Gym Bodz: Retro

Today, the magic door takes us back in time to some seriously retro gym bodz...


Female muscle pioneer and Robert Mapplethorpe muse 'Lady' Lisa Lyon.
And some bloke.


Gladys Portugues, long long before she was Mrs van Damme.


Cory Everson, circa 1984 apparently. As always it is only through the heroic efforts of the scan masters that me and you get to enjoy these images. I'd never seen this picture of the nascent female muscle great before I stumbled across it recently. This must be how archaeologists feel when they show each other their latest finds.


Lori Bowen, the Pumping Iron II poster girl.


Beautiful Mary Roberts had two top three finishes at the Ms Olympia - she was 3rd in 1984 and runner-up to Cory Everson in 1985, when she also won the IFBB World Professional title. Check out her considerable on stage aura here.


Laura Combes (1954-1989) and Rachel McLish in outfits that could only be from the early 80s, when shorts were pulled up high. Laura competed at the 1981 and 1982 Olympias, finishing 4th and 6th respectively. She was the author of Winning Women's Bodybuilding, which must have been one of the first books of its kind. You can see Laura at the 1981 IFBB Worlds here.

Deborah Diana 

 

Women of Iron, released the year before Pumping Iron II, and in some ways a superior film, focused on Deborah and Carla Dunlap. Watch Deborah's posing routine at the 1981 USA Championships, which she won, here.


A little Scandinavian retro courtesy of Lisser Frost-Larsen and Inger Zetterquist. Lisser appeared in Pumping Iron II and went on to edit a fitness magazine in her native Denmark. Inger was European and World Amateur Champion in 1983, when she finished 3rd at the Olympia.


Anita Gandol was famously suspended by the IFBB for the duration of the 1984 contest season. Her crime? Posing in Playboy. She continued to compete well into the 90s, and was the first Utopia Entertainment model.


Clare Furr, 1984 USA champion, and 1986 Olympia runner-up is somewhat under-rated, in my opinion, or perhaps under-remembered would be a better description. Images like the one on the right demonstrate why.


A little more retro Cory, and Diana Dennis heating up the room with a friend. Did women really used to wear outfits like that and do donkey calf raises while other people were in the gym?!!


And last but by no means least, the first female bodybuilder I ever saw, UK female muscle pioneer Carolyn Cheshire. The first British woman to compete at the Olympia, her best finish was 7th in 1983. She also authored Body Chic, and co-authored Body Dynamics, both of which are available at knock-down prices on ebay. Carolyn still offers personal training via her website.

And if you're still in the mood for more retro gymmery, this clip of Mrs van Damme (and Lisser Frost-Larsen) from Pumping Iron II will bring a smile to your face.
Or something.



Watch the whole movie here.

Enjoy!

The Way Legs Were

With the notable exception of the (then and now) freaky pair of legs that belonged to a certain Bev Francis, back in my formative years as a female muscle head, the only legs around were rarely as muscular as the majority of women who compete in the physique division today. However, it is, as Einstein once said, all relative, and at the time, the women I saw in the muscle magazines I obsessively bought were more than big enough to get my teenage eyes popping out of my head (among other things).

So today, courtesy as ever of the heroes who scan and upload images from those 1980s mainstream muscle magazines, a trip down memory lane, a bit of nostalgia for all those furtive purchases we made in newsagent's all over the world and the women that made those purchases so urgent. Today, we remember the way legs were.

Rachel McLish

I don't remember this image particularly, but it serves to indicate how little muscle (by today's standards, and even, in some ways, by early 80s standards) it took for a woman to be 'muscular' back then. I arrived at the female muscle party just a little late for Rachel McLish in her competitive pomp, but it seems to me she actually got bigger after she stopped competing.

Carla Dunlap and Clare Furr

Brian Eno named-chacked Carla in a recent interview, provoking some bizarrely hysterical reactions from the female muscle brethren (more about that on FMS in the future). He says, I remember in the early 1980s when female bodybuilders first started appearing and there was one I really liked, Carla Dunlap. She was Ms Olympia or something like that. She was this amazing black woman, absolutely musclebound, beautiful. 'Absolutely musclebound', he says, and that's exactly what Carla would have seemed to be at that time, not just to Eno but to me too. To her right, Clare Furr's (slightly later) thighs seem positively other-worldly compared to Carla's. 'Absolutely musclebound' back in the early to mid-80s could become 'hardly musclebound' almost overnight.

