Rumours that admissions during Nurse Practitioner Vanessa Cichon's shifts have been steadily rising as her Instagram following has grown are, as yet, unconfirmed.
What has become known, however, is that looking at images of Vanessa may cause a sharp rise in heart rate, shortness of breath, and loss of higher brain functions.
I suddenly feel the urge to get some medical attention myself.
Ladies, she advises, the weights are where it’s at!
Our selection of wonders today comes with a story FMS found at the start of April. It's a story that, as an enlightened female muscle head who likes nothing more than the thought of being surrounded by strong sexy women, I honestly couldn't believe at first. Further research, however, has strongly suggested that there are plenty of men out there who don't want their significant others to lift weights and build muscle.
For real - read the previous sentence again if you have to.
Here's Teisha Cloos' story...
I was dumped because I lifted more weights than my boyfriend
Already it's hard to believe, no? Read on, you won't believe this douchebag's attitude.
Relationships end for all different reasons, writes Aussie Teisha. You could grow apart, fall out of love, or find someone else. For me, I was dumped because I "lifted too much". Seriously. The last message I received from my ex was, "It’s really off-putting that you lift more than me. Maybe you’ll be suited to someone else".
Any candidates? Teisha's in the Sydney area, I believe.
This isn’t the first time I’ve had a guy I was dating comment on the fact that I should stop weight training. And I’m sure there are other women who have been dumped, turned down or encouraged to not weight train because they will start looking "like a man". I started to feel self-conscious about the fact that I was a strong woman. It made me feel as if I could only date a certain demographic of men who also lifted to make sure that I was always the weaker person.
My ex saw the gym as a place for women to run for hours while leaving the weights room to the boys. I made the mistake of changing my workout to impress him. I stopped lifting heavy for months and it really impacted my mental health.
The damage these eejits can do!
I’m in no way a power lifter. I’ve just always been an athletic person and I eventually fell in love with weight training, she says. For me, the gym is a place where I can focus on myself and make my body into a stronger, healthier vessel. And so, she tells her (mostly female) readers, if you love the gym and lifting weights, you keep doing you. Don’t let anyone (especially a significant other) tell you otherwise.
Indeed.
And there is a happy ending.
After this relationship ended, I ended up dating a long-term boyfriend who became my first real love. It was a relationship where he encouraged me to keep fit in the ways I loved to. He even came to me for lifting advice when he was unsure about certain workouts for muscle groups. That’s the kind of person you want to date.
Now this is clearly good news for us, my female muscle lovin' brethren. You may not be about to have Anna Smith (above) or Mihaela Caiuteanu (below) or indeed any of the women whose beautiful muscles illustrate today's post fall at your feet when rejected by their muscle-hating boyfriend, but as the number of women lifting for muscle gains grows ever higher, the odds of you (I'm taken) finding love among the free weights get better and better - "Finally a guy who's not intimidated by my power!"
Not bad for 6 weeks of training, and being retired from competing (no training for 10 months and I am 51!). Ready for clients soon - figured I should start before the clients.
51 or not, with one flex of her mighty bicep, she looks just like her old self.
Tampa in 2012 was the last time we saw her "stuff of legends" biceps flexed on stage, the end of a five-year pro career. After first competing in the late 1990s, she won her pro card in 2007 at the Masters Nationals. She went to just one Olympia, and had just one top 3 pro finish in her 12 pro shows. Looks to me as if - at 51 - she might, in this much less competitive time for FBBs, do rather better if she wanted to put on the suit again.
I'm getting ahead of myself though. As amazing as she looks, all 51-year-old Debbie Bramwell is for now is back in the gym, news which, quite by coincidence, we learned at a time we were planning a week of biceps. Time to get into the archives...
We found that Debbie must have been one of the more photographed women of her time. Back in those days we had money to burn on memberships, so the Debbie archive bulges like the peaks on her "wide and long" biceps, all dazzling smile, luscious hair and hard, muscular, vascular and darkly-tanned physique in lingerie, in posing suits, in string bikinis, and (personal faves) in heels and a variety of sexy, revealing dresses.
She really was photographed by them all, from Awefilms to the Valkyrie, from HerBiceps to Muscle Angels via WPW, FT Video, and Tom Nine. Dan Ray and Bill Dobbins both shot her multiple times, and her career coincided with the boom in free contest pictures, so we've literally got hundreds of those to treasure as well.
With her hairstylist background and sculpted physique, she embodied her own take on the appeal of the muscular female body. I personally feel that women bodybuilders are the sexiest woman, Debbie said in 2009. Nothing like a shapely, strong physique and beautiful lines. What's more feminine than that? Fans never seemed to get tired of her. Even last year she was still getting Hot and Hard 100 votes, a testament to her enduring appeal despite the fact that the surgeon responsible for the last phase of her enhancements was (and probably still is) top of every female muscle fans blacklist.
