Size Matters

Although I can find any amount of muscle on a woman attractive, it’s the big girls, the elite bodybuilders, that have always turned me on the most. A well-developed calf spotted in the street, a pole vaulter, a gymnast, a dancer, even a bikini competitor can get my juices flowing, but sooner or later I return to the prime female muscle beef. I am, after all, a self-confessed slave to female muscle, so it’s only logical that I should find the most muscular women sexier than any others.


Zuzana Korinkova and Fabiola Boulanger
From different eras but equally big (and hot)

People say that female bodybuilding is dying. In fact, people have been saying it for years. As long ago as 1999, ABC news in America made a report on its decline (watch it here). Commentators have often pointed at the post-Lenda Murray era for the start of the decline, some blaming Kim Chizevsky herself as being responsible for ‘the end of female bodybuilding’.


Kim Chizevsky
Wanted for the killing of female bodybuilding

The recently-introduced IFBB Physique class is supposed to be the latest nail in the coffin. Doomsayers claim there are fewer and fewer competitors in female bodybuilding, and the women who do compete are too big and too masculine to retain the level of appeal to the public that promoters need to generate the funds necessary for shows. Prize money is consequently negligible, and it is said the biggest women spend more on steroids than they could ever possibly hope to win back. In short, the picture has been bleak for some time and is getting bleaker.


Bev Francis (v Rachel McLish)
Who was the real star of the film for you?

But is the sport really in as bad a state as all that? There have always been women in the sport who have been criticised for their masculinity, remember Bev Francis in Pumping Iron II? Moreover, if female bodybuilding has been dying since circa 1996, surely it should be dead already. And if it really is in its death throes, why are new stars still emerging?


Yaxeni Oriquen
Miss International 2012, her fifth win in the competition


Cathy Le François and Debi Laszewski
Female bodybuilding legends still in top shape

Female Muscle Slave finds it hard to believe that female bodybuilding is dying when looking at the competitors at the most recent Miss International. Won by the peerless Yaxeni Oriquen, the field was, in my opinion, among the best ever to grace a bodybuilding stage. Apart from Yaxeni, who was possibly in her best ever shape, it was a truly international field with a wide variety of top-level experience. Cathy Le François seems to have been around for as long as I’ve been a fan, and Debi Laszewski seems to get bigger and better each year. More recently-established stars from the US like Monique Jones and Kim Perez rubbed their considerable shoulders with Alina Popa and Brigita Brezovac, their European counterparts.



Top: Monique Jones and Kim Perez
Bottom: Brigita Brezovac and Alina Popa
Surely one of them is a future Miss Olympia

The entire field was unapologetically big and ripped. There was South American freakishness from Maria Rita Bello, and Kim Buck in her best-ever showing as a pro. There was the gorgeous Tina Chandler making my heart go all a-flutter (and not just mine I’ll bet). There was the thickness of Mexico’s Maria Segura, and the feline sexuality of Canada’s Zoa Linsey.




From top, left to right: Maria Rita Bello, Kim Buck,
Tina Chandler, Maria Segura and Zoa Linsey
From Canada down to Argentina there's some serious female muscle in the Americas

And to top it all, Alevtina Goroshinskaya from Russia and the Chilean Geraldine Morgan provided proof that there is a younger generation of female bodybuilders who aspire to the kind of muscularity necessary to compete with the biggest girls of all. Can the sport really be dying when it can produce a line-up like this at one of its flagship shows?


Alevtina Goroshinkaya and Geraldine Morgan
The next wave of professional female muscle is here

It may well be true that in the future female bodybuilding will be forced to detach itself from bodybuilding and other female physique classes. Why hang around when you’re not wanted and not getting what you want? And if it is to develop separately from other physique sports, then it is the women, specifically the elder stateswomen of female bodybuilding, who should be stepping in and helping their successors. Female tennis players were responsible for setting up the Women’s Tennis Federation, and the sport has gone from strength to strength since. Why shouldn’t female bodybuilders do the same?


Serena Williams and Iris Kyle
Serena enjoys the rewards of a sport she and her peers control, Iris, though at the top of her sport for many years now, has little or no say in the way it is run.

But my ill-informed opinion on the future of the sport is not what this week is going to be about on Female Muscle Slave. What I’d like it to be is a celebration, a celebration of female bodybuilders. Not self-snapping amateurs, not physique competitors, but proper female bodybuilders. A celebration and a small but determined stand against those who have already buried female bodybuilding.