Tonya Knight and Mary Roberts

As I recall, images of women training like this one of Tonya squatting were far more numerous in the magazines of the 1980s, and only if you were lucky would there be the kind of 'glamour shot' the we can see Mary Roberts in here on the right. It sometimes came (again, this is as I recall, so don't take this as gospel) at the beginning or end of a training photoset, I guess as a way of showing how the hard work pays off. I found, in general, that these shots were much more attention-grabbing, presumably because they were more unusual.

Marjo Selin


And gradually, legs got bigger. Compare the next few groups of images. I really can't say if they are at all chronological (this post is simply not that well-researched!), let's call it 'legological' or perhaps 'podological' (!). I just wanted to illustrate the point somehow. By the time you get to Jackie Paisley, who is (and I do know this) very much late 80s and into the early 90s, legs have, well, you can see for yourself, changed.

Lisa Lorio, Janet Tech and Juliette Bergmann in her early days.


Sue Gafner and Dorothy Herndon


Marie Mahabir, Rene Casella and Jackie Paisley


Sandy Riddell and Anja Langer

Two of my favourite pairs of legs of the period (among many). I was especially taken with Anja's calves. Even today, as I look at the way they bulge outwards so that you can see them even when looking at her leg front on, they are magnificent, so at the time they would have been quite literally breathtaking.

Cory Everson

This image, for me, evokes a lot about that time in my female muscle life, not least the way the women in the magazines used to always seem to be glistening. The style of photography of the time, no doubt, nothing more, but I came to think of that sheen as the glow of health and vitality that only female bodybuilders possess. Impossible to post anything about the 80s without her, Cory is the epitome of female muscle in that decade, her legs as much as any part of her wondrous physique. Funny now to think that once upon a time I couldn't imagine Cory and her contemporaries getting any bigger or better.

Enjoy!

Unbuttoned/Unzipped of the Day

Let’s go back for a moment to the magazine years. The time when every issue of every major muscle mag contained pics of proper female bodybuilders. My female muscle lovin’ eye was always caught by images that are generally referred to these days as ‘Unbuttoned’ or ‘Unzipped’. As I remember, these images tended to be in Robert Kennedy’s Musclemag, always the racier of the major publications (maybe because it was Canadian) but I really can’t say with any certainty if that’s actually true or not.

Anyway, while Crockett and Tubbs were keeping Miami safe from crime, the muscle babes had big hair to go with their big muscles, and images like the ones below offered something a little different and a little more exciting than the usual training or posing pics, and not just because of those big bouffy 80s jackets with enormous collars. While displaying less than normal of the subject’s physique - the arms and shoulders were covered - at the same time the jackets were open, revealing a teasing glimpse of the bikini and the body underneath. As a result, my imagination was stimulated.

Marjo Selin and Cory Everson

This image of Marjo, in particular, seared itself into my brain, and many years later when I came across it again on the internet, it took me straight back to my teenage female muscle lovin' days. Those abs looked as good as they had the first time, but its her sultry beauty and the no-nonsense hand on the hip that elevates this image to iconic levels. One of the great female muscle images, methinks.

I would, of course, imagine what the muscles I couldn’t see would look like, using those I could as a guide to size and definition. I would reckon, for example, that judging by Sue Gafner’s thighs and abs, her shoulders are pretty damned ripped. And I would imagine that Sue had just opened the jacket. And she had opened it just for me because she wanted me to see her magnificent body. And she wasn’t going to stop there. Opening the jacket was just the start. She was going to take it all off.

Sue Gafner

The criminally-underrated Sue Gafner stimulated my youthful imagination.

The only thing that could be better, I reasoned, would be the unbuttoned jacket minus the bikini top. And fortunately, I wasn’t alone in that last fantasy. Several years down the road and the magazine years were over, but the greatest of all female muscle mags, WPW, now had a website, and it was there that I found my fantasy come true, courtesy of the photographer, of course, but more importantly, courtesy of the sizzling Joan Bovino holding her denim jacket open to reveal her ripped tanned muscles beneath.

Joan Bovino

Fantasy made reality!

Thanks to the efforts of the people who scan images from the magazine years for the pics of Marjo, Cory and Sue. I’m afraid the FMS archive is noticeably lacking in any more Unbuttoned/Unzipped pics from that era, but fortunately, there are plenty more recent examples of this particular niche genre of female muscle image.

