Sweat. Sweet! (The Search for Sweat)

Finally! I thought to myself, something new on the blog, something we've never done before. Sweat. Sweet sweet sweat. Pouring off beautiful muscular bodies. Great patches of it drenching her top. Beads of sweat dripping down her pec line, her abs...

There must be thousands of images of muscle beauties with a good sweat on, right?



Well, I'm still not sure whether the answer to that question is "No" or whether I've been looking in all the wrong places, but having spent more hours than is healthy in a female muscle image viewing vortex and turning up very few proper sweaty images, FMS turned to a friend of the blog for assistance. I stopped after the first 8,000 pictures, he told us, admitting that even among the 30 or so he had found, it was hard to tell how many were "enhanced" - the "sweat" just sprayed on water mixed with a bit of oil.



Images I remembered from way back, "classic" sweat from The Magazine Years, proved, on closer inspection, to be quite obviously of the "enhanced" variety.

And even more worrying, when I was sure I knew where to find sweaty selfies of a more recent vintage, I found my mind had been playing tricks on me too. For example, Marthe Sundby. I thought I'd find sweat bucket selfies in the Marthe folder by the shed load. It's bloody dripping off her in almost every one she takes, right?

WRONG!



At best, there's a sheen. Marthe certainly looks like she has been sweating (or is about to get busy sweating a whole lot more), but her sweat-drenched vest, the great rivers of sweat flowing over her blood-filled muscles turned out to be all in my mind.

And Marthe's wasn't the only folder I entered confidently but left disappointed.




Sweat, I can only conclude, is a lot easier to imagine than to actually find, or at least that seems to be the case for me. I realise I'm projecting sweat onto images old and new, and I don't need a doctor to tell me that must mean I really really dig a strong sexy woman with a good sweat on. And if you feel the same way you are really really going to dig this week's posts, because thankfully, though it might have proved difficult to find exactly the kind of images I dreamed of, it has not proved impossible.



Please email in your favourite sweaty pics to 6ft1swell@gmail.com and I promise to post the lot of them. Sweet Sweat, by the way, is an actual product. Check it out!

Isn't It Iconic, Don't You Think?

One of you lovely readers, responding to the Women of the Year 2013 post from just before Christmas, commented that 'that first pic [of Alina Popa] could be iconic'.



For some reason, these words stuck in my head. I looked at the pic again, closely. And, yes, I thought to myself, absolutely, it is, indeed 'iconic'. What bothered me though was why. What makes this image, more than the others of Alina in the post, more than all the other countless images of Alina (excepting a handful perhaps), 'iconic' exactly? What, precisely, is an 'iconic' image?

The first port of call was the dictionary, which defined 'iconic' as relating to or of the nature of an icon. OK... So let's look up 'icon' then: 1. An image; a representation. 2. An important and enduring symbol. 3. One who is the object of great attention and devotion; an idol. 4. Computer Science A picture on a screen that represents a specific file, directory, window, option, or program.

Alina is many things, but she's definitely not meaning number four. The other three though, all seemed to fit. But although I felt I now had a better handle on the meaning of the word 'iconic', I still wasn't really any clearer on what makes an 'iconic image'.

I dug a bit deeper.

What I found was that it is generally agreed that to be 'iconic', an image has come to have a symbolic meaning that is readily understood. The image causes people to think about what it represents, rather than what it is. So, when you see Che Guevara, it's violent revolution. Gandhi, and it's peaceful revolution. Einstein with his tongue sticking out is madness and genius in the same place. The Stars and Stripes is whatever the USA means to you. In religion, there's the cross, the crescent, the star of David...

I see...

But now I had a new doubt nagging away at me. Just for the sake of argument, let's say the image of Alina represents something like 'the beauty and strength of the muscular woman'. Well, then isn't it the case that any image of Alina does the same? Isn't it the case then that any image of any muscular woman represents the same thing?

