On Display

This gem turned up on the forums recently, the owner of the beautiful back unknown. The picture bears all the hallmarks of The Madness. It's slightly blurred, slightly shaky, apparently shot surreptitiously. A female muscle head unable to stop themselves capturing "the day I went to the store and found the woman of my dreams there".

I think I would lose it right then and there if I actually saw this! reads one of the many comments that now accompany the image. Sympathy for The Madness. We know we would do what is technically the "wrong" thing and invade this woman's privacy too.

Never seen anything like this at my local 7-11, laments another. And there's the rub. Been lovin' female muscle a long time, and I can count the number of times I've come across a proper muscular female in a public place on the fingers of one hand. Or maybe both hands, but less than 10 sightings in 30 plus years is not a great average, is it?

Every time it is deliciously exciting. Every time I fall foul of The Madness, and though I've not always been as fast with the camera as our convenience store photographer, I have found the urge irresistible on occasion, and have a little collection of self-snapped muscular calves to show for it, which I'm not too proud of (but will never delete).



I didn't take this one. I'm not nearly that good!

I'm never going to run into Kashma by the car park. I'm never going to stop at a red light and see Sarah Bäckman waiting to cross. I'm never going to go and pay for my parking and have to wait, open-mouthed, while Linda Durbesson gets her ticket.



However, with a little creative thinking, and drawing on my own experiences, I can imagine how exciting it would be to do so, and after some consideration agree with the forum poster who "would lose it right then and there". It is probably best for all concerned that my public sightings of muscle women have been extremely rare!



I mean, Valeska Bruzzi here looks a tad startled by whatever the whoever who is not taking the picture is doing. Are they up a tree? She seems to be looking kind of upwards. Anyway, poor thing looks so startled that she's about to take her tight tiny shorts off, and I know I would hate to be responsible for that, wouldn't you?

Fortunately, muscle women don't need us to take surreptitious shots of them for us to see them out and about in public places, and while I'm sure we've all heard plenty about those who cover up their muscles in public to avoid attracting attention, there are plenty of muscular women who are more than happy to put it all on display.



Women like Aida Enoki Linares (and that guy's face says it all).



Aida was Peruvian Physique champ in 2015 (not sure since then - she has a 0 posts 800+ followers Instagram and a rarely updated Twitter), and I think these pics are from around the time she won that national championship. Not shy though, is she? And not short of admirers eager to get a souvenir of the evening they ran into the woman of their dreams showing off all her contest ready muscles. And - guy in the photo two up excepted - note they don't seem to have not lost it right then and there!



Surrounded by drooling men...



And the odd woman too.



She's at or outside a Fitness Expo it seems, not the most hostile territory for a muscular woman, and she's making the most of it, loving the attention her muscles get her, revelling in her "otherness", the fact she's so special, so unique. And that confidence, that pride in the muscular physiques they have built, is exactly what I think makes the muscle woman in public candid (how niche are we this week?) so arousing.



Even if she's not overtly flexing (as with above, left to right, Georgia Sims, Maggie Nichols and you know who), what she's wearing has been carefully chosen to show off her muscular assets. Out and about she goes - and let the gawping begin!



They must know, right? Know that for every snigger or hurtful remark there are just as many guys (and girls) who are in total awe, and who will, as soon as she goes out of sight, need a trip to the nearest bathroom for some alone time (probably just the guys that one), and who will never ever forget the moment she walked by.

Or bought food.



Actually, this makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Gym, sleep... what's the other big thing in a muscle woman's life? FOOD! Of course! Source of protein and, er, other stuff.

She's hungry, sometimes very hungry. We started in a convenience store, we now move on to the supermarket, and look, she's showing off her veiny arms in the cereal aisle, and doesn't seem too displeased to be having her picture taken...



Where else can the chances of encountering a muscular female be so high?



Oh, right. Food again.



And look how much of it! Rhi Rhi (above) - I don't know much about her but I know what I like - looks like she's going to be there a while (I am assuming she eats in the style of the lady she appears to be), which gives the guy in red behind her a fair amount of time to convince his buddy to swap places. Hope he's got some money.



And apparently, as well as the food, a drink or two is not considered the worst thing in the world either. Apparently, it's quite common for alcohol to be consumed backstage before contests. For real. A glass of wine for a better pump, says Vicky Moutopoulou (below), which can only mean she intends to treat the rest of the restaurant to her muscle goddess muscles swelling up as the evening progresses.



And enjoying it.

When the wine starts working, she says, veins popping on her beautiful bicep...



