Due to some work commitments and Mr and Mrs Swell's now annual sojourn to the South of France (not the bit that was recently on fire, thankfully), the FMS offices are going to be closed this week, next week and the week after. Nevertheless, as always, we don't want to leave you totally FMS-less, so we've lined up 21 Reasons, one daily picture (or two or three), plus one reason why we love doing what we do, as if we were explaining it to one not so convinced of the glory of the muscular female.
Enjoy!
#17 DANI
If Dani Reardon didn't exist, perhaps one of the better female muscle fiction writers would have invented her. The high school teen muscle queen who goes on to rise to as close as you can get to the summit of her chosen sport without actually being on it...
How far she has come. And, with the exception of the "incident" that led to her being detained by the police back in 2014, she has always been on that rise, both in terms of her professional career, and in terms of her popularity with female muscle fans.
Until now.
I think we are close to seeing the end of her as a competitor, writes one forum poster, obviously better-informed about Dani than I am. She seems to be turning into a bit of a head case and didn't even train much the first half of this year. Sponsors dropped her hand over fist. Her Olympia progress doesn't seem to be on track either. I'm afraid she'll get her ass handed to her this time and she'll slowly fade away afterwards.
All she's ever known is building muscle and competing. It's the only thing she's ever done. And in the period she's been doing it, she's given me as much pleasure as any other muscle woman. And, more importantly, she remains an inspirational figure to (hundreds of) thousands of women across the world. They're not and I'm not ready to stop cheering for Dani. Not by a long chalk. So I hope he's wrong in his prediction.
Today, FMS once again rounds up our favourite YouTube clips as the (pleasingly popular and) irregular muscle in motion fest we call Tube Watch, returns.
CORY'S BEST BITS
Once upon a time, when your female muscle fix came on a printed page, Cory Everson ruled the female muscle world. If there was a month that went by without her being the covergirl of one of the muscle magazines you so avidly collected, it was a rare month indeed. But, unless you (or more likely your Dad) were the proud owner of one of those new-fangled machines they called video recorders and you had the resources to send away to the US for one of those things they called video tapes, well, you just had to imagine how Cory moved. Thankfully, those days are long gone. And thanks to the latest (and first non-Denise Rutkowski) addition to Kiko Newman's channel, you can now enjoy some of Cory's most memorable moves in just over three minutes with the added bonus of some of her legendary contemporaries trying to outsexy her in a variety of (I'm assuming Olympia) posedowns. Gold.
For Your Consideration
Also in the "montage" file this month, new additions to Female Fitness Reset, a channel which, you may remember, we featured on the blog just a few weeks ago. Then, our only (slight) criticism of the channel was the absence of much Bodybuilder with a capital B edits. Now, I am not going to flatter myself into believing that the preponderance of bigger girls in Mr. Reset's most recent uploads has anything to do with FMS' observations, but I am very pleased to report that since then he's added (among others) Cass Martin, Natalia Kovalyova, and both of your 2017 Hot and Hard 100 top 2 - Theresa Ivancik, and Elena Oana Hreapca - to his collection.
BRINGING SEXY BACK
From a serial Olympia winner, we go next to a woman who will be making her Olympia debut this year - Italy's Doina Gurun. This is Doina's first year as a Physique competitor (previously she competed in Figure) and her move up has paid off handsomely. She won her first Physique title at her third attempt - the recent San Jose Pro - and if this routine is anything to go by, it's a) a damn shame she didn't find her way to Physique earlier, and b) going to be hot on that Olympia stage. This is Doina in muscle sexy action during her second Physique outing at the Arctic Pro, and her Instagram moniker (The Tiger) only really makes sense when you've seen her prowl around the stage. Reminiscent of those routines of times past that had the IFBB firing off "sex it down" directives to the 80s/90s ladies, and all the better for it.
For Your Consideration
Doina was filmed and uploaded by Louie Maldonado, whose better half, Sharlin Maldonado, also competed in Anchorage with Doina. Her routine, and those of all the other WPD ladies who competed there and at the Mile High Pro are on his channel, and very well-filmed treats they are. Swell especially digs Anne Freitas (not quite so freaky these days, but still pretty damn freaky) from the Arctic Pro - as well as Jessica Martin, who we featured on Sunday - and Keri Ann Heitzman's slow and sexy style from the Mile High Pro. If backstage/pump room is more your bag though, head over to NPC News Online's YouTube channel and fill your boots, with the Fitness/Physique backstage video from the 2017 NPC Universe being FMS' pick of the bunch.
