(More) Summer Lovin': Bumbum #1

Despite hot, hard and disproportionately developed competition from the likes of Suelen Bissolati and more recently Alessandra Alvez, Gracyanne Barbosa remains Brazil's bumbum #1. Heading towards 7 million Instagram followers - Suelen and Alessandra both have less than half a million, and even Eva Andressa Vieira with 4.6 million isn't in the same league - and, although not a competitive Bodybuilder, Gracyanne was in your Hot and Hard 100 for the fifth consecutive year in 2018.



Mostly, it's Gracyanne's spectacular lower body, her world-renowned bumbum and thunder thighs, that get all the attention - and rightly so. However, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that recently as well as adding definition to her prodigious size down below, Gracyanne has also been getting bigger and more defined up top.



This is all good. As a female muscle lover, more muscle is always good. But spare a thought for Gracyanne. Suddenly nothing in her wardrobe (that isn't super stretchy) seems to fit anymore. For a while I could still do my jeans up as long as I didn't have any underwear on, she explains. But now I can't even do that. Worse still, her ever-growing body has actually destroyed a fair portion of her wardrobe. Not that anyone's complained, but it's pretty awkward when your top just rips open in public, she says. And I'm having my lingerie custom-made now because everything off-the-peg bursts at the seams as soon as I put it on. Not that her husband's complaining...



Is her love of pole fitness responsible for this growth spurt?

Or is it - notwithstanding somewhat ridiculous accusations that she is the "Queen of Fake Weights" (ie. that in her training videos the amount she seems to be shifting is just a few actual weights plus a load of 0kg "fake" ones) - simply that she trains really hard?



Whatever she's doing, it's working.



Ai karamba!

[NB: Gracyanne Barbosa had nothing to do with the making of today's post, and all quotes attributed to her are completely made up - FMS Legal]

(More) Summer Lovin': Wild & Wholesome

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!



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.



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".



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

(More) Summer Lovin': That Intellectual Look

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.



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.




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]


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]



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.


Jana Beeckman makes sure everything matches

Am I entering some kind of brawn plus brains period?


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.



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.


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.



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




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.



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?



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.



Enjoy!

(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...




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.




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.

(More) Summer Lovin': Dressed to Impress

I see the girls go by dressed in their summer clothes...



Except none of them ever look like this!









Dressed up muscle is just about - after glammed, tanned and oiled on stage muscle - my favourite thing. Not so much because of the obvious masculine (muscles) v feminine (style) juxtaposition, more I think because they just look so damn amazing. Women who don't lift can look good if they know how to accentuate their assets and cover up their faults. Women with muscle, however, look great whatever they're wearing because their entire physique is one great big asset and they literally have no faults.



Muscle women can expose as much - or indeed as little - of their beautiful bodies as they wish. Often, and quite understandably, they wish to expose a lot. Particularly beloved of female muscle heads are outfits you can see the muscle through, and for me, abdominals straining against tight fabric is the hottest hard thing of all.



Pity the women who have to grin and bear it while a glamorous muscle goddess sucks all the air out of the room and gets all the attention. If you don't want to be completely upstaged, on no account should you invite a Paige or a Marjorie to your wedding...





Ooops! Too late.

At the time of the pic, Paige's friend was still managing a smile. I do though wonder how long that lasted. Marjorie looks like she knows how her dress is going to go down at the reception. And that raised eyebrow tells me that's exactly the way she likes it.



And Paige's and Marjorie's outfits are relatively modest. Nothing see-through...



And they expose the upper but not the lower body, not both.



The fact Samantha Frost (above) has chosen to preview her dress in the gym seems to be really rubbing it in. You know how good I looked in my leggings and vest, sweating and groaning as I powered through my workout, all the boys drooling all over the place. Well look at me after my shower, glammed and dressed to impress...

Or at least that's what I imagine she's thinking!



To be the man who helps Audreana Cornilissen with her dress choice!

Does my back look big in this?

Massive, darling, but why not try that tighter, shorter one again?





Even bigger beasts are on the way, but first, proof that despite my assertion at the top of the post, muscle women can make mistakes when it comes to their outfits.



You could, as Lauren Finley clearly has done, incur the wrath of the undisputed undefeated Ms Physique Olympia and wear a slightly too-similar outfit to the party.



Or, like Suzanne Davis, you might make a slight size miscalculation.

Although to be honest, the thought of being at a party where you can witness the sight of a muscle women literally bursting out of her clothes is not an unpleasant one.

And so to the big beasts...

I honestly tried to find recent dressed up pics of as many Rising Phoenix qualifiers as possible. Know how many I actually found - recent ones? Just these two.



The ever dependable Ms Martin.



And Virginia, busting out everywhere.

What a sight!

Enjoy!