Not Moving!

No news may be good news, but on this occasion at least, some news is GREAT news!

From today's Guardian:

Google has backtracked on plans to ban sexually explicit images from its blogging platform Blogger, in the face of widespread opposition from users.

The company had initially announced a ban on “sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video”, with just a few exceptions for content which offered “a substantial public benefit, for example in artistic, educational, documentary, or scientific contexts”.

It planned to enforce the ban from 23 March, when any user with offending material still on their blog would be forced to turn it into a private site.

Now, the company has backed down. Jessica Pelegio, a social product support manager at Google, wrote: “We’ve had a ton of feedback, in particular about the introduction of a retroactive change (some people have had accounts for 10+ years), but also about the negative impact on individuals who post sexually explicit content to express their identities.

“So rather than implement this change, we’ve decided to step up enforcement around our existing policy prohibiting commercial porn.”

“Blog owners should continue to mark any blogs containing sexually explicit content as ‘adult’ so that they can be placed behind an ‘adult content’ warning page,” she added.

So, panic over. Having spent much of the week planning and initialising FMS' escape from Blogger, in the end, we're staying right here. And I couldn't be more relieved.

Thank you SO much to femalemusclesfan, nobodie, aiden and everyone else for all your messages of support and advice. I have (without wishing to get all soppy about it) felt the love this week. And extra special thanks to PumpItUp for being there all week, calming me down, providing technical advice, and, finally, alerting me to the Guardian article itself. I couldn't ask for a better virtual friend!

And given that attempting to make FMS look or feel remotely like it does now on another platform has proved to be a task way beyond the capabilities of the both the hosting sites and myself, I am very very pleased that we're staying home. If you could see the smile on my face you'd think Alina had been on the phone telling me she was going to pop round later and thank me personally for all the nice things I've written about her over the years.



Will she be your Hot and Hard #1 again?

I'm back on it. Stay tuned. the Countdown is coming soon...

From Google to FMS (and Back)

A nasty surprise lay in wait in the FMS inbox on Monday morning.

A message from Google no less.

Dear Blogger User,

We're writing to tell you about an upcoming change to the Blogger Content Policy that may affect your account.

In the coming weeks, we'll no longer allow blogs that contain sexually explicit or graphic nude images or video. We'll still allow nudity presented in artistic, educational, documentary or scientific contexts, or where there are other substantial benefits to the public from not taking action on the content.

The new policy will take effect on 23 March 2015. After this policy comes into force, Google will restrict access to any blog identified as being in violation of our revised policy. No content will be deleted, but only blog authors and those with whom they have expressly shared the blog will be able to see the content that we've made private.

Our records indicate that your account may be affected by this policy change. Please refrain from creating new content that would violate this policy. We would also ask you to make any necessary changes to your existing blog to comply as soon as possible so that you won't experience any interruptions in service. You may also choose to create an archive of your content via Google Takeout (https://www.google.com/settings/takeout/custom/blogger).

For more information, please look here (https://support.google.com/blogger?p=policy_update).

Yours sincerely,
The Blogger Team

(c) 2015 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA

As a result of this, FMS is going to have to change.

The idea of making the blog "private" goes against the whole ethos of spreading the female muscle lovin' word. If the blog is not publicly searchable or accesible, with only a limited readership required to sign in to view it, then I'd rather not bother.

Option 2 is to do as they say. Go back through the blog, deleting content that violates their policy. We'll still allow nudity presented in artistic, educational, documentary or scientific contexts, or where there are other substantial benefits to the public from not taking action on the content, they say. But as my definition of art (eg. Lisa Cross' body) is unlikely to match theirs, I could spend days removing "sexually explicit or graphic images" only to find I have not deleted enough and get slapped anyway.

All in all, I'm quite offended by this. FMS is, indeed, an adult blog, but I would argue it is adult in the sense of "not childish" (unless C. Moore Glootz is editing, of course), rather than in the sense of "porn". And to be given that label (though I have nothing against porn, God forbid) belittles what I have been trying to do here over the last few years - during which time, I might add, I have had just ONE (a notable exception indeed, but hardly typical) request to remove content, and even then it wasn't because the content was in any way too "sexually explicit or graphic".

