Blakelee's Bow

We did warn you (see Pic of the Month: August). As she wrote herself: The time has finally arrived! 20 weeks of hard work will be proudly displayed on stage. The same weekend as the Tampa Pro, Blakelee Ortega was making her competitive debut.



Like Blakelee herself, we were prepared. Time was you never heard of any FBB before they stepped on stage. Times have changed. Out of her Instagram and onto the forums, Blakelee has been one of the phenomenons of the last twelve months. The Knoxville Classic isn't the kind of local show the female muscle lovin' world usually pays much attention to. Thanks to Blakelee - and Blakelee alone - this year was different.



The sky's the limit for Blakelee, reads the comment. Since right from the start of her explosion on the forums she has been tipped for greatness. It's not hard to explain her appeal - beast from the neck down, beauty from the neck up, or "hamster head and rottweiler body" as one wag put it. Pictures of her from this spring racked up views and favourites in record time, and as she counted down to her first show, as her muscles emerged in all their glory, our collective excitement reached new levels.



HD Physiques cannily shot her in the weeks before her show, and if what's said in the chat is to be believed, the spike to their subscription rate must have been considerable. Her biceps are absolutely awesome in this recent shoot, noted one HDP cheerleader. She seems so very proud of her muscles and it shows when she flexes.



Now, if I asked you if your hands were still above the keyboard...

It gets better - trust me - but first, shall we see how she did?




Winner of (due to being the only competitor in) Class "C", Blakelee didn't win the posedown for the Overall title. The pics aren't great quality either, so she doesn't even look that ripped. But having said all that, isn't she just GORGEOUS!



I've been trying to analyse in some sort of objective way just what it is about her, and while I've pretty much failed, I think it's got something to do with how long her limbs and/or torso and therefore her muscles are. Both her arms and thighs have such beautiful shapes. They're certainly big when you consider her age and therefore the amount of time she's had to develop them, but they're also beautifully formed.



Whatever. The most important thing is that Blakelee wants to do it again, right? Well, we are (genuinely) delighted to be able to report it's nothing but good news on that front - This is only the beginning, she wrote, beaming with her "C" class trophy. A new fire has been lit. So anxious to get back to work and build a bigger, better me!

And for our big finish, here is Blakelee two days before her show, showing off. Or "practising my routine" as she puts it. Inspired by Alyssa Kiessling apparently - in posing style and choice of briefs I dare say. I loved performing every second of this! Blakelee tells us. Funnily enough, I love watching every second of it.



Now, if I asked you where your hands were...

Tampa: Closer

See the sweat - damn you can even see the pores on some!

As we noted the other day (see Triggers), James Cook does take you to the parts other photographers don't reach, and in Tampa, Mr. Rivieccio went in really close during the Figure presentations. Now the idea that muscle women (and in the grand scheme of things these Figure phenoms are HUGE) "look like men", is, sadly, still prevalent, but for me at least, he's really captured the beauty of these phenomenal ladies...



Even as their Protan begins to streak!

Download and zoom in (the pics are easily hi-res enough to take it) and you'll see that even though Tiffany Laumeyer (left) really is sweating profusely, whoever did her tanning application should definitely consider doing a bit more training before their next show. You'll also see where little beads of sweat have collected into tongue-tip size pools where the flawless Danielle Rose's neck meets the top of her pecs.



The big winner in the day was Canada's Melissa Bumstead (below, left). There are so many strong candidates for "The Most Beautiful Woman in Figure" that it could be a conversation that, once started, might never end. Melissa would definitely be part of that conversation though, and her somewhat wild-eyed excitement at being front and centre in the first callout only makes her even more beautiful to my eyes.



Next to Melissa (here, not in the first callout), Maggie Watson gets a bit of a raw deal - the expression on her face at the exact moment Cook clicked could have been more flattering for sure - but again, zoom in and perhaps think about how good the sweat making her neck shine would taste. Or that on her shoulders. Or the trickle running down her pec line... Would you wait for it to trickle down onto her abs, or not?



Amber Eutsey (left, she of the unabashed bicep flex - see Monday's post, Tease), looks like she felt powerful even when she wasn't showing off "illegally", while Mexico's stunning Georgina Lona has the expression of a woman who can't quite believe what she's standing next to. Or perhaps it's what that guy in the front row is doing...



But while Cook went in close on many of the Figure Phenoms, he only stayed in close on Puerto Rican sizzler Karen Reyes. The camera really loves her, as it were.




Should Annie be worried? I doubt it. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she were controlling the whole thing from the comfort of wherever she was, ordering Cook to take more of this girl, more of that girl, and much much more of Karen. The idea that after the show Annie and James reviewed all these pics together (and naked) from the comfort of their hotel bed is perhaps the hottest one I've had all week!

Enjoy!

Tomorrow we say goodbye to Tampa for another year.

Tampa: [Reader Request] Barbie

I have, my female muscle lovin' friend tells me a couple of weeks before the Tampa Pro, a new crush - Barbie Titus. Do you know her? Well, yes, we do. As my friend was finding out, and many have found out before him, Barbie is not a muscle woman you come across and then forget about, and the fact she's never featured on the blog before today is, according to editorial, nothing less than a crime. Do her justice now, you hear! screamed JJ as I left his office to start work on this, our first Barbie post.

No pressure then.



She first crops up around four years ago as a Figure competitor, winning an NPC Europa show (left) then placing 4th in her class at the Nationals. Even between those two shows she appears to have come a long way, and the (sort of trademark) look - that look that you don't forget - is already established. "Barbie" - must be a fair bit of pressure on women given that name, pressure to conform to it, if you see what I mean.