DANI'S ARMAGEDDON
Our YouTube Swoon of the Month though has to go to Dani Reardon training (and flexing, there's lots of flexing) arms in Orlando. She's not so "lil" and definitely more "monsta" these days, and while many of her clips are far too long to hold your attention, and have too much of her yakking and not enough of her cracking out reps and poses, "Armageddon" comes in at a snug 2.34 and is almost all about those muscles. 2.11 is a moment (and a pose) you won't forget in a hurry, I promise.
Now the really smart choice of muscle woman to be stuck in an elevator with would be Erica Blockman, aka The World's Sexiest Firefighter. Her skills might make the whole experience a bit shorter than it otherwise might be, but I bet it'd be amazing to watch her work. And, he said coyly, you'd feel all safe and protected and stuff...
Trouble is, I can't find a single image of Erica in an elevator.
But I did find a pretty good second choice.
Dani seems to have added beef even since she beefed up for the Olympia, particularly in the arm department, and an elevator stuck between floors would be the perfect environment - well, maybe not the perfect one, an opportune environment perhaps would be more accurate - to demonstrate my appreciation for all her hard graft.
And if that beefy upper body was all sweaty and pumped, then that would be heaven!
Clearly this post is descending faster than an elevator in a disaster movie, so I'll leave my sordid imaginings right there and leave you and this week of ups and downs with two of the finest biceps in the Physique - or indeed any - division. In an elevator.
And FMS will also be leaving you for a couple of weeks to reevaluate and recharge.
It started as an idea expressed during an email exchange...
PumpItUp: You probably know I’ve always seen the 1980s, when likely both of us developed this "interest" we have as being a kind of "Golden Age", where the main media source we had, magazines, had an abundance of female muscle if you knew where to look.
The aerobics/fitness boom meant female muscle crept into film and TV too. Even hardcore but mainstream newsagent mags like Flex had FBBs on the cover, something not seen today.
When the internet arrived, there were sources like usenet groups but downloading pics was slow on dial up and hit and miss. Many of the paysites we know today hadn't really got going. The Diana the Valkyrie mega site was one of the few sources that I was a member of for a few years, still running.
Now with Instagram, blogs and tumblr, (as well as the paysites as intermediaries), we are seeing some of the hottest fittest women, women who would not have been found if they didn't compete or get picked up by WPW or one of the other print mags.
In the age of Twitter and the selfie, too often with its banality, but the benefit for us is these otherwise unknown beauties are posting pics of themselves directly to the world, inspiring and encouraging others to do the same. Suddenly we admirers are spoilt for choice.
I hereby declare this is (probably) the Second Golden Age of Female Muscle!
A little later, the idea developed into the series of posts you'll see here this week, which I'm delighted to say are co-authored by FMS and the legendary PumpItUp himself.
The format is the same every day. Each blogger chooses two images - one from the days when their female muscle addiction was born, and another more contemporary one, and they are the basis of our discussion about issues surrounding female muscle that was then and female muscle that is now as well as our continuing mutual love for these wonderful women.
PART I
FMS: So to kick off, [PumpItUp has chosen] Tina and Aleesha. Presumably it's a size thing! Tina has a less, let's say "enhanced" look though. Would you say that is a sign of the different times?
PIU: Yeah, spot on. Tina was a phenomenon at the time, primarily those legs of course, specially given her age, and we saw fleeting video and pics of her and limited competing while coming up to date, "enhanced" and popular (look at last year’s FMS Hot and Hard 100) Aleesha is on many of the paysites and has her own website.
We had so many remarkable ladies rise and then fade from the spotlight in the old days, who knows what Tina might have become had she started out in this day and age.
FMS: My first pair is Anja and Dani. An old school bodybuilder and a new school Physique star.
PIU: So would you think that much of old style BB is pretty much new school physique (or with much overlap?)
FMS: I think if you are really talking about the mid-late 80s, then - with the exception of Bev Francis - you can see the bodybuilder then look in the Physique look now.
PIU: I haven’t kept up with all the contest changes but do the divisions now allow women to move between them more easily?
FMS: Seems that Figure to Physique is a well-trodden path these days, and more recently women like Zoa Linsey, Klaudia Larson etc. have been moving down.
PIU: And freakazoid Anne Freitas - anything could happen! After I picked up my jaw at her previous extreme form, from what I've seen lately of her, I actually think I prefer her physique look.
FMS: Problem they (and the IFBB) have is that the WPD doesn't quite know what it is yet. There's a massive difference in muscularity between Latorya Watts (Ms Figure Olympia) and Margie Martin, and Physique covers it, so you have the more muscular women winning some shows, and the less muscular winning others.