So, as I sit here typing, the fire of indignation burning inside, my preferred option for the future, my only option perhaps if FMS is to have a meaningful, public future, is migration to another blog hosting site. Wordpress is the favourite, so I'll ask anyone who knows of any good reason why I shouldn't just take the whole damn thing over there instead to speak now or forever hold your peace.

I'm sorry to say that this whole debacle means the posting of the FMS Hot and Hard 100 2015 countdown will be slightly delayed. Not for long, if the process of archiving and reupping the blog to Wordress is as seamless as they claim, but delayed nonetheless. Sorry to keep you waiting. The 100 hottest and hardest women in the world (according to you lovely readers) will be revealed in all their glory at FMS' new home as soon as possible. I will, of course, tell you where that new home is right here.

Big love to all the voters, and all the supporters of the blog.

Offensive? I'll show you offensive...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e31971b2-134f-11e4-8244-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3SnRCScEv

6ft1swell

À la recherche du chaude et dure perdu: Denise Hoshor

REMEMBRANCE OF HOT AND HARD PAST

7. Denise Denise



This photo should, in my opinion, be the first photo inducted into the (at the time of writing, mythical) Female Muscle Hall of Fame. Today I'm looking at it and it feels as if I've never noticed the veins in her forearms before. Every time I look at the photo, it seems to stimulate my imagination in a different way. It's like I'm seeing her for the first time every time. And what a sight she is! Denise's WPW sets are the most popular of all time, so she has a reasonable claim to be the fan's favourite fbb ever, her body and her almost magical sex appeal fulfilling a kind of collective notion of perfection.




As far as I'm concerned, everything she did as a bodybuilder was magic, but two moments stand out. First, Denise in Hawaii, posing in a purple bikini and white heels in public. She's in incredible shape. Huge and chiselled from head to toe, oozing feminine sex appeal. As the crowd (of men) watching her grows, the more provocative and sexier her posing gets. The second is in a tiny segment of a GMV video (can't remember which, I bought it and threw it out so long ago now, and have never found the exact clip). She's at an Expo, strutting through the crowd in a tight, sleeveless black dress. The GMV camera person asks her to flex, and when she does, there is stunned silence from behind the camera. She flexes one last magnificent bicep, holds the pose, and looks beyond the camera. Good? she asks, raising an eyebrow. There's no reply. Whoever is holding that camera has been struck dumb. She smiles, and struts away.




And we leave this week of memories with a beautifully edited tribute to Denise, courtesy of jerrymail (who also brought us the "Denise in Hawaii" clip linked above). The title, Denise Hoshor Sexy, is as good a three-word summary as you will find.



Enjoy!


HOT and HARD 2015 LAST DAY OF VOTING IS TODAY

Obviously I'll take time zones into account, and to be honest, if you are a bit late, I'll still accept your votes (especially if you are all complimentary about the blog), but please, as soon as you can so I can start to put the posts together. Many thanks to all who have voted so far. You make the Hot and Hard 100 what it is, a thing of beauties!

Inspiration, rules and how to vote here.

À la recherche du chaude et dure perdu: Michelle Andrea

REMEMBRANCE OF HOT AND HARD PAST

6. Come Sail Away



I was never much one for keeping a diary, but if I had been when I first came across the subject of today's post, I may have been moved to write something like this...



New plan. Make a lot of money (banking? arms dealer?) Buy yacht. BIG yacht. Berth yacht hot place in US (Florida?) Meet Michelle Andrea (or sim.). Invite MA onto yacht. She sunbathes topless, nude. Sail into sunset, happily ever after etc.



Yes, once upon a time, all I wanted, all I would ever want, was a big yacht and Michelle Andrea. I very much doubt I was alone. Often mentioned in 'Most Beautiful of All Time' discussions, Michelle still looks about 200bn better than any woman her age has a right to - see for yourself on her Facebook or Twitter. And, best of all, you can tell her all about your own 'Me-You-Yacht' fantasies on HerBicepsCam.

