardon's arrest in Florida in the week leading up to the Olympia passed you by. If you didn't hear about it in your own local or national media, there's been plenty of chatter on the forums...
Temporarily, Dani became the most famous female bodybuilder in the world - or at least the English-speaking world anyway. You and I and every other man or woman interested in the sport knew who Dani was long before the 15th September, when the story broke in the USA, but by the 17th, when the story had reached Australia and New Zealand via the UK (and all points in between no doubt), more people knew Dani than Iris, Alina, Juliana, Dana Linn and all the other Olympia contestants put together.
COPS: FEMALE BODYBUILDER WENT ON RAMPAGE, KICKED IN CAR WINDSHIELD reads the headline on the Breaking News USA website - the first report of the incident, published on the afternoon of 15th September, reproduced here in full:
A female bodybuilder has been accused of going on a drunken rampage in California.
Police say 24 year old Dani Reardon (full name: Danielle Reardon) kicked in the windshield of her boyfriend’s pickup truck during a fight. Reardon reportedly reeked of alcohol and has been charged with resisting arrest and battery (domestic violence) in Orange County courts.
The police report says police received complaints that Reardon was hitting a man and screaming at him while attending a party. She was found inside a Ford F-150, kicking the dashboard and eventually the windshield.
Her live-in boyfriend Ian Schofield hard a red mark behind his left ear and on his neck and a scrape on his right knee. He told cops, "She tackled me and hit me in the face." But he refused to press charges.
And this, essentially, with the incident correctly relocated to Florida, and less of the "rampage", was the report that went around the online news source world.
Details about Dani and her career were added here and there, with the prize for absolutely the most bizarre detail going to the Orlando Sentinel, whose report post-dated the Breaking News USA piece by a couple of hours. Their piece informs us that according to one NPC judge, Danielle has very pretty lines [but] she needs to improve her conditioning at the next level as though the readers were all saying to themselves, "Yes, she's in trouble, but how can she get higher placings at her contests?"
The original Breaking News article was accompanied by Dani looking more than a little dishevelled and forlorn in her mugshot (bit of a shock for a Brit that - the fact that your arrest photo can be seen by all and sundry, it would most definitely never happen here), but the main image (below) showed her all smiles and striations.
By the time the story reached New York on the morning of the 16th, there were now two images of Dani at her best to accompany that of Dani at her lowest.
And as the story sailed across the Atlantic and reached our shores here, more and more images of the gorgeous Ms Reardon were added, so by the time the Daily Mail reported the story on the night of the 16th, there were five of the best to enjoy.
And a You Tube preview clip from TanyaFitness!
On the afternoon of the 17th September, Australian online news sources had the story on their pages. And, yes, you guessed it, they now had even more pictures of Dani, and relatively little text. Newscom.au outdid everybody with SEVEN images of Dani and her beautiful bod illustrating just over 100 words about her and her arrest.
We've seen in the past on FMS how female bodybuilder stories need a "female bodybuilders are freaks" angle to be interesting to the wider media - how the FBB subject was "turned into a man" by taking steroids or, how her muscles make it hard/impossible to find a man, for example. But with Dani's story, well, neither of these angles is going to work, so essentially what the story boiled down to was not so much "young female bodybuilder turns violent after drinking" but rather "really really really good-looking young female bodybuilder turns violent after drinking".
Call me a cynic if you will, but it seems to me that this is what the reporting of Dani's story ended up being about, and became more and more about as it travelled around the world. There was basically nothing to write about here - young woman gets drunk and does something stupid is hardly news. However, the editors weren't going to miss the chance of putting this gorgeous young woman onto their pages. Consequently, there were more and more images and less and less text every time.
And so, for a few days at least, and while she was going through a tough time no doubt, Danielle Reardon was the most famous female bodybuilder in the world.
By the 18th September the (non-) story had ceased to be a story, and the mainstream media forgot all about Dani again, as, I imagine, did most of those who had never heard of Dani before. Meanwhile, she had received "positive vibes" from friends, fans, supporters and her family, and she seems to have made it up with her beau.
She couldn't do much about the traffic she found herself stuck in the day before I compiled this post, but she at least used the time to take her first lot of selfies since the incident, and post them on her Instagram, which can only be good news.
And her line of gym wear got some free publicity as well.
It's name? Kausa Rukus. HA!
Enjoy!
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