The answer is obviously 'No'. So I'm back to square 1, not really any clearer on why this image strikes us as 'iconic' while others don't. I decided to take a different approach, starting with the image itself. I looked at Chris Zimmerman's image of Alina again (hard though looking at Alina so much was, I really had the bit between my teeth now...)



What I came up with was: 1. It's an image of a woman who, by general consensus is something approaching the epitome of a female bodybuilder, and what's more, she's in absolutely prime condition; 2. The subject, though a female bodybuilder, is not hitting any conventional bodybuilding pose, nor is she wearing the conventional 'uniform' of a female bodybuilder - the posing suit; 3. Zimmerman's style is, it seems to me, (and I say this with no specialised knowledge of photography at all, so I may be completely wrong) all his own - nobody shoots these women quite like he does.

OK, now to test the theory!

1. Does the female bodybuilder in the image have to be at the top of the sport, and does she have to be in prime condition?



When I thought about other iconic images of female bodybuilders, these two sprang to mind immediately. I imagine Bev Francis and her most muscular in her orange posing suit at her biggest and best seems to answer the question in the affirmative. This image of Kim Chizevsky will, I imagine, be a little more controversial, but to me, this is the image of Kim. I don't know why I associate this pose and the black posing suit with her more than any other of the FBB 'icons', but I do.



Having dealt with one era of female bodybuilding, I moved on to Lenda Murray. Choosing one image of her as iconic was, I found, much more challenging because there were so many more candidates. Nevertheless, as I searched through my (not inconsiderable) Lenda archive, for me, this image stood out.

Who else? I thought. Iris, sure, but it's hardly the case that only Ms Olympias or should-have-been Ms Olympias can qualify as icons. I doubt I'll get too much stick if I say I think the two images below are iconic, and Cathey Palyo and Melinda McNabb never came anywhere near being crowned Ms Olympia.



And so I broadened the search to two of my all-time favourites, and, as with Lenda, found myself struggling to find the defining iconic image of either of them!

With Denise Hoshor, I found I could narrow it down to one set of photos, but when trying to pick one from the set as the iconic image of Denise, it proved impossible. And furthermore, as with Lenda, I was aware that other fans might well put forward other sets or shots of Denise as more apt to represent her at her iconic best.




With another of my all-time favourites, Gina Davis, I couldn't even narrow it down to a single set. There are so many top top photos of Gina (I looked at so many goodies while I was trying to choose I did begin to wonder if there was a bad photo of her out there) that the best I could do was make a short list that never got any shorter than the wonderful images below.





So confused had I become that I'd forgotten what the immediate question had been!

Ah! Does the female bodybuilder have to be at her peak and at the top of her sport? From the selection above, I could only surmise the answer was 'yes... maybe'. Bev was a yes, as was Kim. Lenda, it seems to me, had a few peaks at least, and in my iconic image of her, 'The Naked Sleeping Lenda', she certainly wasn't in her contest prime. Neither Palyo nor McNabb were ever at the 'top' of female bodybuilding and in the image I selected Palyo wasn't in prime condition, McNabb absolutely was.

What about the second conclusion I'd drawn from Zimmerman's Alina pic, the point about her not being in a posing suit and not hitting a regulation pose? Again, you can see that, based on the above selections the answer was a rather unsatisfactory 'sometimes, but not always'.

ARRRRRRGH!

Perhaps the third point would prove more fruitful, the point about Zimmerman's style? I perused his Facebook offerings and other pictures of his in my collection. I had to agree with his assertion that he can 'light the shit out of muscular women'. His style is certainly unique among FBB photographers, and there are many many fantastic shots among his body of work.

Are there some female muscle photographers more iconic in their style than others?

Bill Dobbins sprang to mind immediately. Like the image of Bev Francis' most muscular above, one other image I am absolutely certain no one will argue is iconic is the one that adorns the cover of his finest achievement, The Women: Photographs of the Top Female Bodybuilders.



Yes! I thought. Dobbins and Zimmerman, photographers with an 'iconic style', photographers who, through their work, create the iconography of female muscle...