I would definitely lose it right then and there!

Denise Hoshor's Good Stuff

Denise Hoshor is certainly one woman who would have been a contender had FMS been running our Hot and Hard 100 back around the turn of the millennium.




Her contest career was brief, the highlights being the Overall title at the 1999 North Americans and 2nd place in the Heavyweight class at the Ms International the following year, but her WPW and Ray Martin videos from around that time are, even today, among their best-selling products. And when older muscle heads (like myself) compile "best ever" lists, Denise more often than not appears at or near the top.



After a 6th place (out of 7) at the 2000 Olympia, she disappeared, returning after a six-year break not as the bodybuilder of legend we remembered but as a Figure competitor. At the 2006 Tournament of Champions she failed to place and that, for the best part of a decade, was all she wrote, but far from all that was written about her.



She really was my crush in the late 90s and the early 2000s, one forum poster admitted before asking the question we all wanted to know the answer to: I wonder what happened to her. Even the guys on the muscle brah forums confessed they had gone into withdrawal after her apparent retirement from the sport. She was a freak! I always loved her look, they said, I would love to see her back as a bodybuilder.



Now Denise Hoshor really is back.




Sorry to disappoint you, but she's not back as a bodybuilder, more as a kind of buff Home Economics/Crossfit guru. Good Things In Life Are Homemade is the name of her YouTube channel, and as one forum wag has pointed out, while we've all aged in the meantime, it seems Denise, who must be well into her mid-40s by now, has not.



Denise, apart from the workout clips (of which there are currently only two, plus one about climbing a rope), will show you how to make all manner of good stuff at home - protein pancakes, sourdough bread, Greek yoghurt, pumpkin pie, banana flour cornbread, and my personal favourite, New England clam chowder. And what's more, she'll also keep you up-to-date with Drake's recovery from surgery. Drake is her dog.



Not quite what I imagined when I imagined Denise's return, but hey, I'll subscribe to her YouTube channel and watch her harvesting sweet potatoes because for all the pleasure she's given me over the years, I feel it's the very least I can do for her.

When it comes to Denise, it'll always be all good.

On Fandom: Chapter 3

Who are we?


And who is SHE?

In Dr. Tanya Bunsell's and study Strong and Hard Women: An Ethnography of Female Bodybuilding, the popular image of who we are was seriously challenged.

It is unsurprising that males who have been attracted to deviant muscular female bodies have been depicted in a negative light. Stereotypical muscle worshippers have been portrayed in documentaries such as Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends as weedy, nerdy, pathetic, "living with their mothers at 40 and saving every penny for sessions", repressed homosexuals with no social skills and something mentally defective about them. So far, no comprehensive study has taken place which interrogates this common knowledge – it was for this reason that I contacted you with the intention of learning more about males who appreciate female muscle.

Despite huge methodological issues, my research in the UK found that the majority of muscle worshippers were middle-class, university educated, and aged between their late 20s and late 40s. The majority were heterosexual and active gym members. That several trained is perhaps surprising and contradicts with other academics that have claimed that schmoes may deliberately "cultivate flabbiness or lankiness, perfecting a feeble physique incapable of lifting heavy weights... [in order to] better the contrast their bodies with the images of the powerful figures of female bodybuilding".

The demographics of those who took part in my study clearly give a counter-presentation of the stereotypes of muscle worshippers as weak and economically dependent, and a common thread between the muscle worshippers is that their attraction to muscular women developed in their teens.

This is a start in the right direction – but it is only that (my sample size was far too small to make any generalisations). Far more research needs to be conducted in this area – both from the women's perspectives (including the lived embodied experiences of the actual sessions) and from the perspective of the muscle worshippers. Indeed, I actually feel that the male muscle worshippers voice has been severely neglected in research on female bodybuilders (including my own) and I would like to see more work out there that begins to break down these taboos and stigmas and celebrates men who celebrate muscular women in all their complex beauty.

Dr. Tanya Bunsell (in an interview with FMS, July 2013)


Some of that complex beauty?

Sadly, the further research Dr. Bunsell called for at the time has not, to my knowledge anyway, been undertaken. However, I can offer my own observations though I'll not add anything more about the British FMS readers who were quoted in Dr. Bunsell's study, those "middle-class, university educated" readers but rather what I've learned from the virtual encounters I've had during my female muscle lovin' travels.

Call it "Dispatches from Schmoeville" if you like!



The main thing I've learned is there is no "type". I've had contact with guys in their 20s and guys in their 60s and pretty much every age in between. I've also had contact with female female muscle lovers (and I'm not talking about guys who pretend to be female for chat room larks, I'm talking about real women and yes, I'm sure).