After a quick bit of mental arithmetic, I reckon if I sell up, even after solicitor's fees and paying off the wife... I might just have enough for that great big yacht...

HANG ON MICHELLE! I'M COMING!!!

Cunningly I distract you from doing the same with 1991 Michelle...



Enjoy!


TWO HOT and HARD VOTING DAYS LEFT!

Inspiration, rules and how to vote here.

À la recherche du chaude et dure perdu: Michelle Neil

REMEMBRANCE OF HOT AND HARD PAST

5. Dr. Feelgood

In a short, and sadly long lost, clip from around 2006, a Femflex (I think) crew is shooting contestants back stage. A vision of incredible, heart-stopping size and conditioning, her hair as golden as her tan, starts flexing for the camera. They ask her her name. Without skipping a pose, she tells them. Then, there's a fairly long pause (these clips were generally quite chatty affairs). Off camera, a kind of awed silence for this amazing specimen, punctuated by assorted gasps and wows while she just keeps flexing, her muscles rippling, bulging, exploding. Finally, one of the crew speaks.

You sure are gonna be hard to keep out of the top three.

She looks over a thick, shredded shoulder at the offending crew member.

I'm gonna be hard to keep out of the top ONE, she says.




That was my introduction to the wondrous Dr. Michelle Neil, one of those women, one of those bodies, that seemed to arrive fully-formed. Even when she was still competing at regional level she had the ability to make experienced female muscle watchers turn to jelly - as this clip where Dave Palumbo claims to be interviewing her but just kind of drools intead will testify (scroll down a bit, it's there).



Michelle seemed to know she was special, and that confidence - I don't think it counts as arrogance if you really are the best - combined with her spectacular physique to make treasures of each and every one of her photo sets and video clips. I could have chosen one of her posing clips from her 2007 Nationals triumph, or some of her work with Awefilms. There's that Femflex "Mini-Movie", six minutes of Michelle's muscles close-up and bulging out of a tight black dress, or an FTVideo webcam clip where she displays muscle control (pecs, abs, glutes) that still moves me to this day.




In the end, I plumped for a photo set by the often forgotten (and now gone) bodyelite.net with Michelle's aptly elite body, you might say, packed into a little black dress - probably not so little on your average woman, but if ever there was a woman who was not average (and not just physically), Michelle was she.




Sadly, as I'm sure many of you already know, the light that burned twice as brightly burned only half as long, and Michelle gave up competing soon after she had won her pro card. She was the victim of massateric hypertrophy as (apparently) that freakishly overgrown jaw thing is known in medical circles, which is where, incidentally, you will find her now, still practising at her clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma.



Perhaps the secret of her enduring appeal (apart from the presence, the confidence, the body, the insane muscle control etc.) is that her brief career keeps us ever keen. As one forum poster and Michelle devotee gushes, Michelle, you should be among the stars with your heavenly muscular body, especially that back, that face, those eyes of blue and golden hair! And then adds, there are two things I wish I had: photos of her workout routine and some topless shots! See? She left us wanting more.



Lawdy I am enjoying these posts even if no one else is!

Another day, another memory tomorrow...


THREE DAYS OF HOT and HARD VOTING LEFT!

Review last year's list: 100 to 81, 80-61, 60-41, 40-21, 20-11 and the top 10 on FMS passim, or download PumpItUp's Hot and Hard 100 2014 pdf.

Rules and how to vote here.

À la recherche du chaude et dure perdu: Desiree Ellis [NSFW after click]

It's not often - despite the safety of the "Adult Content" warning on the blog - that I actually post what you'd call adult content, but today is one of those times.

REMEMBRANCE OF HOT AND HARD PAST

4. Revelation & Desire

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, you had to imagine what a female bodybuilder looked like naked. Apart from those adverts for 'L.Scott Sales' or the like which were on the inside back page of WPW (and even then had only tiny tiny pictures of - let's face it - hardly the women you would have most liked to see naked) in the magazine years, it was a rare sight to see even what I know now is called an "implied topless" shot.

