Muscles in Motion

When a video is too long but a picture is not enough...

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Two's Up of the Day

TWELVE-pack? If only Elena had remembered to move the medal...


Katka Kyptova and Elena Shportun

Abs of the Day

Sunday, the day of rest. A day for lounging around at home. And if you get to be the lucky lucky man who spends his day of rest lounging around with Elena Shportun's impossibly deep abdominals ridges to gaze upon, well, I hope you appreciate what you have and never ever complain because buddy, you have got it oh so good.

Express Yourself!

What do these two pictures have in common? Why is it they appeal to me a little bit more than your average snap of a muscular beauty?

The answer is expression. On the left, the open mouth gives the impression that as she flexes she’s saying Yeah! That she loves showing off her muscles. On the right, Brandi’s pout makes me think that by flexing her delicious body for the camera, she is turning herself on. Both women know they’re hot, and by emoting even just a little bit, in their different ways, they are transmitting that to the viewer, ie. me. And that little bit of expression gives my imagination so much more to work with, and consequently elevates these pictures beyond the norm.

Slave loves a good picture of a muscular women, but loves a good picture of an emoting muscular woman even more. Hope you enjoy the examples I have chosen as much as I enjoyed choosing them!

The ‘Yeah!’

Angelica Mielczarek seems to know the effect her body can have on a man. Wouldn’t you be wide-eyed and open-mouthed if you saw her? Her expression is like a mirror to the viewer/gawper. Wow! Look at her! becomes Wow! Look at me! Very sexy.

Most Muscular

A most muscular pose without any expression is a wasted opportunity, but Lindsay Cope knows how to make the most of it. Yeah! she seems to be saying, Check me out! What muscle woman doesn’t love displaying the results of her hard work, and through her expression Lindsay puts over the self-confidence, vanity even, that Slave for one cannot resist in muscular females, especially ones who are as drop-dead gorgeous as Lindsay is.

The Roar

When flexing those guns or finishing their set of 200 press-ups, the feeling just can’t be contained. It has to be let out. And so like mighty lionesses after a successful hunt, their feeling of strength and power is expressed in a mighty roar. Grrrrrrr! Roaaaar! The gym quakes. Knees go weak. Bunnies flee. She is the queen of her jungle.

Routine Emotion #1: Tonie Norman

Some routines are more memorable than others, some women just have the natural ability to connect with the audience, and as far as I can tell, it’s the ones who are most expressive on stage that achieve this.


Exhibit A: Tonie Norman. Not the biggest, not the most successful, but always a routine worth watching, because, like the routines of way back when, it’s always more of a performance with Tonie, and as these pictures and close-ups illustrate, she’s got a pretty wide variety of expressions to communicate with. I particularly like some expression with my abs and thigh pose, not an easy thing to do given the amount of strain involved, but Tonie pulls it off effortlessly. Again, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, like she’s shocked that she’s just made so many men in the audience grab their crotches all at once.

The Pout

Nothing better than a big-lipped pout to communicate how sexy she feels posing for the camera, or how into her own body she is. Like Brandi at the top of the post, Gretchen Imes revels in her muscularity, or at least that’s what her pout says to this viewer.

Tongues

Heather Foster sticks it out on stage (and incidentally shows incredible control of her lower lip in the process), while Kashma’s seems to be unusually long. Nice. She gets better and better, doesn’t she?

Routine Emotion #2: Elena Shportun

These days, few female bodybuilders give their routine as much artistry and expression as was prevalent in the past. Think of Natalia Murnikovene, Diana Dennis, even Cory Everson. Nowadays, routines often seem to be just a collection of poses set to music, rather than a ‘performance’. But Elena Shportun keeps the flag flying for artistic bodybuilding routines, always giving an emotive, creative and consequently memorable turn. I reckon she would have made a great actress. In fact, she still might!

Homage

On the left, Liang Yue Yan pays homage to her ancestors by terrifying any Mongolian invaders, while the lady on the right seems to be paying homage to Betty Pariso’s famous tongue-out most muscular.


Of course the one place where you can’t help expressing yourself (unless you aren’t doing it properly) is the gym. Larissa shows us a range of expressions as she punishes her sexy body.

First, an Ooooo


Then, an Aaaah


And lastly, a Grrrr


Double Whammy
And finally, a couple of screenshots of Marja Lehtonen. Now don’t you think they would be so much blander without the expressions? In too many posing videos there isn’t enough eye contact with the viewer in my opinion. Often the ladies look slightly off camera as they take direction. Sometimes they even just stop posing and wait for the director to tell them what to do next. I hate this: it’s lazy on the part of the film-maker, who could just edit the bloody thing a bit, and the less eye contact I get, the sooner I tire of the clip.


No danger of either of these things here. Marja’s got you in her sights, gives you wide-eyed open-mouthed, then the roar. Double sexy!

Enjoy!

Faces

You may remember seeing Martin Schoeller’s portraits of top female bodybuilders around four years ago when they were first exhibited. Now they have resurfaced again in the UK media.

Schoeller says, With Female Bodybuilders [the book], I am trying to show the vulnerability that I see and feel in the subjects when I am with them, to get to the complex emotions behind a mask of extreme physical expression. These women mirror our modern cultural hunger for size, aggression, and attention at any cost. We are in the age of Bigness.



Art it may be, but these pictures are not doing female bodybuilding any favours. The women stare blankly back at the viewer, one of Schoeller’s hallmarks, and the fact that they are in contest shape and look drawn and exhausted is accentuated by another of his hallmarks, harsh, unforgiving light.



Hardly a representation of female muscle that is going to win over the sceptics. Don’t blame the photographer, he has his own aims. But, as a Schoeller antidote, Female Muscle Slave would like to present other portraits and self-portraits of muscular women.

And I can be arty too, you know.

Slave says, My aim was to show how female muscle and beauty are not mutually exclusive, even in mainstream terms, and have juxtaposed the beauty of the women with the negative comments from articles on the Schoeller photos to demonstrate the falsehood of preconceptions about women with muscles being unattractive and masculine.


Heather Lee : Tatiana Butler : Gal Ferreira

They all look so ugly, like an old leather couch.


Diana Tinnelle : Rebekah Kresila : Christina Steele

Horrendously disgusting. Abhorrent. Yuk!


Elena Shportun : Andrea Giacomi

Looks like a bunch of men with girly hair and make-up on.


Cinderella Landholt

Ugliest women in the world!


Helene Ahlson : Mary Ann Graves : Christy Resendes

The stuff of nightmares.


Katka Kyptova : Virginia Sanchez Masias

There are better looking gargoyles on Hereford Cathedral.


Heidi Vuorela

Grotesque! Freaks! Gross!


Geraldine Morgan : Dawn Sutherland

They look like Iggy Pop.


The recent article on Schoeller’s work was in the Daily Mail online. You can also check out Schoeller’s work here, and to buy the book of female bodybuilder portraits go here.

Enjoy!