Tube Watch

Today, FMS once again rounds up our favourite YouTube clips as the (pleasingly popular and) irregular muscle in motion fest we call Tube Watch, returns.

CORY'S BEST BITS

Once upon a time, when your female muscle fix came on a printed page, Cory Everson ruled the female muscle world. If there was a month that went by without her being the covergirl of one of the muscle magazines you so avidly collected, it was a rare month indeed. But, unless you (or more likely your Dad) were the proud owner of one of those new-fangled machines they called video recorders and you had the resources to send away to the US for one of those things they called video tapes, well, you just had to imagine how Cory moved. Thankfully, those days are long gone. And thanks to the latest (and first non-Denise Rutkowski) addition to Kiko Newman's channel, you can now enjoy some of Cory's most memorable moves in just over three minutes with the added bonus of some of her legendary contemporaries trying to outsexy her in a variety of (I'm assuming Olympia) posedowns. Gold.



For Your Consideration

Also in the "montage" file this month, new additions to Female Fitness Reset, a channel which, you may remember, we featured on the blog just a few weeks ago. Then, our only (slight) criticism of the channel was the absence of much Bodybuilder with a capital B edits. Now, I am not going to flatter myself into believing that the preponderance of bigger girls in Mr. Reset's most recent uploads has anything to do with FMS' observations, but I am very pleased to report that since then he's added (among others) Cass Martin, Natalia Kovalyova, and both of your 2017 Hot and Hard 100 top 2 - Theresa Ivancik, and Elena Oana Hreapca - to his collection.

BRINGING SEXY BACK

From a serial Olympia winner, we go next to a woman who will be making her Olympia debut this year - Italy's Doina Gurun. This is Doina's first year as a Physique competitor (previously she competed in Figure) and her move up has paid off handsomely. She won her first Physique title at her third attempt - the recent San Jose Pro - and if this routine is anything to go by, it's a) a damn shame she didn't find her way to Physique earlier, and b) going to be hot on that Olympia stage. This is Doina in muscle sexy action during her second Physique outing at the Arctic Pro, and her Instagram moniker (The Tiger) only really makes sense when you've seen her prowl around the stage. Reminiscent of those routines of times past that had the IFBB firing off "sex it down" directives to the 80s/90s ladies, and all the better for it.



For Your Consideration

Doina was filmed and uploaded by Louie Maldonado, whose better half, Sharlin Maldonado, also competed in Anchorage with Doina. Her routine, and those of all the other WPD ladies who competed there and at the Mile High Pro are on his channel, and very well-filmed treats they are. Swell especially digs Anne Freitas (not quite so freaky these days, but still pretty damn freaky) from the Arctic Pro - as well as Jessica Martin, who we featured on Sunday - and Keri Ann Heitzman's slow and sexy style from the Mile High Pro. If backstage/pump room is more your bag though, head over to NPC News Online's YouTube channel and fill your boots, with the Fitness/Physique backstage video from the 2017 NPC Universe being FMS' pick of the bunch.

DANI'S ARMAGEDDON

Our YouTube Swoon of the Month though has to go to Dani Reardon training (and flexing, there's lots of flexing) arms in Orlando. She's not so "lil" and definitely more "monsta" these days, and while many of her clips are far too long to hold your attention, and have too much of her yakking and not enough of her cracking out reps and poses, "Armageddon" comes in at a snug 2.34 and is almost all about those muscles. 2.11 is a moment (and a pose) you won't forget in a hurry, I promise.

Get comfy now.



Enjoy!

A New Golden Age? Part VII

PIU: I am only just bookmarking Instagrams and trying to catch up.

FMS: Not sure I agree with your Instagram tactics there. The joy of it is in the "Insta", wherever you are and whatever you're doing, you can keep up with what your favourite muscle goddesses are doing and thinking and - most importantly - how they're looking at that very moment. Can't recommend it highly enough - Sharlene Franken, Sierra Mangus, Theresa Ivancik, Asha Hadley... I could go on. To be honest I find it hard to remember what life was like before it!

PIU: I am sure I will get up to speed with Instagram. In one sense with the direct social media we get a more personal impression of those in the sport, perhaps more rounded. In another way the distance that the early much more selective images added to the sense of them being even more exotic, otherworldly and glamorous.



Which might almost lead me to my last choices to explain. Meral and Michelle (yet another Michelle!) from a memorable shoot in the 80s. Both still looking good today.



And Meral at least still in the business - check out her website.



FMS: Meral. Wow. Still absolutely drop dead gorgeous. Valerie Gangi is another from that era who still looks amazing. Better not to mention Denise Rutkowski though!

PIU: Fast forward to an image of two contemporary hot bodies in the gym, Carly Thornton and Corinne Ingman.



