Dressed in Muscle: 241

Q: What's better than a beautiful glammed up muscle woman?

A: TWO beautiful glammed up muscle women.



Welcome, one and all, to 241 Tuesday.



Physique Olympia champ Dana Linn Bailey is, unsurprisingly for the most popular muscle woman in the world (see FMS passim), a woman who other muscle women want to have their picture taken with. The also extremely well-followed Vanessa Tib (left), and Jody May (right) capture the moment. Jody was reported on one website to be "back in the gym" recently. It doesn't look to me like she ever left it.



And here's another fitspirational champ, multi-Figure Olympia winner Nicole Wilkins, looking effortlessly classy. Her perky friend is Renee West, an NPC Physique competitor who you can see more of on her Instagram and contest galleries at NPC News Online. I like being muscular and strong in appearance, I’m proud of my physique and the hard work I’ve put into it, says Renee. But sometimes I like to keep covered up. Fortunately, this was not one of those times.

SISTERS OF IRON

On the left, Physique pro Erica Blockman and her sister Sondra. This may have been taken a while ago because it seems to me Erica is the way bigger sis now - and I make it my business to watch her Instagram like a hawk. To be honest, I haven't heard much about Sondra recently, but it turns out she is still competing - NPC Bikini division. Fitness is not a destination... it is a way of life! she says. I imagine Erica's mantra replaces the word "fitness" with the word "muscle".



And on the right, the woman who calls herself Julieta Fit and her more well-known, much more fantasised about, and much much bigger sister. This seems like the sort of family snapshot you might find (minus the muscles, of course) adorning mantelpieces the world over, but I wonder if those Muscle Angels clips where Julieta touches up Oana as she flexes ever make it into the family home movie night...

NATIONAL TREASURES



Even the earrings are bigger! VSM dwarfs compatriot Raquel Hernandez Olmo in every way except that Raquel has got a bigger medal. Well, she's got the only medal in the picture. And on the right, more evidence for my theory that post-show female muscle glamour is as good as it gets. Proof on this occasion is provided by British WBFF stars Laura Madge and Su Farrell giving us a breathtaking 241 double bicep.

DOUBLE TROUBLE



What kind of dress should I wear for the photoshoot? asked Monica. Well, anything really, Colette replied. As long as it's at least two sizes too small. And on the right, a real rarity. The only existing photo that our research team could uncover in which Yvette and Brandi Mae are wearing any clothes at all.

Seriously though, really, if we just go back little to the Renne West quote about covering up for a moment, the key factor was how she was feeling and where she was going. Post-show gatherings of female bodybuilders are where the women look (and feel) their best - having just competed - and provide an atmosphere where they're at their most comfortable - as they are surrounded by the like-minded and like-muscled. Consequently, they never seem to cover up at such gatherings. It's de rigeur for the guns (and shoulders, and more often than not the chest as well) to be fully on show.



Hence the magic.




Top left, Dana Linn again, this time with Michelle Davis in her more muscular days. Top right, the sexy, sultry and volcanically smouldering Andrea Holliday and friend Dawn Hinz-Pugh look like they may have caused some serious damage that night - you know, guys so transfixed by such muscular beauty they walked/drove into/through/over stuff etc. Bottom left, Margie and Alana trade "Do my shoulders look big in this?" gags. And finally, bottom right, the halter top. Always a winner for the muscular woman, exposing the arms, shoulders and back in one - as modelled here by the great Gina Davis. And a bodybuilding days Karina Nascimento models that other great staple of the muscular woman's wardrobe - the asymmetric off-the-shoulder number [are you sure you know what you're talking about?- ed.].



Even when I did find an FBB with covered arms they weren't really covered at all. And do you also get the feeling that Toni Norman (above, with Vicky Nixon) probably lost the lace shawl thing as soon as she hit the dance floor that night?



And to finish off our post today, two favourites that double your pleasure of beautiful muscular women caught at their most devastatingly glamorous. Above, Myriam Bustamente and Heather Foster, and below, the divine Debbie Bramwell and Elena Sieple. All four just seem to epitomise what I've been rambling on about!



Enjoy!

Dressed in Muscle: Tina in Motion

The glorious Tina Chandler x10!!!

Top-notch swoonage from eroticmusclebeasts on Tumblr

Enjoy!

Dressed in Muscle: Hall of Famer I

CHRISTINA RHODES

I must have seen hundreds (if not thousands) of images of Christina in my time, and even a cursory perusal of her folder on an old hard drive revealed many of them involved her looking both excitingly huge AND beautifully glamorous in a variety of elegant dresses. But great as all of those images are, this one just blows me away.