And in many ways this Barbie does conform - the long blond hair, the spectacular enhancements, the flawless styling and make-up, and so on. But in so many other ways, she is as far from the "ideal" of her plastic namesake as it is possible to get. Big and strong, with that slightly-squarer-than-a-woman-"should"-have jaw (so beloved of female muscle heads). She's so Barbie-like feminine and yet so masculine, it's easy to imagine how many non-heads she has confused the hell out of as they find themselves both deeply repulsed by and deeply attracted to her at the same time.




2015 was a big year for Barbie. After another unsuccessful crack at a pro card in Figure at the Jr. USAs, she decided to switch to Physique. Back at the Nationals it was a case of too soon, but she made an impression - not least in the FMS office. It would be a whole year until we saw her on stage again, but it was well worth the wait. Again she was at the Nationals, but this time she was ready, won her class and turned pro. There's not nearly enough stage shots of her from the show, but she's spectacular in every one.



Interviewed just after she'd left the stage, Barbie already knew when she'd make her pro debut. Don't be fooled by her "I’m the worst decision maker ever, I just keep training..." IG persona. Her career to date would suggest she knows exactly what she's doing.



The pro debut was at the end of August last year at the Hurricane Pro. Barbie arrived among the IFBB pro elite and was good enough - even to my untrained eye obviously superior in every way to her Nationals' winning package - for 4th in a very strong line-up. Beaten only by Olympians Heather Grace, Michaela Aycock and Melissa Pearo, she finished ahead of hardened hard pros like Maria Rita Penteado, Angela Debatin and Olga Belyakova. She promptly disappeared back into her muscle-building bunker, but the female muscle lovin' world had been notified now.



One way of gauging just how taken the collective we are with a competitor is to see how many compilations of their Instagram clips are up on YouTube. Those channels where you find those kinds of clips, they don't - surprise surprise - necessarily do it for love but rather for the advertising possibilities. Many edits of the same woman suggests she's a nice little earner for them. She can be found on numerous such channels, with Fitness Instagram leading the way with six Barbie comps at the time of writing. It's also worth bearing in mind that Fitness Instagram tends towards Bikini and "Fitness models" - more mainstream-y in their appeal, and therefore more likely to get clicks. Barbie is one of their more muscular muses, combining muscle mass and mass appeal.



She "comps" well. She doesn't post that regularly, but when she does it's pretty much always a winner. Her IG has more clips of her training than anything else, and the faces she pulls and the noises she makes should be an editor's dream. Why they insist on putting (generally) crappy soundtracks over her I am at a loss to explain.



I'm also struggling to nail exactly how old Barbie is. Two fairly grown-up children have come out of her beautiful body - this much we know. And we also know that she doesn't, or at least hasn't, competed in a Masters' class when the chance to do so has been there - at the Hurricane Pro last year, for example, which was an over 40 Masters. So, if pressed, we'd have to say Barbie must be in her late-30s. Maturing nicely.




And so to Tampa and her second appearance as a pro. Not the most photographed woman on the stage - I get the feeling she has a limited number of poses, all playing to her strengths of course (again, she knows exactly what she's doing) - either by our hero Mr Rivieccio nor by J.M. Manion for NPC News Online, but every single one is worth a little of your time. And once again, for such a relatively inexperienced competitor, Barbie over-achieved. 6th in a 35-woman line-up, and interestingly the very first Physique routine from the show put up by Maximum Muscle Report - a nod to the broader appeal she has than some of her higher-placing rivals perhaps?

It's not shot from the greatest of angles, but glutemen won't be complaining...



As far as I know my female muscle lovin' friend won't be either. Last I heard he was still on his Barbie exploration trip, and still loving every image and clip of her he was clicking on (no doubt with his left hand). It would hardly be surprising to discover there are heads all over the world doing exactly the same thing, as well as a few non-heads, confused as to why, but finding they can't help themselves nonetheless.



For James

Enjoy!

Tampa: Big

Irene, one week before the Tampa Pro

One of the observations I made when I wrote Monday's post last Friday (confused? read Monday's post!) concerned Irene "Too Big for the World" Andersen. Emerging from the pool, she displayed "incredible muscle mass", and looking again at the picture (below), I'm even more impressed - not least by that big, bulging, beautiful trap.



One of Wings of Strength's innovations - first in effect at last year's Rising Phoenix I believe - is that there should be, on top of the prizes for placings, a "Most Muscular" award as well. Aleesha was the first winner of it at the RP, but this season either I haven't been paying enough attention or they haven't had one at any of the previous shows in 2018. No prizes for guessing who took it home from Tampa though.



You can't please everyone, and the prize - or rather the need for the prize - has had plenty of criticism from fans of the "big is always best" variety. Admirable though there commitment to pure size is, occasions when the biggest FBB in show has been the winner are few and far between in FBBing history - IFBB FBBing history at least.



By introducing the award, WoS have at least acknowledged those FBBs who choose mass over all other considerations have a right to do so, and allowed them to go against current judging trends and still earn some prize money. I'm pretty sure Irene would have preferred the judges to award her a top 6 placing - she was 8th - but at least she was acknowledged with a prize (and she got a little share of that prize pot).



"Too Big for the World" she may be, and she's certainly "too big" for the IFBB judges. But on this occasion, Irene was just big enough to be the "Most Muscular" woman in show.



Size still matters. Especially in such a great posing suit!

Enjoy!

More from Tampa tomorrow.