2016 may be the year the IFBB 'define' the Physique division better though. Autumn Swansen - who won the Arnold Classic - has had a meteoric rise through the pro Physique ranks, and I think her look is what the IFBB are after.
Funnily enough, she looks even more Anja-like than Dani!
Any comments about this week's post would be especially welcome. What's your opinion about the issues come up in our conversation? Is your idea of the Golden Age of female muscle similar or different, and do you agree we are entering another one now?
There was, I imagine, a bit of a queue to get up close and personal with Dani.
Even if the result of all that waiting in line was a picture of you and the goddess that leaves you - no matter how stunning you might be in real life - looking a bit, well, ordinary.
Because Dani, from any angle, was looking exceptional, arguably in her best ever shape. A shape good enough, remember, to take home the (not very big) cheque for 2nd place.
So good in fact, she was freaking herself out!
And adding yet more to the mountain of adoration she receives from the female muscle lovin' community. [I'm] Lost for words... claims one fan, before proving they are, after all, actually not. So gorgeous & built to the hilt! they continue. What a dream girl...
Also prowling around the Expo for HD Physiques was Katie Lee, interviewing various gorgeous women with greater or lesser amounts of muscle before rather rudely outflexing them as she signed off. Here the vision that is Diana Schnaidt gets "katied".
Just about everything we've seen so far this week - selfies, candids, glamour, leather, biceps, bling, the so-called "duck face", and a bunch of pics where the car may not be evident at first - all starring everybody's ultimate passenger seat muscle fantasy.
Although sometimes she takes a different four wheels out.
Shades on. Guns out.
Just imagine seeing her drive by!
Gentlemen, start your engines.
Beautifully, lovingly built.
A powerful beast.
Coming soon. (Lil) Monsta Trucks.
And we leave you for today with Dani in motor muscle motion...
Relax. Physique is Lightweight, Middleweight and Light-heavyweight Bodybuilding in disguise, or at least that's what it has turned out to be, despite the complaints of some of the (less muscular) Physique women themselves. And until the IFBB/NPC bigwigs do see their plans to "tone it down by 10-15%" come to fruition, that means there's lots and lots of beautiful female muscle in the division, especially when the cream gather as they did in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Yes of course we miss the Ms O, but that didn't stop us enjoying the Physique Olympia, and all this week on FMS we're going to be paying tribute to these spectacular, muscular women.
So relax, get comfy, and enjoy!
DANI REARDON: DREAM GIRL
I DREAM OF DANI...
True story. So, I'm in bed early last Saturday morning and I start dreaming about Dani. Now, you might have a lot of dreams involving muscle women, you might not. I almost never have them - the last I actually remember involved Gayle Moher in her Awefilms red dress and was about probably about seven or eight years ago. I guess it's because I spend so much of my waking life with female muscle on the brain that my subconscious gives the old grey matter a bit of a break while I'm asleep!
Anyway, I'd been rabidly sourcing all the pics for this post and many many more the day before. As many as I could find in fact. Pics of Dani from contest photo sites, pics from Dani's Instagram and elsewhere. Dani before, Dani during, and Dani after the show. Anything I could lay my cursor on really. Last count I have over 200 in the folder, of which only a small percentage will make the final cut for the post. And I knew I didn't need so many, but I was insatiable. I just kept searching and searching...
So it was with a head full of Dani that I lay down and cuddled up to the wife on Friday night. And as I slumbered and Friday night turned to Saturday morning, one image of Dani in her Olympia posing suit began to take over my thoughts. This one.
In my dream Dani was every bit as chiselled, and she was wearing only slightly more than this. She was weaing a pair of ridiculously small shorts - they barely covered her glutes and were so tight you could basically see the muscle anyway - instead of the bottom half of the posing suit, though they had an identical design. The posing top was the same but she was also wearing a small jacket. And I mean small. Like a matador's jacket if you know what I mean, it barely came down much further than her posing top. Her bronzed, hard abs, every striation in her quads, her pec line - a little sweaty as I recall - basically everything you could have seen of Dani on stage at the Olympia bar her shoulders, arms and upper back was on display. And I was right there with her.
Me and Dani were in some kind of bar or restaurant. It being my dream and all I was obviously being as charming as Bond and she was all enamoured. And then we were somewhere a lot more private. Now at this point you are probably expecting me to start feeling up that bronzed hard body of hers, and that's exactly what I would be expecting if I were reading this. Sorry to disappoint, because quite the opposite happened. Off came her little jacket, and then suddenly she was touching me.
At this point in the dream I became aware of two things. #1, that I was dreaming. And #2, that it wasn't actually Dani who was touching me so very expertly, but my wife.