Like Meral and Andrea, they know how to present themselves, they are equally confident, proud and look the viewer straight in the eye. They may appreciate the admiration and more we fans offer them but as the financial rewards are still not that great for most, whether they compete or not, ultimately they are doing what they do because they want to, and we are eternally grateful for that!

FMS: Was going to have Carly and/or Corinne for myself until you beat me to it. Newer faces (and bods), keeping the UK's tradition of quality female muscle alive. So happy about Carly's breakthrough last year. Unexpected but richly deserved and (if you follow her Instagram!) you can see she's absolutely going to go for it as a pro.

Corinne I reckon will follow before long. She's long overdue a bit of luck as far as competitions are concerned, but in the meantime her insane conditioning has won her a legion of fans, both male and female (again, Instagram her!)



So, for my final two I thought we should include the then and now Queens of Muscle. The Weider-backed beauty who ruled in my youth, and Ms Rising Phoenix, who gets absolutely zero love from the IFBB.

Does she care? Not a bit. And I hope, I really hope, that this is where FBBing, at least pro FBBing, is going. Away from federations that don't want these women, and onto a new, fan-sponsored, athlete-led organisation that eventually brings all the Physique, Figure, Fitness women over too.

A lot of the things we've talked about - the internet, social media, and the interactiveness this makes possible between the women and the fans - makes this doable for the first time (I think) and the work of Wings of Strength to keep pro FBBing alive has shown the way.

PIU: Aside from the whims of certain internet companies or government interference, we perhaps now potentially at least, have a kind of pluralism (to borrow from political theory) from a few (print) sources to multiple centres of power (no pun intended) in a globalist online world. As you rightly suggest, if power is increasingly in the hands of the women and the fans, as individuals or groups, it can hopefully continue to adapt positively and flourish for many years to come!

And that, dear readers, is all we wrote.

Many many thanks to PumpItUp for helping me make a (yet another) dodgy idea into real posts, which, if they were half as enjoyable to read as they were to make, are not too shabby at all. As always, it's been an education to pick his brains!

Check out the UK's longest-running female muscle blog 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!

Treasures from the Archive: Ms Olympia Memories: Part I The Magazine Years

Can't say I remember too clearly what it was like having to follow the Ms Olympia a month (or two) after it had actually happened through the pages of Muscle & Fitness, Flex, Ironman and so on, but whenever I come across an image of Cory Everson with a big medal around her neck, flanked by one or both of the Weiders and/or one or both of the women who made up the top three that year, her arms held aloft, it invariably seems familiar, and takes me back to those early magazine years.



Then, as far as my teenage female muscle obsessive self was concerned anyway, the result was a given. The Ms Olympia was not so much a contest as the annual coronation of the most physically perfect woman in the world. And clearly that was Cory.



In those days you were never exactly starved of images of her to drool over (especially in Weider publications), but for me it was the pics of Cory on stage that were always the most drool-worthy, so the Olympia editions were prized possessions. The tan, the oil, the striations, the muscles, and, I particularly remember, the bikini bottoms so tight that I was forced to spend hours, possibly days, of my life just looking (slightly puzzled at that tender age) at whatever was making that shape between her legs!



But, of course, there were other women, and in those very early days Anja Langer was, I reckoned, probably the second most physically perfect woman in the world... The judges didn't see it my way (not for the last time) in 1987 (left, below) when she finished 4th, but in 1988 (right) Anja was runner-up to (of course!) Cory Everson.



These days, I'm convinced that the reason I've found myself reacting so positively to the Physique division (much more positively than I'd expected to when it was first announced) is largely because the aesthetic is so reminiscent of Anja's and the other female bodybuilders' at the time I first discovered my love of female muscle. Over 25 years later, it seems I'm still programmed to respond to this "classical" aesthetic.

And staying in those early years (but not in the sense that it was an image I saw in a magazine), a screencap of Gladys Portugues during her routine at the 1986 Ms Olympia. It was intended for posting earlier in the year when FMS explored The Agony & the Ecstasy experienced by female bodybuilders when prepping and competing.



Now I've seen women (and men) looking this deliriously happy before, but they tended to be in sweaty clubs set up in old railway arches in the late 1990s and all of them had ingested a substance whose effects gave it its name. I doubt Gladys had had any of that, nor that she looked so ecstatic because Jean-Claude had promised to buy her a dog. This is what pure, unadulterated, Olympian female muscle ecstasy looks like!



We return to my formative female muscle lovin' years with three of the most "exotic" (to a teenage boy in a London suburb anyway!) and, therefore, most exciting women I had the pleasure of seeing inside the covers of the magazines containing Olympia reports. Future Ms Olympia Juliette Bergmann (above left) seemed, I recall, almost impossibly beautiful, and was probably responsible for my eagerness to visit Holland - much more so than the more conventional attractions for a young man. Marie-Laure Mahabir (above right) seemed to be from a different planet altogether.