Welcome to Unbuttoned/Unzipped week!

Saint Valentina: I Heart Muscle

Readers from the UK may remember the TV series Louis Theroux’ Weird Weekends, indeed female muscle lovers all over the world may be aware of one particular episode involving female bodybuilding (there’s a clip from that show of him meeting fans at the Jan Tana that has been posted up on forum boards and blogs - you can see the whole episode here).

Less well-known to female muscle heads, however, is an episode from the same series, in which Louis meets hypnotists, including a pick-up artist who tries to teach him how to be successful with women. In a scene in a gym, there is, very briefly, an appearance by a woman who reminds me of Kelly Felske. It’s over in a flash, and I can remember sitting there watching it when it was first broadcast and wondering if I had just imagined it. I probably did imagine it, on seeing a repeat, she doesn't look a lot like Kelly Felske (and if it is her, she's past her peak).


Even though I'm pretty sure now that it wasn't actually Kelly in the clip, the fact that I imagined she was in the documentary says something about my mental state. I probably shouldn't think too much more about that, but it's not going to stop me posting a couple of pics of this gorgeous old school goddess at her peak.

Anyway, the pick-up artist basically takes Louis to places where he regularly picks up women, and the gym is one of those. While he’s talking Louis through how he does it (they are kind of working out at the same time) the artist spies 'Kelly', and we get a brief shot of her loading a plate onto a barbell.

The artist stops talking for a moment as he gazes at 'Kelly'. Then he turns back to Louis and says: Now that’s what I love on a woman… Muscle.

And then the episode just carries on as before. There is, unfortunately maybe, no scene where the guy actually picks up a muscle woman – as I remember he doesn’t pick up a woman in the gym at all.

So why am I telling you all about this? Well, there is a point, and it is this. Lovers of female muscle (myself included) seem to spend a lot of time justifying what it is we love about it to ourselves, to each other, maybe even to those who deride our preference. And when we do, we don’t usually put it as succinctly as the pick up artist, but basically, that is what it is all about – the muscles. Maybe we don’t say it because it’s just so obvious. But nevertheless, it needs to be said, so here I go…

In the same way that many guys can’t understand what we find arousing about female bodybuilders, I can’t conceive what it is like to not be aroused by muscles on a woman. When others say female bodybuilders lack the curves of a conventionally sexy woman, I am genuinely confused. I too love curves on a woman, and muscle women have curves everywhere because they are covered in muscles. They have curves in places that most women don’t have places. To me, they are the most curvaceous, and therefore, the sexiest, women of all.


Hot stuff: from Zuzana to Gillian and all points inbetween, for me, it's always been about those sexy muscular curves.

I love the way muscles look whether relaxed or flexed, in motion or frozen in a photographic image. If sthenolagnia is ‘arousal by the display of strength or muscles’, then the keywords for me are ‘display’ and ‘muscles’.



Back in the days of the trip to the newsagent’s to get my female muscle fixes, I would buy the magazines so that I could masturbate while looking at the pictures of the likes of Cory, Anja etc. And I did plenty of that. But I also remember that I would spend a lot of time just following the contours of their bodies with my eyes, thinking about how perfect their bodies were.


First loves: Cory and Anja provided early examples of physical perfection to my teenage female muscle lovin' mind.

And I dreamed that one day I would get to touch those muscles, to follow the contours of those magnificent bodies with not just my eyes, but with my hands. To feel the hard muscle beneath the skin, well, I couldn’t imagine anything better.


Looks good, feels good, tastes good.

Unfortunately, I never got to touch Cory or Anja! But I have felt the muscles of dancers, gymnasts and martial artists with my own hands (hands that were shaking with the excitement of the moment) and even despite my idealised expectations, I was not disappointed. It was heaven!



I’ve lived long enough to know that it’s muscle that turns me on more than anything. I love it. Any amount of it will do, but the more muscle there is, the more defined and proportional it is, the more turned on I will be. I simply find muscular female physiques to be more beautiful and more sensual than any other body type.


'Any amount of muscle will do', but we all have our favourite bodies and our favourite bodyparts. Two of my favourite muscle women and two of my favourite bodyparts. Cathy Le Francois' striated glutes and the incredible ripped eight-pack of Oana Hreapca are among many of mine.

Hi, my name’s David, and I’m a female muscle lover.

Happy Saint Valentina's Day!