Woman of the Week: Slava Galagan

She juxtaposes the seemingly incompatible: she has the shape of a seriously built amazon and the face of the prettiest, most innocent girl. Long shiny dark hair, big eyes with curly lashes and a charming smile somehow go along with the widest shoulders. (Vasilina Pazdnikova, "Vladislava Galagan, the Female Bodybuilder")



Not me gushing, but a female admirer, a would-be journalist and student at the Anglo-American University in Prague, where "Slava" (as she is more commonly known) was enrolled for a while. But it could have been written (though perhaps not so well) by pretty much any of the many female muscle heads who have fallen under her spell.


Young(er) Slava, already "selecting outfits that make sure her achievements don’t go unnoticed"

A teenage athlete, she had first found beauty in female muscle at local meets. There were girls in good shape with beautiful leg muscles, she says. If I saw them now I wouldn't be so impressed, but at that time, at 16, they amazed me. Weight training not only improved her as an athlete, it gradually became her obsession in life.



Slava is, like her Prague-based trainer Olha Zhelamska, originally from Russia. Specifically, she hails from what she calls "a tiny town in the God-forsaken Taman Peninsula" (which, if your Russian geography isn't all that it should be, is about as close as you can get to eastern Crimea without actually being in it), and it was there she first began to dream of becoming a pro FBB. I was on the phone with my ex-boyfriend while scrolling through Bodyfitness models on the Internet, she explains. Suddenly, as though something or someone inside me had put the words there, I thought: 'I know what I want to do with my life'. Item #1 on the agenda was escape from Taman...



Relocating to Prague gave her freedom from a family who failed to understand (and support) her. She became financially independent as well, but the demands of being a student and being a bodybuilder proved incompatible. Happily, she ditched the former. Bodybuilding requires a lot of investment, she says. I had to work and train. Studying was just too much. I loved it, but it stood in the way of my dream.



And one part of that dream was realised last week when she stood on stage for the first time at the IFBB Diamond Cup in Malta. Not as one of those Bodyfitness models she had been scrolling through when she had that epiphany, but in the Physique division. She was the Physique division actually, all of it. Perhaps not quite as she had dreamt it then, but still... Best experience ever! she told her Instagram followers. Even though I was the only one, I still stepped on the stage. It’s always so hard the first time.



Yep, she's already planning to do it again. And that is very good news for the female muscle lovin' community because, although a very select few have had her on their radar since late 2016, it has only been during the prep for her contest debut that Slava has really made a name for herself. And she's really made a name for herself.



On top of all that single-minded dedication (which is always a winner), she's an "Amazonian" 5'9", has the looks of "a buffer Aspen Rae", and has made the kind of progress every head with a 22-year-old skinny but athletic girlfriend dreams of on a nightly basis. To say Slava has slayed us all is (not easy but) no understatement.



We don't seem to be able to decide whether "to look into her eyes or at her pecs" for one thing. She is "huge, but still cute as a button", "growing like a weed", and "her sex appeal is off the charts". It's been said she is "the future of bodybuilding", and "the future sexiest woman on Earth". The reply to which was, predictably: "She already is."



It is, apparently, almost impossible not to get a bit carried away (as you gaze into those big brown eyes or at those beautiful beefy arms). Her student interviewer felt it, FMS is very much feeling it, and her fans, including her 20,000+ Instagram followers (Angelica Enberg and Yeon Woo Jhi among them) are no doubt feeling it too.



I build this dream, she says. I never had a doubt. Good, but by no means 100% perfect English. And that is both something of a relief and perfectly excusable considering just about everything else about Slava Galagan is, apparently, absolutely perfect.



Enjoy!