Then & Now: 1989 (again)

In the days before the Hot and Hard 100 voting closes (and you've only got 4 left by the way), FMS likes to avoid influencing your decisions unduly by bringing you some historical, rather than contemporary, female muscle. This year we've come up with a kind of time machine idea, used a random date generator, picked a contest winner from that year, and tried to find out what that special lady from the past is up to now.

The first staging of the IFBB World Pro Championships had been in 1979, and after a year off in 1980, it was held every year until 1989. It was resurrected for one last hurrah a decade later before disappearing again, it seems forever this time.

As I forgot to tick the box on the random date generator that avoids duplicates, we are dropping our time machine into the said IFBB World Pro Championships in 1989. We emerge blinking into the auditorium, and what an amazing sight we see...

THEN

Anja Schreiner, Joy Nichols, Erika Mes... all placed outside the top 20. At 20 is Janice Ragain, Gillian Hodge at 19, Joanna McCartney at 18. Way down in 15th is Juliette Bergmann, and Rene Casella also finds herself placed outside the top 10 at 11. How much better can this contest line-up get? Well, hold on a second...

10 - Marie Mahabir, 9 - Lisa Lorio, 8 - Laura Creavalle. It's like a list of my female muscle lovin' early years fantasy women, maybe yours too... 7 - Tami Imbriale, 6 - Janet Tech, and into the top 5 we go with Italian goddess Claudia Profanter. Barely able to breathe, we collapse into some empty seats at the back, but the parade's not over yet, and next out comes 4th place Laura Beaudry and 3rd place Dorothy Herndon and after her runner-up Jackie Paisley...

Literally gasping for air we look at each other. No words are necessary, the wide eyes say it all. What uber-goddess could possibly have triumphed over this alpha field?



Stepping forward into the spotlight, her victory pose as graceful and unique as every other she has hit during the contest, comes Diana Dennis, The Uber-Goddess.



When Women's Bodybuilding came into vogue in the 80s we really had no role model for artistic female posing. We could leaf through Muscle and Fitness or Ironman and see some gentlemen posing, but then came Diana Dennis, a pioneer for us in the arena of artistic, imaginative routines. She elevated the display of muscle groups to a fine art of expression in motion for the decade she competed and then for the decades after that. She consistently lifted the bar in the art of female posing.



It's not hard to find testimonials from the women who knew her and saw her perform. The words of Alison Brundage above, are typical. Even in the last ten years or so, long after Diana had retired from competition, female bodybuilders of then and now were paying gushing tributes to her on her Facebook page, often in response to her latest benefit performance - she was well over 50 by this stage - for one of the many good causes she has supported. Diana, as Helen Bouchard puts it, is the best.



She continued to present her body in her own inimitable style for many years after her last competitive appearance, photographers only too happy to work with her.

NOW



And even in her late 50s, there was no mistaking the fire in those eyes.



This, possibly, is the most recent picture of Diana Dennis. It was posted on her Facebook page around Christmas last year. I still don't know quite what to make of it, which may well have been Diana's intention if she did indeed come up with this idea. If so, and it's the only thing she's shared in five years, it would be utterly fitting. Still looking for unique ways to portray herself, still pushing the boundaries...

It would be wrong to leave you today without a little taste of Diana in motion.

Here she is at the 1991 Ms Olympia. Enjoy!

Far From Routine: Artists

One of the many indicators that attitudes among most of the (male-dominated) federations to female bodybuilding are 'wrong' has, in my opinion, been the demise of the routine. Once upon a time, they were so much more than just a race to get through as many poses as possible before the music was cut and the next competitor ushered onto (and then just as quickly off) the stage.

Now a minute long if you're lucky, competitors were once upon a time given a full three minutes each. Women like Diana Dennis, rarely hitting a traditional pose in the course of her routine, made them into true performances, with all the artistic connotations of that word. There are still some true artists out there, Sheila Bleck, for example, commissions original pieces of music for her routines and gives each its own unique muscle flexing choreography, but she is very much in a minority.