We come from all over the world. As well as those who are native speakers of English, I've chatted regularly to female muscle lovers from Holland, Germany, France, Brazil, Argentina and the Czech Republic. The blog has received votes for the Hot and Hard 100 from readers in Europe, from North and South America, from Asia and Australia, and from Africa, and as I type, for example, my "audience stats" tell me there are FMS readers online from Denmark, Singapore, Argentina, Belgium, and Canada.



My own correspondence with fellow female muscle lovers confirms Dr. Bunsell's findings that it is more than likely that we discovered our attraction to muscular women in our teens. Wonder Woman, Gladiators, Pumping Iron II, Cory Everson on the cover of a magazine, chancing upon a female bodybuilder on TV... Common first experiences as recounted many times on the forums or related to me personally.

Is this just normal sexual development? Doesn't the guy who likes large breasts or Asian women or other guys discover his preference in his teens - whether he acts on it or not - too? Isn't this something all men, perhaps all people have in common?

I'm not qualified to answer my question, so let's just say it is, in my experience, something we do seem to have in common, whatever our age or location.


Why WOULDN'T you lift?

Dr. Bunsell also found that we tend to lift. Here I have found a kind of 50:50 split between those who do - often because it is thought to be a good way, perhaps the only way of having a realistic chance of meeting a muscular woman as an "equal" - and those who don't and who conform more closely to the "perfecting a feeble physique" type mentioned in the findings of other academics pre-dating Dr. Bunsell's study.

Our experiences of female muscle is, I've found, also very different. I've corresponded with a few who attend shows, who pay for sessions, some who say they go out of their way to surround themselves with athletic, muscular female friends and/or only have relationships with muscular women. And at the other extreme are those whose experience of muscular women is almost entirely vicarious, who have only rarely, perhaps once or twice in their lives, had chance sightings in public places.



I've come across men who are completely open about their passion for female muscle, who are open with their wives and girlfriends, their friends and their families, and work colleagues and anyone else who cares to know. The majority though keep their love of female muscle to themselves, even if they have a strong desire to "come out".

The internet has provided many of this silent majority with an outlet, a safe place to be open and to explore their love of muscular women with the like-minded without fear of ridicule. I'd say it's a fair bet that "It's so great to finally be able to talk to someone about this" (or words to that effect) is a sentence you have actually typed or read at some point during female muscle related correspondence with a fellow head.

At that point though, at least in my experience, at that moment where you feel the thrill of "connecting" with another female muscle lover, with someone who "gets it"... That's the moment where we truly reveal to each other how different and how spectacularly varied our individual appreciation of female muscle can be.


Are you appreciating?

to be continued...

Physique Dreams: The 2016 Physique Olympians

Guy on the left: "Told you they'd be bigger than you think."

The Olympia may have lost a few female muscle fans since 2014, but there's still the cream of the Women's Physique Division to enjoy (even if you are still shedding the occasional tear for Anne the Bodybuilder), and for many of those lucky enough to attend - such as our somewhat awestruck friends above - I dare say that the problem was not so much where to find the muscle as how to hide the tentpole.




Covering, as it does, the considerable gap between the outer limits of Figure and the cusp of Heavyweight Bodybuilding, the WPD at the 2016 Olympia saw many of FMS' personal and reader favourites doing battle in Las Vegas before, for the third consecutive year, Juliana Malacarne was crowned Ms Physique Olympia again.



This year it was Dani who finished runner-up, and she felt "on top of the world" to do so.




People keep asking me if I'm OK with the placing, thinking the answer is "No", she wrote some days later. Don't get me wrong I am dreaming of that number one spot, but for one reason or another I'm not ready for the title and I'm cool with that.



And it's good to know Dani is cool wandering around the "convention center" allowing fans to check out her abs and in the process revealing she's cool with wandering around commando. See what I mean? Muscle easy to find, tentpoles hard to hide.




Jamie Pinder joined Dani in the top 5, rounding off her comeback year in fine style and a beautiful posing suit. I couldn't be more honored and proud to be fifth in the world! she said, clearly as delighted as Dani. The stage is my happy place.




She must really enjoy the stage because it seems to me that whatever she's doing - stocking up before leaving for Las Vegas, modelling her new Olympia gear, having that first post-show meal, or even going "back to the grind" after the Olympia - Jamie looks pretty damn happy. And I'm not always a fan of them but I have to say I'm in a pretty happy place admiring Jamie v.2016's enhancements. How's your tentpole?