The months when pictures from the Olympia appeared in the magazines tended to be the only ones featuring European-based FBBs like Marie-Laure, and I guess because I had seen so few images of them it made them all the more exciting - they were more memorable because they were so rare. Their placing at the show was utterly irrelevant to me, though perhaps it did cross my mind how such a magnificently sensual creature like Claudia Profanter could possibly finish 14th (as she did in '91).



But while it may have been an advantage to be European to get Swell's attention (or maybe that should be to bring Swell to attention), it was by no means necessary. As my teenage years drew to a close, Denise Rutkowski's feline power and unforgettable gold bikini proved an irresistible combination. And, for the first time in my life, I was, actually, trying to resist the lure of female muscle in order to appear all normal and stuff as I left school and moved away to university.

[Incidentally, if you are the sort who likes to know how the FBBs of your youth are looking now I am honour-bound to warn you that YOU SHOULD NOT TRY TO FIND OUT WHAT DENISE RUTKOWSKI LOOKS LIKE NOW. I had the misfortune to see, and it is haunting me. Really. Trust me. DON'T.]



And though I regularly fell off the wagon, discovering the likes of Denise, Yolanda Hughes and Natalia Murnikoviene (above, left and right respectively) when I did, I think of that first effort at repressing my desire to view images of female bodybuilders as the end of "The Magazine Years". By the time I re-embraced my sthenolagnia in the late '90s, I didn't need to rely on the mainstream muscle magazines for my fix - there was Women's Physique World and, a bit later, Muscle Elegance. It's rather ironic (and quite fitting) then that I couldn't actually find a magazine scan of Yolanda at the Olympia from a muscle magazine, and instead had to use a WPW pic.

Oh, look! It's Cory winning again...



And I leave you for today with Denise Rutkowski as I would like to remember her, performing her (I think it's fair to say) LEGENDARY routine from 1993. She finished second, and by all accounts that I know of, should have won.

On this evidence, it's easy to see why people would have thought so.

(If you've already got the box of tissues in in preparation for the excitement of this Friday's 2014 meat-fest, now might be a good time to crack them open...)



Enjoy!

More Ms O memories coming soon...

FMS vs Ryan Takahashi: The Conversation I

Today, Female Muscle Slave and The Adventures of Ryan Takahashi are posting, simultaneously, the first of a series of Q&A 'conversations' had between the authors which explore different aspects of our mutual love of female muscle...

So, I guess we should begin at the beginning. Who was your first female bodybuilder? And how did you react?

FMS: For me it was Carolyn Cheshire. She was the first female bodybuilder I ever saw. I must have been 13 or 14 maybe – it’s funny I really can’t remember exactly when it was, but I can recall every detail of ‘the experience’! Carolyn was making an appearance on a popular science show, a show I watched every week just out of interest (and in those days we had only 3 or 4 channels in the UK, so there wasn’t much choice). So, I’m watching as usual and this week it’s about how muscles work or something, and suddenly it’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Carolyn Cheshire…’



She comes onto the set through the audience in an orange posing suit, and I was immediately – and I MEAN immediately – transfixed. I remember how bronzed she was, tanned to absolute perfection and glistening with oil. And she had muscles. And she clearly liked her muscles because she didn’t stop flexing them until the applause died down and the presenter introduced her properly. And after the introduction, she did a lot more flexing.



How did I react? Well, let’s just say Carolyn was by far the most ‘exciting’ woman I had ever seen. I was 100% excited, yeah. She was beautiful, glamorous in a kind of American (ie. exotic!) way, and she radiated vitality and, above all, confidence. And I had never seen a woman with a body like hers. So strong, and so so sexy. Definitely ‘not normal’. But she was showing it off, pretty much all of it, in a studio full of strangers - not to mention the whole country’s living rooms – with total self-assurance.



My excitement quickly turned to utter intoxication. I hear my heart pounding. I feel the throb between my legs. I get a huge rush of adrenaline. And even if I wanted to, I couldn’t stop watching her. I can’t stop looking at her muscles. For the first time, I was feeling what I call ‘The Madness’.

RT: My first ever memory of seeing a female bodybuilder was opening up the 1999 issue of the Guinness Book of World Records and seeing a full color photo of Cory Everson. The picture wasn’t the most sexually appealing of her because it was a contest photo, but that image just burned into my 12-year-old memory. She looked freakish, unhuman and completely different from any woman I’d ever seen before. Like all pre-teen boys, traditional underwear and bikini models – in all their bony, skinny glory – caught my attention. But Cory Everson totally altered my paradigm. My perspective of the aesthetic diversity available within the human female form radically changed for good.