I think it's a real shame that this aspect of the female bodybuilding show has declined in importance so much. Competitors' muscularity and proportions have already been judged by the time the evening show comes around. What's the point of a routine if it's just a quick run through the same poses we've already seen in previous rounds? And furthermore, if these federations are, as they claim to be, so concerned about competitors' femininity, why are they deliberately downsizing the one part of the contest where feminine expression is most possible and desirable?

I don't think it's a coincidence that the vast majority of the routines nominated by you lovely readers date from the 1980s, 1990s and the first few years of the new millennium, before, I would argue, the rise in new divisions (male and female) squeezed all the time out of the female bodybuilding evening show. These days, the biggest show is in the Fitness division, but though we might gasp at the truly amazing athleticism you see there, it just isn't the same.

So, as my little reminder of what once was, and what could be again, today FMS presents three of our collective favourite artistic posers. One reader choice and one FMS pick for each of the two women we'll see in competition, plus a guest posing routine nominated by one reader which I'd never seen before and which will, I reckon, leave you quite nostalgic for the days when every routine was an event.


CLAUDIA MONTEMAGGI

With her background in ballet and gymnastics, her stunning Italian beauty and her physique worthy of two Ms Olympia appearances, it's no surprise Claudia's routines have proved memorable. Does sex appeal have anything to do with it? wonders Eurosport commentator Simon Reed - perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not - just moments after a close-up of Claudia's crotch in the first of our two Montemaggi classics. The second was nominated by a reader who wanted to thank FMS for posting the clip in April 2013. I've never heard a routine get such an ovation, he says.

Swell Pick
1989 World Games



Reader Request
1991 Ms Olympia




DIANA DENNIS
Guest Posing

Proper theatre, with costume, prop and a beginning, middle and end. By 1999 Diana Dennis may have been well past her prime as a competitive bodybuilder, but as this clip amply demonstrates, she was still taking guest posing to new heights. I don't mean to be rude or to labour the point, but compare this to a much more recent Monique Jones guest posing routine here. Monique is huge and her outfit is fun and everything, don't get me wrong, I do enjoy Monique's turn, but I'm hypnotised by Diana.




ELENA SHPORTUN

I'm just a fan, says the woman who captured the first of our Elena Shportun clips. I went to the 2006 and 2007 World Champs and shot this. Checkout the ab roll at 0.39! Best posing routine ever! she says. "She" happens to be Johanna Dejager and she also claims that the following year Elena returned with an even more ripped look. Sadly, no footage of that routine appears on Johanna's or anyone else's channel as far as I know, but the following 2009 Oslo Grand Prix routine is also one that lives in the memory. In her time she was in a class of her own with her posing, reckons our nominating reader. The aforementioned Sheila Bleck apart, I have to agree.

Reader Request
2006 IFBB Worlds



Swell Pick
2009 Oslo Grand Prix




Tomorrow, in our final installment, your three most nominated routines...

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.

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!

Back Back in the Day of the Day

Diana Dennis



I wish the kind of artistry and grace Diana brought to the sport of female bodybuilding would return, so I'm not so much including her for the muscular development of her back, rather as a reminder of a time when the 'routine' was a chance for expression, rather than an opportunity to hit some poses (vaguely) in time to a popular song.

I can't imagine that many of the 'routines' that we see today would provoke the kind of prose reminiscent of descriptions of artwork, which, of course, is how she sees herself:

Against a black pallet the spotlight captures an image of strength and beauty. Sculpted by years of disciplined training the physique is hard and chiseled. Each muscle developed and perfected as if designed by the hands of a bronze creator. 

The audience is captivated by the sight of perfection that stands still before them in a statuesque manner. The music electrifying, the thrill of suspense in the air, poses become fluent as classic dance and modern movement are incorporated into the unique and distinctive routine. The energy moves smoothly across the stage in a mesmerizing and tranquil fashion, unlike anything ever seen within this venue and sport.

Judge for yourself if the sport could do with a little more of this...



Diana's website