There were all sorts of swings and roundabouts in the placings...

UP

Sheronica Henton (2015, unplaced; 2016, 6th)



This weekend has really opened my eyes to what I am capable of achieving, says Sheronica. Such an amazing experience, I am so happy with what I accomplished. And so she should be I reckon. I mean just look at those ARMS!

DOWN

Erica Blockman (2015, 8th; 2016, unplaced)



But still the World's Sexiest Fire Fighter by some distance.



UP

Heather Grace (2015, 11th; 2016, 3rd)



Having won in Colorado and been runner-up to Penpraghai in Arizona, Heather Grace brought momentum to the Olympia, and ended up as the least predicted name in the top 6. Even Heather herself was somewhat taken aback. I can't even explain the rush of being called into that [first] group, she told her Instagram followers after the pre-judging dust had settled. It was an incredible experience.

'BOUT THE SAME... BUT NOT

Autumn Swansen (2015, 5th; 2016, 8th)



Kira Neuman (2015, 2nd; 2016, 4th)



Nothing wrong with 8th, but having cracked the top 6 at her first attempt last year and then gone on to take the Ms Physique International in March, this female muscle fan was (surely) not alone in thinking Autumn's lean and flexy style would do even better here. Not so. Meanwhile Kira, so so good and runner-up in 2015, had a shocker at the International, and consequently was "elated" with 4th this time around.



Maybe it's a mojo thing! Kira just got her groove back, as it were. When I step on that stage I have one thing in mind - she wrote afterwards with a winky emoji - show 'em what I'm workin' with! You know! Note that is not a question.

FAVES OLD & NEW

As always at the Olympia, I enjoyed some my long-time favourites in action - all beautifully captured by legendary lensman Igor Kopcek for Eastlabs, by no means the only but for my money by far the best Olympia gallery once again - but there were some new faces and bodies that have got my tentpole/mojo rising as well.



In the former category there was my Asha, in her own words "living the dream" at her debut Olympia (I know, it was a surprise to me that she'd never competed here before too) and bringing all her Amazonian majesty to the stage for 9th place.




And this time last year we were introducing the Gloriaous Gloria Faulls to FMS readers, since when we've been hearting every little thing she does, not least the victory at the Tampa Pro that qualified her for an Olympia return. She finished slightly down on her 2015 showing - 11th compared to 7th - and in typical Gloria style, celebrated by posting a picture of herself in "beast tank" rather than a stage shot.



Very different sides of Gloria, but there's no hiding those incredible legs.



Faces and bodies not previously seen on FMS that made us stop what we were doing for a while included the star spangled Jessica Gaines (who the aforementioned Mr Kopcek took a LOT of pics of, just saying, I don't blame him!) and San Antonio Pro champion Stacey Norris, who we felt was particularly unlucky not to place.




Branka brought the muscle from Croatia, Antoinette Downie from Barbados.



Candrea Judd-Adams was all smouldering powerful sexuality.




And I could go on and on and on. I really could. Frances Mendez, Rosela Joseph, Michaela Aycock, Vicki Diaz... I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't have spread this post out over a month or something. Anne Freitas, what a strange and beautiful-looking creature she is now, no wonder our friends up there look so aghast. And Susan Smith! I haven't mentioned the gorgeous Susan Smith yet!!!

Click on the names above for a peek, and I urge you to explore all of Eastlabs' mighty Olympia gallery at your leisure - you'll need at least a day for it. And fluids.



But before we go today, we should remember that British history was made on that Physique Olympia stage, It was, as I'm sure you know, made by Rosanna Harte.




Her placing (a very creditable 12th) is kind of irrelevant. She's looked better I think - winning in Dallas earlier in the year for example - but much more important is the fact that she was there at all (and in case you're wondering what the women who, like Rosie, didn't make the top 10 did as soon as they found out, the answer can be found on the Rascal's IG). Yes, for the first time there was a British Physique competitor nibbling at the goodies, proving to all our wonderful WPD beauties that it can be done, that they really can make the Olympia. Rosie's gone done it, and she's planning to come back.



Still not as sharp as the top placing girls, or they had more muscle density and maturity so appeared leaner, probably a little of both, was Rosie's conclusion after she had cast her expert eye over both herself and her competition. That's my homework for the year, she added. Can't wait to see her once that homework's done.



And we leave you, fittingly I think, with the Queen of Physique, unbeaten in the last three years and six contests. The woman who Rosie, Dani et al are gunning for...




Enjoy!