From the first time you see those biceps flex, you're sold. So thick and long, with their beautiful rising peaks. The hard ball of vascular muscle in her forearm, her meaty, bulbous tricep almost mirroring its more famous cousin below. And that vein, that cord-like vein running along the base of her bicep and into her muscle pit...
Anyone who knows the sport knows your arms are among the best,Promoting Real Women put it to her in 2010. Would you consider them your best feature?They certainly aren't the biggest out there, she replied. But they do have a unique shape.
Debbie Bramwell, still fabulous at 51. Check out her Instagram for more, and while it's still up (can't believe it's lasted this long) you can also check out her legendary She Muscle arm training clip here. On top of everything else, that sexy, sexy voice!
Truth be told, it was the women in Muscle & Fitness, Flex and Musclemag that set me on the path towards the raving female muscle head I am today. The majority of women who featured in Women's Physique World way back when I personally didn't discover until I got a dial-up and hopefully typed the magazine's name into the search field.
In memory of that moment the motherlode was revealed to me, a selection of five (I think not at all controversial) bicep legends from that time. Women who may not have been among my very first female muscle discoveries - even if a couple of them do go very very way back indeed - but who certainly did their bit to seal the deal.
SUSAN MYERS
She has no weak spots on her, says the commentator over Sue's 1988 Jr. Nationals winning routine. She's well-balanced, she appears to be thick all over, she's ripped, she has great skin tone, she poses well, and on top of that she's really pretty.
Sue was, indeed, much more than "just" her biceps, but the lure of those arms, those thick, bulging biceps in particular, has stood the test of female muscle lovin' time for myself, and many many others. Sue's baseball biceps are addictive, warns one.
If I'd found better pics of Susan, by the way, you'd be looking at them.
PHYLLIS PADUR
She was, I believe, in the late 1980s only briefly a competitor who was in the WPW spotlight, but like Sue Myers, Phyllis Padur still gets talked about (by geezers like me, of a certain age!) when "Best Biceps Ever"-type conversations are had, and also when a more contemporary muscle woman's biceps jog the memory - I recall Michelle Gavin's beauties being referred to as Padur-like peaks, for example.
Phyllis' nickname was "Funky Peaks"!
CHRISTA BAUCH
A prolific subject for the WPW and Ray Martin lenses, a few years ago, Christa was still, well into her 60s, more muscular than she had any right to be and receiving offers from men less than half her age. In her 1980s-90s pomp, she was hot and hard all over, but I had a particular hard spot for her biceps, especially when they were threatening to burst right through the fabric of whatever classy outfit she happened to be wearing.
Personal faves include the dress with the sheer sleeves - Christa applying lipstick at one point, the kind of thing Ray Martin did so well, taking you into the FBB boudoir - and the white dress, apparently painted on - I may be misremembering but I swear you can see her abs through it! But any time spent with Christa was good time, including probably more hours than is healthy playing "Dress Me Up!" on her website.
Christa competed twice at the Olympia in the 90s, but you can go way back to the late 1980s (and the glory days of Eurosport) with this routine. There's also an offical WPW preview to enjoy here. When you've stopped playing at dressing her up that is.
JOAN LAUTH
Like Phyllis, Joan is still lauded on the forums by those who remember her bringing something truly unique to the late '80s female muscle lovin' world. Her biceps are not so much the greatest split-peaks of all time, more like the only biceps in history that grew extra biceps on top of them. Her peaks have nice peaks! a newer fan exclaims.
Back in 2013, it was rumoured that the (then) 48-year-old was thinking of competing again - and she still had plenty of muscle to show off. Around that time she was also a vocal critic of the IFBB's "plans to kill" Female Bodybuilding, penning an open letter to the IFBB bigwigs that accused them of trying to "send Female Bodybuilding back to the Stone Age". Joan knows - she was there, at the same high school as Cory Everson!
"Joan of Arms" was the title of her first WPW feature. Wennerstrom, as usual, nailed it.
MICHELE MAROLDO
But, if I had to choose just one pair of biceps from that discovering-WPW-on-the-internet era, I would have to choose this pair. I don't recall the exact moment my eyes bulged out of their sockets while a dial-up image of these "otherworldly" arms loaded line by line, but I'm pretty sure they bulged good (and weren't the only things bulging).
Remember the WPW clip of her being measured at 18 inches? And then the guy rubs oil all over it! writes one forum poster. Well, actually it's a Ray Martin production (oil rubbing was generally not done by anyone but the ladies themselves in the WPW clips). Not sure they were 18 either, looks more like 17 to me, but hey, how could I forget?!
She'd been training for a good ten years before she even started competing in the late 1990s - 5'4" and chiselled, according to the WPW blurb. Michele has the best biceps and triceps in the history of the sport. And they've seen a few! A picture of Michele "now" back circulated the forums a couple of years ago. Not such a meat feast as she was back then - how could she be? - but OMG her bicep was still thrilling, still "otherworldly".