Muscle Elegance changed the game.

The trauma of purchasing the magazine from one of the busiest newsagent's in the country (at the Tottenham Court Road end of Oxford St!) paled in comparison to the rewards within. There wasn't a coy hand covering anything inside its pages. In an instant, the need to imagine had vanished. Here were female bodybuilders, and some of the top female bodybuilders at that, revealed in all their spectacular glory.

Bi-monthly my desire was satisfied. And like a kid who's been bothering his parents for a toy for months only to tire of it quickly once it's been bought for him, a new desire began to replace it. Wouldn't it be great if Muscle Elegance made DVDs?

I didn't have to wish for very long! And it's from one of those early DVDs, Gym Heat, as I recall the first one I actually purchased, that today's recherche comes.

It starred the ubiquitous Denise, Rhonda Lee Quaresma and Desiree Ellis. Great though Denise always was (and is, and no doubt shall always be), and despite the sizzling sex appeal the young Rhonda Lee undoubtedly had (long before she went down the Melissa Coates road of beauty-destroying cosmetic surgery), it was Desiree's segments of the DVD that, if it had been VHS, I would have worn out.

Her beauty. Her voice, as smooth as her dark, delicious skin. Her muscles, rippling beneath as she pumps and flexes. The tease - for roughly half the clip she's not even topless. Shoulders = power, she says. Big shoulders turn her on. Training her shoulders turns her on. It was, and for me at least, still is, utterly intoxicating. And that's even before the naked second half, before she starts to make love to the bench...

Here's the link

Enjoy!

Safe(r) for work memories tomorrow!


ONLY FOUR DAYS OF HOT and HARD VOTING LEFT!

Review last year's list: 100 to 81, 80-61, 60-41, 40-21, 20-11 and the top 10 on FMS passim, or download PumpItUp's Hot and Hard 100 2014 pdf.

Rules and how to vote here.

À la recherche du chaude et dure perdu: Cory Everson

REMEMBRANCE OF HOT AND HARD PAST

3. Iron Woman

Cory. So many many images, so many many moments spent with her...

I had thought it would be impossible to pick one, that I'd have to compile some sort of 'Best of' post, but when I closed my eyes and remembered, immediately and vividly one did, in fact, come to mind. A magazine cover. Ironman, November 1991. Cory.



The pose. Left hand in hair, her bicep full, defined. Her right suggestively pulling her suit up, the veins on her bicep. The look. Straight to camera. Boring into the viewer, into me. Intense, powerful. Her mouth, her lips, slightly opened. Her abs, a fissure running from top to bottom, separating hard slabs of muscle. Beautiful. Animal.

This was Cory as I'd never seen her before. I guess now I'd say she was more 'swole'. At the time, I didn't have the vocabulary. Just the feeling, The Madness, adrenaline pumping, hypnotised by her beauty, her power, her sexuality, her muscle.



Perhaps this cover, this shoot, is bringing back special memories for you too, dear reader, and it really is a female muscle landmark. Perhaps not, and it was merely the time in my life and the time of the year that has made this cover stay with me for so long. I was 17, and the long winter nights were drawing in, if you know what I mean. Perhaps it's because 1991 was towards the end of her career as a cover model, that she'd stopped competing and had filled out because she didn't have to toe the Weider-winner line anymore. Honestly, I don't know why this cover photo and the few images inside that Ironman, November 1991, made such a big impression on me. But they did.



Remembrance continues tomorrow...


And P.S. ONLY FIVE DAYS OF HOT and HARD VOTING LEFT!

Ge busy if you want your women to make the list this year!

