Friday 31 August 2018

(More) Summer Lovin': Wild & Wholesome

imagebam.com

As women who feature heavily in GwM's High Score Today go, Amanda Ballengee is - in my experience - rather unique. Exquisite muscle beauty, one comment reads, but completely different to the usual on this site - no gym pics found at all!

imagebam.com

No gym pics found on her Instagram nor website either. Instead we have Amanda picking blueberries (she can pick and carry a lot with those arms). There's Amanda with her gun dog artwork. There's Amanda with her guns (handguns and semi-automatics) and her other weapon of choice, her bow. And there's Amanda "checking cams and taking names" (eh?!) in the West Virginia woodland she calls home.

imagebam.com

The title of today's post - Wild & Wholesome - is the name of the blog which you can read on her website, and while she clearly has an affinity for "the wild", just how "wholesome" you find her will be very much a matter of personal opinion. To some, she is simply "a lovely country girl", "a strong, confident woman representative of our Western Christian culture". To others, she is "a crazed Christian conservative".

imagebam.com

Find out how "wholesome" you think Amanda is on her website and/or Instagram.

Thursday 30 August 2018

(More) Summer Lovin': That Intellectual Look

imagebam.com

A few years ago an old friend of mine (real not online), very successful in his field of business, decided he was going to get himself some glasses. He didn't need to wear them, there was, and as far as I know still is, absolutely nothing wrong with his vision. He just felt he needed to look a bit more intellectual in meetings, where he was often up against guys who "just looked so f***ing intelligent" with their specs on.

imagebam.com

There's quite a lot of him in C. Moore Glootz - the bluster, the sideways point of view, the egocentricity (not that he isn't a lovely guy underneath all that!). Strangely though, some recent research reported in the UK media has suggested that not only was my old friend correct in thinking wearing glasses makes you look smarter, but also that there may actually be a link between having poor eyesight and being intelligent.

imagebam.com imagebam.com
imagebam.com imagebam.com

Research commissioned by Scrivens Opticians & Hearing Care and carried out by OnePoll.com found one third believe spectacle wearers look more intellectual than those who don't have prescription eyewear. The research also found 32 per cent of glasses wearers think they are perceived 'differently' when they wear glasses.
[The Sun, 31 January 2018]

imagebam.com
Built to last: Gaby Quiros is smart enough to find the Corinth Canal

A new study published in the journal Nature Communications has found that needing to wear glasses is associated with higher levels of intelligence. In the study, the largest of its kind ever conducted, researchers from the University of Edinburgh analyzed cognitive and genetic data from over 300,000 people aged between 16 and 102 that had been gathered by the UK Biobank and the Charge and Cogent consortia. Their analysis found “significant genetic overlap between general cognitive function, reaction time, and many health variables including eyesight, hypertension, and longevity”. Specifically, people who were more intelligent were almost 30% more likely to have genes which might indicate they’d need to wear glasses.
[The Guardian, 30 May 2018]

imagebam.com

Whether what's brought it on is the (sometime) glasses wearing Swoon of the Year Shannon Seeley, or my recent deep exploration of Amanda Machado's Instagram, or something else entirely, over the last couple of weeks I've been actively searching for and collecting images of bespectacled muscular beauties for FMS.

imagebam.com
Jana Beeckman makes sure everything matches

Am I entering some kind of brawn plus brains period?

imagebam.com
Rachael Chaskey has read at least one book

Anecdotal evidence on the forums abounds with suggestions that some muscle women are, in fact, just as "meat-headed" as (I imagine all) male BBs (to be). I've never seen FBBs as anything less than brilliantly intelligent simply because they've chosen right, chosen the correct answer if you like - a life devoted to Bodybuilding.

imagebam.com

So I dismiss that kind of forum chatter. For one thing, there are the actually academically qualified and professionally high-achieving types (see below), but what about Cory Everson, who plotted a career into the mainstream that remains unrivalled? What about Denise Masino or Lisa Cross or Brandi Mae Akers, who have turned their talents to money-making via muscle erotica? What about Emery Miller, chatting away to her fans on cam and managing to be engaging and apparently knowledgeable across a wide range of subjects? The most popular Female Bodybuilders, more often than not it seems to me, appeal not only to our baser physical instincts, but can also reach the largest of erogenous zones - our brains.

imagebam.com
Doctor Alex Mossbarger

In a thread called "Female Bodybuilders with a High IQ", Bettina Kadet (now Salomone) (optometrist), Kathy Connors (well-read, knew "an impressive amount" about a minor African conflict according to a head who met her), Cerra Aredia (lawyer), Dina Al Sabah (polyglot, BSc, MSc, MBA), Dr. Michelle Neil, Dr. Dena Westerfield, Heather Darling ("accomplished" lawyer), the late great Renee O'Neil (BSc, MSc, missile defence program director), Chris Lydon (did Neurobiology and French, then graduated from Yale Medical School before discovering Bodybuilding), and, of course, Kristy Hawkins (chemist) all get shout outs.

imagebam.com

None of them - as far as I know - are famous for wearing specs though...

imagebam.com imagebam.com
imagebam.com imagebam.com

Neither are many of the women we've featured today, and some I was genuinely surprised to find wearing glasses - Cass Martin, for example, Michaela Aycock, Ashlee Potts, and Megan Elizabeth Colvin. Only one or two - Paige Sandgren being the obvious example - are more commonly seen with than without eyewear, and much of Paige's geeky-girl-next-door appeal stems from that very fact.

imagebam.com

Do the rest of them know what my old friend worked out and the later research confirmed (sort of) - that glasses really do make you look more intelligent?

imagebam.com

It's win-win as far as I can tell. If they really do need to wear the glasses then research shows they are likely to be have clever genes anyway. And even if they are wearing them solely for effect, well that just shows how smart they are too. Either way my suspicions are confirmed. Muscle women are as brainy as they are beautiful.

imagebam.com

Enjoy!