She's not so much in the dress as emerging out of it, "hulking out" as one comment on the picure at Girls with Muscle puts it. In particular, those pecs - for which she is rightly famed - appear to be expanding, pushing the fabric outwards. Stare at them for long enough and I swear you'll start to believe they are actually moving!

On solid thighs she stands, hands on hips, her delts and lats splayed. She looks right at you with a knowing, arrogant smile. She is all muscle, all power, all woman.

Dressed in Muscle: Gains & Unemployment

Orlando Breastaurant Rejects Woman for Being 'Too Muscular' read the headline.

Most stories about "female bodybuilders" that arrive in my inbox turn out to be about nothing very interesting at all. As I mentioned yesterday, the term is used in very loose sense in the mainstream media. But I was definitely going to read this one.

As soon as I'd found out what a "breastaurant" was...

A breastaurant is a restaurant that has skimpily-dressed waiting staff. The term dates from the early 1990s, around the time that the chain Hooters became popular in the USA. It has since been applied to other restaurants that offer similar services. The restaurants often have a sexual double-entendre brand name and also offer specific themes, both in decoration and menu. According to Yahoo!, there are four main selling points of breastaurants: service, food, entertainment, and breasts.

Right. On with the story...

Victoria Smith is a 29-year-old fitness addict, an enthusiastic amateur bodybuilder who’s getting ready to start a job as a flight attendant later this summer. In the meantime, to earn a little extra cash, she applied to the Orlando location of the breastaurant chain 'The Tilted Kilt', where she says she was rejected because her legs were "too muscular". This is legal! Completely gross, but legal.

And here was a picture of Ms Smith, showing off her gains...



Like I said, "bodybuilder" is a term applied very loosely these days.

My first reaction was that this was outrageous. "Rejected because her legs were too muscular"! How dare they?! I'm definitely putting this on the blog, I said to myself. Discrimination on the grounds of overmuscularity! It's outrageous!!!

But as I read on, learning about how the interview basically involved Ms Smith being asked to try on skirts (the "uniform" or "kilts" of the chain's name) of ever-decreasing length in front of the interview panel - really, I'm not making this up - I gradually became less and less outraged and more and more unsympathetic. Nothing against Ms Smith personally - she turned to the gym as a means of overcoming problems with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, and her legs are coming along very nicely, so she should be applauded for that - but it seems to me that any woman who is prepared to put themselves through the humiliation of such an interview can hardly complain about the restaurant discriminating against them when they don't meet - for any reason - the company profile of what a "sexy" waitress should be.

Ms Smith was given a bullshit excuse for being rejected, and if you care to read the whole article, you'll see she was treated pretty poorly. But it seems to me the whole interview process for the restaurant is bullshit, and as far as I'm concerned they treat every single one of their interviewees poorly, even the ones they hire.

But the story did leave me with an idea for a post after all. A "What if...?" daydream about a restaurant - you can probably see where this is going - where the waitresses were all female bodybuilders (even if the management might have to apply the term as loosely as the mainstream media in order to find enough waitressing staff).



Muscularity would be a prerequisite for being hired, the more muscular they were, the better their chances of landing a job at our "flexaurant", where the more generous the tip, the more the waitresses will let you admire their muscular development.



Of course, staff would get regular breaks so they could have their meals - high-protein dishes from the restaurant kitchen - and there'd be a state-of-the-art staff gym at the back so they could get themselves nicely pumped before starting their shift.



Welcome to Barbelles!


Erica, our maître d', and the Regional Manager fraternising with some happy punters

Sexy and very muscular glamour all week.

Enjoy!

BODYBUILDER! The A-Z of HUGE B

Following on from last Friday's post, today it's time for the Bs as we continue with FMS' Lexicon of the Large, our Encyclopedia of Enormity, The A-Z of HUGE.

B turned out to have a bumper set of entries, so there were some editorial decisions to be made. For example, should the Biceps Femoris (aka the leg biceps) be included with the biceps we know and love on the arm (the Biceps Brachii)? Do Betty Pariso and Betty Viana both get into B, or do we wait for P and V respectively?

It was a similar story with some of your suggestions. Much appreciated, all of them, thank you all so much for taking the time to get involved and email in. However, among the largest of the large , I'm afraid the likes of Christa Bauch and Britt Miller - lovely though they are - just ain't big enough to warrant an entry.

Let's see who and what made the cut...

The A-Z of HUGE

B is for...