À la recherche du chaude et dure perdu: Zuzana Korinkova

REMEMBRANCE OF HOT AND HARD PAST

2. Oh Zuzana



I'd scan the shelves for new issues then take my chance to furtively leaf through the pages when there was no one else near me, no one who could see what I was looking at, because if anyone did, they'd see what a weirdo I was. Waiting, again, until there was no one at the cash register, unable to look the shop owner in the eye, I'd pay (my hands trembling with excitement) and stuff the magazine into my bag as fast as I could. Relief! The hard part over, my heart pounding inside my chest, I'd rush back home to secretly enjoy the pictures of the amazing women within my precious cargo.



It's a scenario apparently familiar to countless fans of female muscle who grew up at the time when a trip to the newsagent's was the only way to get your fix.



I would have been in my late teens when I saw these images of Zuzana. They're images I spent hour upon hour with. So much muscle, so much detail to enjoy. Her meaty, booming bicep; her freaky, granite glutes; triceps whose striations have striations...



Many years later the internet allowed me to enjoy Zuzana in motion, both on and off stage, and the excitement was barely less intense. Whether it was the younger, leaner Zuzana or the later jaw-droppingly huge Zuzana of so many WPW clips, she was a fascinating, beguiling combination of muscle and beauty. Little wonder she is one of very few women who almost every female muscle lover has on their all-time list.

See another UK female muscle fan's recollection of these Zuzana images on FMS' Shared History of Female Muscle Fandom page in the piece entitled The Newsagent's.

And we leave you today with an edited clip of Zuzana's legendary white lingerie shoot.

Enjoy!



Another trip down female muscle memory lane tomorrow...

À la recherche du chaude et dure perdu: Sophie Duquette

In this last week of voting for the FMS Hot and Hard 100, I don't wish to unduly influence the waverers among you who are still compiling your lists by posting too many images of the hottest hard women of the last year [like you did yesterday?! - ed.] And on top of that, as I've recently reached, shall we say, a "certain age", I'm kind of in the mood to look back on my female muscle lovin' life thus far.

So, all week on FMS, it's some of my all-time favourite female muscle moments, starring some of my all-time favourite muscle women. And with apologies to Monsieur Proust, we've decided to call it À la recherche du chaude et dure perdu, or...

REMEMBRANCE OF HOT AND HARD PAST

1. These Glutes Were Made for Walking

She walks towards the camera, which then swings around and follows her up a staircase and onto a landing. Then we switch point of view as the camera overtakes her and now she's walking towards us again. She smiles into camera as she passes along. Fade out.

Described as above it doesn't sound like much. But when "she" is Sophie Duquette in heels, when her mouth-watering body is at its full and curvy muscle peak, when that fantasy body of hers is covered only by a triangle of fabric up top and a "skirt" that barely manages to cover 50% of her glorious rear... well, it's amazing how scintillating a forty-seven second clip of a woman doing nothing but walking can be.

It's so far from the HD clarity we are so spoiled with now - I'm guessing it's about ten years old - but I tend to think it's actually better for it, or rather, I'm all the better for it. If, ten years ago, I'd watched Sophie in HD - particularly the walking up the stairs behind her rippling legs section - so excited would I have been that I might well have found myself in intensive care, never able to safely watch the clip again. Ever.

And to think there are actually men out there who wouldn't find this sexy.

Click here and you can watch the clip on a continuous loop. Careful now!

And I shall be biting into another madeleine tomorrow...

FMS Hot and Hard 100: One Week Left

Time for your RED REMINDER

Voting for this year's FMS Hot and Hard 100 closes next Friday, 20th February.



1. You may vote for up to 100 women. (Your choice if you rank them or not - but rankings are used as a tie breaker if two women have the same number of votes).

2. Vote for your favourites from the last year - it's not an all-time poll, it's a Top 100 Hot and Hard Women in the World NOW, so your thinking should be about active (though not necessarily competitive) muscle women only, please.

3. Send your list to 6ft1swell@gmail.com



Your anonymity (in case you were worried) is guaranteed.




We look forward to hearing from you.




Review last year's list if you like. But hurry!



We'll count up the votes and begin posting the results, counting down the hottest hard women in the world today from 100 to 1 at or soon after the beginning of March.



Enjoy!