Media Watch: Ms Iron Bum (!)

Exactly a month ago, the online arms of the British tabloids got wind of a young and beautiful "fitness model" who had been causing such a stir on social media that she had attracted upwards of three-quarters of a million Instagram followers and her fame had spread into the outer edges of the mainstream American media and beyond.



A Fitness model who has been branded "Miss Iron Bum" has wowed her social media fans by filming a video of her latest training session from behind, gushed The Sun on September 12th. The super-fit star is Bakhar Nabieva, the article continues, a 22-year-old of Azerbaijani origin from Dnipropetrovsk, in western Ukraine.



Now, if you are a female muscle fan who likes to keep up-to-date, it's very unlikely that you haven't heard of Bakhar Nabieva, even before The Sun, The Daily Star and our old friend The Mail filled up their column inches with almost exactly the same pictures and text - which was mostly based on an interview with Ms Iron Bum herself that was done back in April by a Brazilian website called The Saradas (note the "The"!).



It's fitting, I think, that it was a Brazilian website that got the first interview with her, because with her hyper-developed legs and (iron) glutes, it seems to me that Bakhar would fit right into a line-up of Brazilian muscle bombas. And, believe me, if we could organise such a line-up to prove our point, we most certainly would!



However, she's been on the female muscle fan radar since autumn last year, causing many a jaw to hit the floor when her Instagram pics started turning up on the forums and her webcam moniker - "LadySport" (not "Ms Iron Bum") - went round.



The breathless comments attributed to "fans" in the UK stories are, as far as we can ascertain, comments lifted from the (many) filmed-from-behind clips on a (much-viewed) YouTube channel that seems to have fallen foul of an AdRev scam but probably did belong to Bakhar at one point - if you've already followed our link to her Instagram page, and clicked on the YouTube link there, you've already found it.



On the forums, meanwhile, the brethren have been going just as ballistic for Bakhar. From her waist down she has, for one fan, "too much curvy muscle goodness for the human brain to handle". Another refers to her thighs as "the very gates of heaven". "If I never had to look at another thing again in my entire life..." says one poster of a brief Bakhar quad-shaking butt-flexing gif (and he doesn't need to finish his sentence).



So, here she is on FMS, better late than never, the newest muscle girl to break out into mainstream consciousness by the power of social media alone. Well, OK, the power of social media and her stunning looks and killer body. But there is a story behind Bakhar, and The Saradas found it and the UK media reported it verbatim. It's the story of a girl once-bullied who decided she was never going to bullied again. A girl who found herself - and, whether she wanted it or not, fame - by building muscle.



The finger? "To all shit talkers", she says.



Enjoy!