BACK



The female bodybuilder's back is arguably the greatest single sign of her strength. Without having shifted serious poundage her back wouldn't be so wondrously huge - it indicates her physical strength. But furthermore, understand that to lift that poundage she has, by sheer force of will, pushed herself beyond her physical limits again and again and again, and marvel at the mental strength that has taken.




The results can be absolutely breathtaking.




Whether it's the back double biceps pose (that seems to reveal every tiny muscle from the shoulders to the waist and beyond) or the lat spread (her back fanning out, like an angel stretching her wings), it doesn't get much better than the sight of a huge and shredded muscular back. [Back Is Beautiful, FMS, March 2014]


BACKSTAGE



If female muscle worship is a religion, if we, the female muscle brethren, are the mad monks, then the backstage area, the 'pump room' at a female bodybuilding show, especially a big pro show, is the holiest of holies. The show itself is could be a place of pilgrimage, but backstage is the forbidden inner sanctum.
["Backstage of the Day", FMS, April 2013]




C. Moore Glootz is banned. I don't think I'd be able to handle it and therefore probably shouldn't be allowed to go. I know of at least one lucky reader who got to visit there at the Ms Olympia. He has never been quite the same since!



And yet, I'm guessing that most of us would give up a body part to be there just once, as photographer, or - even better - "helper". To smell the pro tan, to hear the clank of the weights, to gaze upon those shining bodies, anointed as if with holy oil...


LISA BAVINGTON




A Canadian champion in 1999 and IFBB pro from the turn of the millennium, "The Mighty Bav" is still talked about as one of the most naturally beautiful really big girls of that or any other era. She was also a campaigner who tried (you don't need me to tell you) in vain to get female bodybuilders a better deal.



At the 2001 Jan Tana Pro she appeared with Christine Envall and Antonella Grilli, recalls one fan. All three had some of the most impressive shoulders and tiniest waists ever seen, as well as all-natural chests. As they stood side by side, there seemed to be hardly any room on stage, so wide were their lats! Heaven.


BETTY PARISO




Now as far as I know, Betty is the only female bodybuilder who has a rock band named after her. No, they're not called "The Sweaty Bettys" (although I do believe there is a song called "Sweaty Betty" which is most definitely not about her), but "Pariso". At least, that's what her Wikipedia biography claims (there are "issues" with the page) and I would like to believe it's true, so I'm going to say it is!



When she won her pro card she was the oldest woman to have done so. She was the first, and so far only, woman over 50 to win a pro title. Amazing achievements, but for Betty fans, her age was never an issue when it came to their appreciation. Despite the fact that she is old enough to be my mom, confesses one, there is something so incredible about her that I become flush with raw emotion and desire.



Indeed. And if any FBB ever knew how to rock a dress, it was Betty. There! I got through the whole Betty bit without a single tongue-out most muscular. How often do you see that? [in case you want one, there's one here - ed.]


BEV



From one legend to another.



Ms. Olympia 1983, the contest immortalised in Pumping Iron II: Bev Francis is given 2nd place behind Rachel McLish as she is "too muscular". Ms Olympia 1990: Bev is given 2nd place behind Lenda Murray - she is "not muscular enough".



Ms. Olympia 1991: The gauntlet has been thrown in the face of the Aussie. If they wanted muscle she'd give them bloody muscle... At the prejudging Bev walked out with 160 dense and conditioned muscular pounds stacked on her 5'5" frame. The audience gasped – no one has ever seen that much muscle on a female form.
[Peter McGough, Bev's Last Stand, Muscular Development, August 2013]


BICEPS




Them guns, them pythons, "them biceps brachii" - as I'm sure they used to say in Ancient Rome when having lusty thoughts about that new and impressively "aedificavit" slave girl. Lefties, yes! Righties, yes! DOUBLES! Yes! Yes!! YES!!!



She runs her hands through her hair as she gazes at herself in the mirror. I stand behind her and gently place my trembling fingers onto her mighty biceps. Her skin is so soft, and my heart pounds as I make firm my grip in anticipation of what is to come. She winks at me in the mirror, inhales and then almost imperceptibly twists her wrists. The biceps were hard before, but that tiny movement has turned them into two solid balls of rock. There is no give for my aching fingers. I am light-headed, my breathing shallow, so in awe am I of her beauty, her strength and her power...
[Biceps! Elena Oana Hreapca, FMS, May 2013]




Not an easy thing choosing just a handful of pictures to represent probably the most beloved muscle of all, but if your favourite didn't make it this time, there'll be more to come when we get to P for Peaks... (and C for Curls, possibly, and maybe D for Double Biceps, L for Licking, K for Kissing, P for Posing, W for Worship...)