Wednesday 29 August 2018

(More) Summer Lovin': Mmmmarelize

Just the one pic today, but if you haven't come across South African Marelize Stander before, we're guessing it will spur you on to further investigation.

imagebam.com

Hair, naels [sic] and striations is Marelize's own title for this selfie meesterstuk. This 34-year-old muscle beauty reckons she has been training for 20 years, and looking at that right royal pectus cibum, I see she hasn't had many days off in that time. Easy too to see why she recently became South Africa's national PCA Trained Figure champion.

More of Marelize's irresistibly gorgeous muscle meat on her Instagram

Enjoy!

Tuesday 28 August 2018

(More) Summer Lovin': Summer of Shannon

No, not another gushing tribute to Swoon of the Year Shannon Seeley (see Summer Lovin': My Summer of Shannon). Instead, a gushing tribute to another Shannon - Rabon, or Rabon-Perdikis, or even (Rabon) Perdikis as she is known now.

Shannon, that Shannon, you may remember, had a bit of history with the female muscle lovin' community in the (very) early noughties - "the Shannon Courtney of her day" according to one forum poster - and then disappeared completely. A couple of years ago though, she came back to us, even more glorious than before... and competed in the Physique division at the Jr. USAs, with predictably disappointing and "judges said I was too big" results. We, however, were a lot less immune to Shannon's charms - both those she had retained and those she had built over the top of those familiar ones - and she smashed into your Hot and Hard 100 top 20 in 2017, and was there again this year despite not having done a show since that 2016 appearance.

Well, on August 5th at the Sheraton Myrtle Beach Convention Center Hotel...

imagebam.com imagebam.com
imagebam.com imagebam.com

She was no Physique competitor this time. Shannon - in all her suit-threatening glory - was the sole Female Bodybuilder at the NPC Stewart Fitness Championships.

imagebam.com imagebam.com
imagebam.com imagebam.com

More than enough woman.

And, excitingly, this is only the first of her planned shows for 2018. Very soon, Shannon will be chasing her pro card at the IFBB North Americans. And as she's an over 40 now, so limited competition, I'm fairly confident that she'll get it.

Follow her final preparations on Instagram

Read the Shannon story (up to and including 2016) on FMS passim.

Monday 27 August 2018

(More) Summer Lovin': Sun's (Still) Out...

imagebam.com

Kim Gutierrez

A continuation of/companion piece to our Summer Lovin' post with (almost) the same name in July. FMS proudly presents another installment of hot and hard women out and about and showing off their muscles - at times outrageously so - in the sun.

HIKE

imagebam.com

Unidentified lady with calves

RIDE

imagebam.com

One thing that hasn't changed about Shannon is her love of equines

GO TO WATER

imagebam.com

Jennifer Keller

Whether it's the pool or a (real or artifical) lake, there are cooling alternatives to the beach for the terminally land-locked when the mercury rises. Having said that though, it's hard to imagine any of these bodies truly having a cooling effect on the local environment, particularly Maria Garcia emerging Bond-girl-of-my-dreams-like from the pool in a Bikini that reveals only slightly less than no Bikini at all would.

imagebam.com imagebam.com

Anna Laskowska (left) and unidentified ripped beauty

imagebam.com

Jacquelyn Hickerson

imagebam.com

The definition of caliente?

HIT THE STREETS

imagebam.com

Vivi Winkler

No excuse necessary, but high temperatures mean fewer clothes - the perfect chance to expose all those parts of your body you've been working so hard to perfect.

imagebam.com

Kristina Moser

imagebam.com imagebam.com

Laura Gallardo Herrero (left) and Zsoka Halasz boost tourism

imagebam.com

Diana Schnaidt (left) and Ashley Hromyak entertain the locals

FLEX FOR FOOD

imagebam.com

"Roxy" is the only name we have for her, unfortunately. We're pretty sure, however, that a lady as good-looking as she is, who has such thick, suckable biceps as she does, won't have later walked out of The Protein House having paid for her meal.

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL TEAM

imagebam.com

Flamengo, in case you were thinking of joining Alessandra Alvez's tribe.

KEEP US SAFE

imagebam.com

"Misty"

Summer is not all play. Someone has to pull us out of the burning building, someone has to arrest those perps. I feel I would sleep more soundly if I knew all fire fighters and police officers were a) female, and b) carried as much muscle as these gems.

imagebam.com

Inja Damjanovic

GET THOSE JOBS DONE

imagebam.com

Gutters don't clear themselves, you know.

Today's late August Bank Holiday here in the UK (not Scotland) always serves to remind us that autumn chills are indeed not far away. Until then though, we hope that all our friendly neighbourhood muscle women continue to show it all off.

imagebam.com

Frida Paulsen Stern

Enjoy!