Perhaps there is something there, but at the same time I was sure that it was Women's Physique World that had given us more iconic images than any other source, and neither Dobbins nor Zimmerman had anything to do with that. In fact, I realised that images I would call iconic had been made by a wide variety of photographers and in a wide variety of styles. Square 1 again!

Have you reached any conclusions at all?! I hear you cry.

Well, yes. Sort of. Just bear with me...

The fact that Bill Dobbins' image of Nikki Fuller was a cover made me wonder if that was something that could make an image more likely to become iconic.

Check out these ones of Diana Dennis and Juliette Bergaman...



They're familiar, aren't they?

Well maybe, just maybe, that's because both of them were WPW covers...



And the other thing that did occur to me was that so many of the images I thought of when I tried to conjure up 'iconic images' in my mind were images I had first seen in the magazines in my early female muscle lovin' years. Perhaps it is the case that an image from those days when there were so many fewer images around is so much more likely to be thought of as 'iconic' because almost all female muscle heads of the same generation had almost identical experiences of first seeing them?

Having said that though (he said, indicating the imminent arrival of another unsatisfying conclusion), as with Chris Zimmerman's image of Alina, there are, it seems to me anyway, images that, as the reader who started this whole sorry thought process off said 'could be iconic' being produced now.


Cindy's glistening abs; Anne Freitas' freaky 'Christmas tree'


Gabriela Bankuti by Zoltan Vegh of Fitness Exposure (now there's another female muscle photographer with an 'iconic style'...)

Sorry I haven't really got to the bottom of anything. It might have something to do with the goddess being photographed, the point she's at in her career or her conditioning. It might have something to do with the pose or lack of it, and/or what she's wearing (or not wearing). It might have something to do with the style of the photographer, or how old the image is, or when and where you first came across it...

Perhaps the only conclusion I can reach is that you know an iconic image when you see one! But even so, they are GREAT pictures, aren't they?!

Man, you're probably saying to yourself, this guy has far too much time on his hands! Well, in my defence, I was on holiday. But, yes, OK, I should probably go and get something to eat now.

Enjoy! And I'd love to hear what you think the 'iconic images' of female bodybuilding are. Comment box or 6ft1swell@gmail.com, as always.

Ms International: 1988 Cathey Palyo

Continuing our week devoted to the endangered Ms International contest with the 1988 champion Cathey Palyo because, well, why not? I mean, just look at her!



Muscular and gorgeous, Cathey was a fixture in the mainstream muscle media during her short but glorious career, and without doubt one of my favourite bodybuilders from the early days of my female muscle lovin’ life.



I remember this issue of Flex very clearly, Cathey’s beautiful body screaming out at me from the cover. And inside, pages of her to drool over. Kind of makes you nostalgic for the days when muscle magazines did feature female bodybuilders, doesn’t it? Days when the female side of the sport wasn’t under the kind of fire it has to put up with now.



Or was it? It’s easy to look back on the late 80s and early 90s as ‘The Golden Years’, to wish that it could be now as it was then. But beware. The IFBB have been dictating what a female bodybuilder should be since before Cathey’s time. The scan above is from an article in an old issue of Musclemag, presumably from between 1985 and 1988 because that was when Cathey was active. It begins: ‘With the IFBB encouraging breast augmentation…’

Fortunately, Cathey was having none of it. It continues: ‘… many women bodybuilders are resorting to implants, but Cathey Palyo, for one, feels implants are not for her. Here she outlines her chest training program and encourages all women to get a big chest the old-fashioned way – earn it!’

And she was as good as her word on that front.





As I said, I’d never forgotten Cathey, but researching this post led me to find how much more there was to admire about her than the perfect body and the perfect face. Her stance on the breast augmentation issue is only one of a number of discoveries that have made me wonder whether my admiration for her, and other women of the era, might have been even greater than it already was if I had spent more time actually reading the articles that accompanied the pictures.