LAURA BINETTI



Fans tend to remember the Binetti effect. Laura was one of the first female bodybuilders I discovered, says one fan. When I saw her pics my jaw hit the floor. For another, Laura brings back memories of early websurfing days - 1996 or so. Once the dial-up connection finally downloaded the pic, I almost fell outta the chair.



Personally, I remember the floral swimsuit pics. I remember her size being quite overwhelming. I remember a pic of her (that I haven't been able to track down) where her arms are folded, and the striations across her her pure muscle pecs hypnotised me. And I remember she had a big thick vein that ran right along the centre of her bicep and across its peak. And I remember a lat spread and her trousers around her knees and her panties (that were tiny anyway) were half pulled down and her glutes were two breathtaking, impossibly tight balls of pure striated muscle...



I could go on. All these years later and revisiting Laura remains almost as much of a joy as coming across her was then. I doubt the Binetti effect would be any less intense for a young female muscle head seeing her for the first time now. So, if you've just fallen out of your chair, no need to thank me. You're most welcome.


BIRCUMSHAW AND THE BIRD



Ms International, 1992: The judges gave the title to the extremely marketable German beauty Anja Schreiner, but it was the shenanigans to prevent the crowd’s favourite Paula Bircumshaw retake the stage for the presentations that led to the audience riot and Paula’s unique message to the judges.



Both Anja and Paula had the same height, but Paula had much more muscle. Guessing (correctly as it turned out) that the crowd would be up in arms when the winner was announced, the judges changed the rules during the competition with the sole purpose of preventing Paula from retaking the stage. Instead of inviting the top 10 back for the presentations (as had been customary in previous contests), they only called the top 6 back. No one was fooled as to their motives, and amid the consequent outcry, Paula did in fact come back and let the judges know exactly what she thought with the help of her middle finger. Sometimes I'm so proud to be British!
[Ms International: Did You Know...?, FMS, June 2013]


FEMALE BODYBUILDER, FEMALE (aka WOMEN'S) BODYBUILDING




I confess the word itself turns me on. Bodybuilder. When I hear it said - referring to a woman - in just about any context, my heart jumps. Adrenaline and the rush of The Madness follow. Who is she? Is she here? It's been this way for as long as I remember, a reaction that places me outside societal norms. I am not normal. A deviant. To the majority, "She looks like a bodybuilder" is far from a compliment, but to me, it's the highest compliment you can pay a woman re her physical appearance!




Bodybuilder. The meaning of the word seems to have changed during my 30ish years of female muscle lovin'. Only today I was hoodwinked into checking out a story in the Mail Online about an Australian housewife turned "bodybuilder" when the word was used in the headline. She's a Bikini competitor. I'm not saying it's wrong that the term is used so loosely now, I'm just saying. When I first started buying muscle magazines all the women were bodybuilders because there was nothing else for them to be. When Fitness came along there was a clear distinction. Lenda and Kim were bodybuilders, Debbie and Marla were fitness "girls". Then came Figure, and lately Physique. A woman who competes in any of these divisions is a "bodybuilder" to the mainstream media, while in the terminology of the sport ie. the federations, the bodybuilders are just one class of women - the unwanted ones, largely.




Female Bodybuilding is, they keep telling us, (and in many cases we keep telling ourselves) dying. One after the other they make they switch to the ever-growing Physique division. And yet, there are still women, young women, who aspire to be as big and as beautiful as Alina or Anne or Lenda or simply the massively muscular woman they see themselves as in their mind's eye. Enough is enough... Screw this Physique transformation. I can't hide the BODYBUILDER inside, wrote Shannon in 2013. Did your heart, like mine, skip a beat when you read those words?


and BRIGITA BREZOVAC



You would have to have been very good in a former life for this to happen to you. Room service, Brigita in a very small dress, looking ripped, gorgeous and in the mood. Her lush blond hair cascades down over one of her mighty shoulders, the veins on her arm swell as she grips the bottle. This is going to be a night to remember...
[Around the World with Brigita, FMS, November 2012]




I love the way of life being a bodybuilder. I like the food and diet regime because I can always have my body under control, I like working out and I like that I'm different from the average person. But Brigita, what do you enjoy most about being a top female bodybuilder? If I tell you the truth, the thing I most enjoy is the attention.
[Brigita's Beautiful Back, FMS, April 2014]


The A-Z of HUGE will be back with the Cs in the near future.

Any suggestions/complaints? 6ft1swell@gmail.com