My reaction was a mixture of awe and mild disgust. Her oiled physique, bulging muscles and vascular body slightly repulsed me because I’d never seen anything like that before. But my eyes could not turn away. I intrinsically knew that although I didn’t exactly find her “attractive” in the traditional sense, I knew I had stumbled upon something special, something that would make me look at women differently. I always found myself sneaking peeks from that book and looking at that photo years and years later. There was something about Ms. Everson that burned into my mind. Her body was grotesque, but so damn appealing. Today, I don’t find bodies like that gross anymore. Of course not! But at a very tender pubescent age, my hormone-charged brain struggled to process the unique sexuality Ms. Everson exuded from that singular image.

What is your favorite female muscle-related fantasy? And why do you think you find this so appealing?

RT: Like most female muscle fans, we have many fantasies about our lovely ladies. For me personally, my favorite consists of me and a small army of strong female muscle warriors fighting alongside (in either a post-apocalyptic world or a nondescript medieval kingdom) against a vicious enemy. This enemy could be zombies, other muscular warriors (both male and female), interplanetary space aliens, killer cyborgs attempting to take over the world, dinosaurs, etc. The exact circumstances change, but I can’t stop fantasizing about me and my legion of gorgeous muscular Amazons battling in action.



Many men who love strong women have fantasies related to domination and submission. Not me. While I don’t knock that sort of thing as being “ridiculous” or “just not my thing,” my personal female muscle fantasies don’t have anything to do with me being dominated or me doing the dominating. Instead, I value these strong women as allies and, more or less, equals. Besides, after a long, epic battle to save the human race from total destruction, how else will I and my hundreds of beautiful Amazonian warriors pass the time?



I’ll let you fill in the rest! But rest assured, it would be pretty amazing!

FMS: I'm going to seem like the smart arse who gets granted a wish by the genie and his first wish is to have an unlimited number of wishes! I totally agree about having a lot of fantasies, and I guess my favourite fantasy is I get to have them all, simple as that.



I want to be a muscle woman's man. The whole thing. Train with her, eat with her, just be with her.



And the sex. Yes, I imagine, I fantasise there would be a lot of it. In my mind muscle women are the horniest women alive. So there would be more than I've ever had with any other woman I've known, and I have had a bit. There would be a lot more in fact. Yes, of course I want to worship her, to submit to her, but not only that. She's a woman, sometimes she'll want me to be a man, to be dominant and strong with her too. All in all, I want us to explore both our sexualities as fully as possible.



I want her to compete, so I get the whole contest prep deal too, watching her body change, the muscles emerging as she diets, watching her get more defined, more perfect every day. I want to be there for her, through that incredibly demanding process. And I want to be there to witness her moment in the spotlight. Give her all the help she needs, be it practical, emotional or anything else. And when she's got herself that trophy, I want to give her a night worthy of her achievements, a night to remember.



When we're out in public, I'd watch people react to her. I'd defend her if they were rude, but mostly I'd revel in the admiration they gave MY hot and sexy muscle woman.



I'm greedy, I want it all. Holidays, body hair, mood swings, aggression, self-doubt, self-love, sweat, the chicken breasts, the protein shake farts, watching her muscles swell, feeling her muscles swell, massages, the things in the fridge that are not legal, the single-minded determination...

And best of all would be if I was her man BEFORE she got into it. And you might have read on my blog that the wife IS getting into lifting. Lately I've been pinching myself to check it's really happening. Suddenly, I'm faced with the prospect that (at least some of) my fantasy is actually happening!

to be continued...

What's your answer to the above questions? Comment below if you care to share. Or perhaps you have a question you would like to pose the authors? Again, comment box below or email either 6ft1swell@gmail.com or ryantakahashi87@yahoo.com and we'll be sure to discuss it in future installments of the conversation.

Hand Bras

This week, FMS returns to the familiar format of seven posts with a single theme.



Hands up anyone who doesn't like a hand bra on their muscle woman?

OK, you can put your hands above the table again. I don't expect too many hands went up there. I mean, what's not to like? Seems to me it's a similar deal to the 'maximum muscle minimum clothing' image. You get to see all the muscle, and there's just a little bit denied to you, and it's that little bit you can't see that turns the eroticism up to 11 by sending your female muscle lovin' imagination into overdrive.



I guess the first 'hand bras' I would have ever seen were in the muscle mags of my teenage years. I certainly remember the shot of Paula Bircumshaw (right), although I seem to remember it as a whole page photo rather than as it is here with text. In the muscle mags, hand bras were about as racy as it was ever going to get, as it ever could get, so each one was a pretty big event in Swell's teenage bedroom as I recall!




Nowadays, you can get to see it all as often as you like - don't get me wrong, I like a shot of a topless or naked muscle woman as much as any of the female muscle lovin' brethren do, as long as there hasn't been a plastic surgery disaster, of course - but still, the tease of the hand bra always has that extra special something.




So, you lucky people, it's not quite topless muscle beauties all week.

Enjoy!