But, in my defence…



Cathey’s win at the Ms International in 1988 was the pinnacle of her brief but stellar career. She started competing in 1985 and just a year later won pretty much everything she entered. The NPC Tournament of Champions was followed by the NPC contest in her home state of California. Then she won the NPC USA and IFBB World Amateur titles, finishing 1986 as NPC National champion.

After just one appearance on stage in 1987 at the Ms Olympia, where she finished 14th, she competed three more times, all in 1988. Her win at the Ms International was by far the highlight, seeing off the likes of Sandy Riddell, Jackie Paisley and Della Wagnon. After a 4th place at the Pro World Championship and a 16th at the Ms Olympia, Cathey put an end to her competitive career.



According to an article about the (then) forthcoming Ms Olympia in the Los Angeles Times in 1988, Cathey did it all for the love of training, freely admitting ‘I know I’m a freak’. Perhaps she decided that earning such little prize money as a pro was scant reward for her efforts. Although she was reportedly the third highest earner in the sport in 1988, she had made just $7,500. Perhaps she saw the signs of what was happening in the sport and wasn’t prepared to put up with the way the IFBB liked to dictate their own vision of a female bodybuilder onto the sport. Perhaps I’m way off and it had nothing to do with any of this.

Nevertheless, I’m glad she did have her moment in the female muscle sun.



I’ll leave you with this, my personal favourite quote of hers, from an interview in an issue of Musclemag…

When people ask me if I lift weights, I tell them “No, I just play a LOT of tennis.”





Celebrate the Ms International some more with us tomorrow...

But don't forget to sign the petition!

Ms International: Did You Know…? [Part 1]

…the first ever Ms International was held in 1986.

The field included legends such as Kay Baxter, Sue Ann McKean, Penny Price and Anita Gandol, as well as Juliette Bergmann and Bev Francis. The winner, however, was none of the above. The first woman to win the title of Ms International was Erika Geisen.



Who?



Though born in Germany, Erika competed for Australia. She had made her pro debut in 1983 and was crowned Miss Asia. She finished 11th at the Olympia the same year as her Miss I win. She competed once more at the Ms International, in 1988, and came sixth.

…in 1988 there were two Ms Internationals.

The IFBB had sanctioned the first Ms International, but in 1987 it took place under the auspices of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), and there was no IFBB contest of that name. The following year, however, both the IFBB and the AAU organised contests called ‘Ms International’.

left: Cathey Palyo, IFBB Ms International 1988

right: Cathy Butler Corish, AAU Ms International 1988

The IFBB show was a pro-am event (as it had been in 1986), while the AAU’s version was just for amateurs. The 1988 IFBB Ms International was Cathey Palyo (more about Cathey later in the week, which should be exciting news for anybody who remembers her!) while the AAU Ms International was won by Cathy Butler.

…Tonya Knight competed at the Ms I in 1988 and 1989 but you won’t find her listed in the results.

At the 1989 Olympia, Tonya had somebody else take her drug test for her, and was consequently stripped of her placing and prize money at the two previous Ms International shows. Naughty girl!



However, she made a triumphant return to the Ms I in 1991, when she claimed the title, seeing off Anja Schreiner, Shelley Beattie, Debbie Muggli, Marie Mahabir, Sue Gafner et al (talk about a QUALITY line-up, that’s just the top 6!).

…Paula Bircumshaw showed the Ms I judges her middle finger in 1992.

You probably do know about this, I’ve actually noted this event before
(see Real Iron Ladies).



The judges gave the title to the extremely marketable German beauty Anja Schreiner – not the first or last time there has been a controversial winner of a female bodybuilding show – 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 (as far as I know, I’m sure there’s been plenty of women who’ve wanted to give the judges the bird, but as far as I’m aware Paula’s the only one who’s actually done it).



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 what she thought.

Sometimes I’m so proud to be British!

Don’t forget to sign the petition to keep the Ms International as part of the Arnold Sports Festival. More MsInformation (couldn’t resist) tomorrow!

Meanwhile, how about a little more of our heroine…