Too big for you? Too ‘man-like’? Then look away now.
This week on Female Muscle Slave we shall be gorging ourselves on the biggest and the best. This week, size matters.




Enjoy!

Express Yourself!

What do these two pictures have in common? Why is it they appeal to me a little bit more than your average snap of a muscular beauty?

The answer is expression. On the left, the open mouth gives the impression that as she flexes she’s saying Yeah! That she loves showing off her muscles. On the right, Brandi’s pout makes me think that by flexing her delicious body for the camera, she is turning herself on. Both women know they’re hot, and by emoting even just a little bit, in their different ways, they are transmitting that to the viewer, ie. me. And that little bit of expression gives my imagination so much more to work with, and consequently elevates these pictures beyond the norm.

Slave loves a good picture of a muscular women, but loves a good picture of an emoting muscular woman even more. Hope you enjoy the examples I have chosen as much as I enjoyed choosing them!

The ‘Yeah!’

Angelica Mielczarek seems to know the effect her body can have on a man. Wouldn’t you be wide-eyed and open-mouthed if you saw her? Her expression is like a mirror to the viewer/gawper. Wow! Look at her! becomes Wow! Look at me! Very sexy.

Most Muscular

A most muscular pose without any expression is a wasted opportunity, but Lindsay Cope knows how to make the most of it. Yeah! she seems to be saying, Check me out! What muscle woman doesn’t love displaying the results of her hard work, and through her expression Lindsay puts over the self-confidence, vanity even, that Slave for one cannot resist in muscular females, especially ones who are as drop-dead gorgeous as Lindsay is.

The Roar

When flexing those guns or finishing their set of 200 press-ups, the feeling just can’t be contained. It has to be let out. And so like mighty lionesses after a successful hunt, their feeling of strength and power is expressed in a mighty roar. Grrrrrrr! Roaaaar! The gym quakes. Knees go weak. Bunnies flee. She is the queen of her jungle.

Routine Emotion #1: Tonie Norman

Some routines are more memorable than others, some women just have the natural ability to connect with the audience, and as far as I can tell, it’s the ones who are most expressive on stage that achieve this.


Exhibit A: Tonie Norman. Not the biggest, not the most successful, but always a routine worth watching, because, like the routines of way back when, it’s always more of a performance with Tonie, and as these pictures and close-ups illustrate, she’s got a pretty wide variety of expressions to communicate with. I particularly like some expression with my abs and thigh pose, not an easy thing to do given the amount of strain involved, but Tonie pulls it off effortlessly. Again, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, like she’s shocked that she’s just made so many men in the audience grab their crotches all at once.

The Pout

Nothing better than a big-lipped pout to communicate how sexy she feels posing for the camera, or how into her own body she is. Like Brandi at the top of the post, Gretchen Imes revels in her muscularity, or at least that’s what her pout says to this viewer.

Tongues

Heather Foster sticks it out on stage (and incidentally shows incredible control of her lower lip in the process), while Kashma’s seems to be unusually long. Nice. She gets better and better, doesn’t she?

Routine Emotion #2: Elena Shportun

These days, few female bodybuilders give their routine as much artistry and expression as was prevalent in the past. Think of Natalia Murnikovene, Diana Dennis, even Cory Everson. Nowadays, routines often seem to be just a collection of poses set to music, rather than a ‘performance’. But Elena Shportun keeps the flag flying for artistic bodybuilding routines, always giving an emotive, creative and consequently memorable turn. I reckon she would have made a great actress. In fact, she still might!

Homage

On the left, Liang Yue Yan pays homage to her ancestors by terrifying any Mongolian invaders, while the lady on the right seems to be paying homage to Betty Pariso’s famous tongue-out most muscular.


Of course the one place where you can’t help expressing yourself (unless you aren’t doing it properly) is the gym. Larissa shows us a range of expressions as she punishes her sexy body.

First, an Ooooo


Then, an Aaaah


And lastly, a Grrrr


Double Whammy
And finally, a couple of screenshots of Marja Lehtonen. Now don’t you think they would be so much blander without the expressions? In too many posing videos there isn’t enough eye contact with the viewer in my opinion. Often the ladies look slightly off camera as they take direction. Sometimes they even just stop posing and wait for the director to tell them what to do next. I hate this: it’s lazy on the part of the film-maker, who could just edit the bloody thing a bit, and the less eye contact I get, the sooner I tire of the clip.


No danger of either of these things here. Marja’s got you in her sights, gives you wide-eyed open-mouthed, then the roar. Double sexy!

Enjoy!