Now what happened next I shall not go into in very much detail, but I will say that it was all over pretty damn fast! I managed, somehow, and I've never managed to do this before, to stay at least partially in the dream while also being at least partially awake. I was conscious of what was really happening, but at the same time (by force of will?) I kind of tricked my brain into believing what I wanted it to believe for a few crucial seconds, with, as the wife would confirm, a most copious and satisfying result.
DREAMS COME TRUE...
...when your fight is stronger than your fear, says Dani. She seems to be in the business of conquering those fears because since we first met her here on FMS back in 2013, dream after dream has been ticked off her list. Pro card - check. First pro appearance - check. First win as a pro - check. And now her first appearance at the Olympia - check. And all of this done and dusted at such a precocious age. Next on the list? The Ms Physique Olympia title, of course. And given her record so far, you wouldn't bet against her, would you? This is what I was born to do, she says.
Like many of the WPD class of 2015, particularly the debs, Dani seems to have had an absolute ball in Las Vegas, loving every minute of the experience. She was barely able - or actually unable truth be told - to contain her excitement from the moment she touched down at the airport (above) to the moment she came off stage after the finals, officially (well, sort of officially) the 4th best Physique competitor in the world.
She was mobbed, respectfully, but mobbed nonetheless, by admirers of all ages, shapes and sizes as she walked through the Expo - you'll want to watch the whole thing I'm sure, but watch from about the two-minute mark of the Friday section of Dani's own Olympia video diary and you will see what I mean. The same fans were eagerly sending their pictures of Dani to her within minutes and you can see a selection of her faves on her Instagram too. And it was the same story on the Saturday after the awards. Everybody loves Dani, and, high as the proverbial kite and "having the time of my freakin' life" as she was, she felt the love. The fact that you all want to take pictures with me and tell me you are rooting for me means the absolute world, she said.
Most of all though, the dream that came true wouldn't have been so sweet for Dani - despite all the adoration and even if her placing had been the same - if she hadn't been satisfied with the package she had taken onto that stage. But she was. She really really was. And even if she hadn't been saying how pleased she was with the way she looked for the show, you'd still be able to tell from the contest photos, don't you think?
DANI'S XTC
What I'm looking at is a woman in absolutely the best condition she can be in, but whether I think she is perfect or not is besides the point. What is important is what Dani thought, and especially what Dani was feeling on that stage in Las Vegas. These images, for me, show Dani has fully realised what Tanya Bunsell calls 'the latent image in her mind’s eye', the vision she has of her body at its most perfect.
The exact same paragraph, with "Karen" for "Dani", and "1995" for "Las Vegas" appeared right here in April 2014 in a post entitled Karen's XTC, part of an exploration of the joys of the female bodybuilder in peak condition. Funnily enough, Dani also appeared that week on the blog, getting what she called "the chills" as she posed on stage in her hometown show in Orlando. Perhaps on closer inspection these (excellent) shots of Dani doing her compulsory poses and routine don't quite match that iconic image of Karen Smith at her most ecstatic, but one or two of them certainly come close enough to suggest that Dani was feeling those "chills" again in Las Vegas in 2015.
Dani has never looked better, and she knew it, and she felt it. If the IFBB are going to be looking for a less muscular look in 2016, then Dani's going to have to rethink her prep because her package here was all about the muscle. Her legs were - to quote Corinne Ingman - "truly, disgustingly peeled". Her abs - always one of her strongest bodyparts - swoonworthy as f***, insanely defined obliques and all. Her back - every fibre of every muscle full and visible - never better, and the same could be said for any of the other muscles on her gorgeous, bronzed body you might want to examine. She was, as her many many Facebook and Instagram admirers (male and female) and (pretty much male) female muscle lovin' forum posters are always saying, "perfect".
I wonder, says one of those male forum posters, if sometimes she stops doing whatever she's doing to think, just for a few moments, "My God. I am perfection."
This says more about the fan (and anyone else who has ever wondered the same thing - be honest!) than it does about Dani herself, but it's impossible - especially after her Olympia experience - that she doesn't know that she is so admired by women and lusted over by men (and probably most of the women who admire her too). I wonder how it feels to know that you are so admired by so many, or to know you are an object of female muscle desire, and in Dani's case arguably the object of female muscle desire right now. I wonder how it feels to have sponsors falling over themselves to sign you up, to be the brightest star in your sport. And I wonder how it feels to have all your years of hard work and sacrifice pay off and to hone your physique to its absolute peak right at the moment when you are about to step into the brightest spotlight of all...
