Media Watch: Boots & The Pole Dancer

The "Boots" in question are not something a pole dancer need not wear, but rather the well-known UK high street "beauty, health and pharmacy" retailer. That Boots recently brought out their own range of "natural plant protein" for women - "MBody".

Now the very fact that a high street retailer such as Boots is going into the female fitness nutrition market is a sure sign that market is believed to be a goldmine.



And that is undeniably great news, but not what we're concerned with today.

Instead, let's look at the ad Boots (originally) lined up to market their new range.



The problem with the ad is - did you spot it? - the "tone up not bulk up" tagline, deemed "shocking" and "appalling" by "furious" social media users according to the Mail Online.



That so many got so riled is largely due to the efforts of the wonderfully named Peach Lee Ray, a pole dancing instructor and confidence coach from the Wirral, who was so incensed by the ad she went public with her ire. Disappointed that Boots UK is spreading this misinformation to women, she wrote on her Facebook page. So many women are scared to invest in their health and fitness because they worry about 'bulking up', gaining 'too much' muscle and not feeling feminine. The fitness industry has used the idea of 'toning' to spread and continue to support the stupid idea that women should not be muscular or take pride in a certain body aesthetic.



If you have the type of body type that gains muscle then you should be proud of who you are and what you look like, she went on. It isn't bad for a woman to be muscular. It doesn't make you less feminine or desirable, we should embrace ourselves in all of our variety. Screw this noise. Bulk up if you want to. Be muscular if you want to. It's your body and this BS fitness industry shouldn't be spreading these messages.

We like Peach. We like her a lot.



The Mail article led to other media sources contacting Peach direct.

'Toning' and 'bulking' are synonyms for the same concept: building muscle, she told Today a couple of weeks after the Mail had run its story. To create a differentiation is misleading. 'Toning' plays on women's insecurity of needing to be skinny or small, I just want people to know I think being a strong, muscular woman is a good thing.



The social media furore that led to Boots pulling the ad suggests Peach is not alone in her thinking, and on top of that, the evidence of my own eyes during the recent hot spell tells me that more and more women in Britain have been hitting the gym this year, and fewer and fewer of them are shy about displaying the results of their efforts - particularly their 'toned' (or should that be 'bulked'?!) arms and shoulders.

The female muscle radar has never been so busy!



Kudos once again to the Mail as well for bringing Peach's rant to an even wider audience, and once again - I'm more and more convinced there's a raging female muscle head on the editorial team there! - supporting women's right to build muscle.



Read the Mail article and Today's follow-up with Peach in full here and here.

You might also want to follow the pole-dancing confidence-building female muscle advocate on Instagram. She is currently "super busy" (understandable) and has "nowhere to train properly", which is a bit of a crime. If any of you lovely readers are, or know of a gym owner in the Wirral area with room for a pole at their premises, perhaps you might like to help our new heroine solve one of her two problems.



Enjoy!

Around the World: China

Around the World is an occasional series celebrating the female bodybuilders of a particular country, and examining any issues peculiar to muscle women there.



Today, we visit China, hardly - despite the numbers - a hot bed of female muscle so far. Unless you are an Asian FBB nut, it's unlikely that you could come up with more than a few Chinese FBBs, if any. Those that have made something of an international name for themselves - Zhang Ping, Xinli Cao, and Liang Yueyun, for example - have had to overcome considerable cultural (and/or economic) obstacles to do so. Women in China have long associated being beautiful with being skinny, says CNN correspondent Nanlin Fang, a situation not unique to China by any means, but also noted by Beijing gym owner Hou Shiyao. Most of the women who come to our studio aim to lose weight, she says. They want to be like a skeleton, or a piece of paper!



However, that may be changing. The skeletal body may still be the ideal for the majority of Chinese women, but an increasing number are, according to Hou Shiyao, coming with a slightly different, slightly more muscular goal - majiaxian.



Literally, this translates as "vest lines", but in fact it's how you say "six-pack" in Chinese, and claims Nanlin Fang, China's "increasing exposure to Western lifestyles has made a desire for a more muscular physique, especially visible abdominal muscles, trendy." Chinese women, besides the usual summer essentials, have found another accessory, confirms the (newspaper) People's Daily - six-pack abs have become the latest fashion.



On Chinese social media #majiaxian has been at or near the top of the trending topics list ever since Chinese New Year, with women proudly flaunting their new flat/muscular midriffs all ready for summer. I bought a gym membership as a birthday gift for myself, says fashion designer Liang Yuan - one such woman charting her journey to majiaxian via WeChat, the country's most popular social media app. I wanted to challenge myself. Now friends and family members have started to call me a "fitness monster" because I workout twice a day, seven days a week.



A capital B Bodybuilder Liang (and the vast majority of the #majiaxian WeChatters) may not be, but she (and they) are indicative of a change in attitude which is backed up by the stats. A 2017 Gym Data Report stated that females now account for 51.3% of members in China's gyms, with chest and back exercises almost as popular among them as those focusing on abs. Moreover, an impressive number (almost 20%) of those female gymgoers stated that they used fitness equipment "in the same way as men".



Pioneering Chinese IFBB pro Mou Cong is hardly the most defined in the Figure division in which she competes, and few of the random women from pan-China contests in 2017 and so far in 2018 that we came across while researching this piece are very six-packy. However, when you consider there are around 650m women in China, all this adds up to potentially the biggest explosion in female muscle ever.




Liu Zhichang, a 25-year-old working in a marketing team at a Beijing tech company claims workouts posted on WeChat have spread among her friends "like a virus". Every woman I know wants to have majiaxian, she says. Especially if they have seen a friend's toned abs. At first, I just secretly admired them, but then I decided to dedicate myself to working out, to make it a habit. I want to have majiaxian, and I will.



请享用!

Around the World: Jordan

Around the World is an occasional series celebrating the female bodybuilders of a particular country, and examining any issues peculiar to muscle women there.





If you think the lady holding the medals looks just that little bit prouder than most with her haul, then you may well be right. Dana Soumbouloglou's two runner's-up medals (or plates, actually - nice touch that) probably mean a little bit more to her than they did to any of the other prize-winning competitors at the Stephanie Worsfold Natural Classic in Ontario last weekend. For one thing, they probably hadn't travelled over 9,000 miles just to compete there. Dana had - all the way from Jordan.



There is no legislation banning women from practising this sport in Jordan, says Fayez Abu Areeda, Head of the country's Bodybuilding and Fitness Committee, but Jordanians do not approve of women taking part. We do not have Bodybuilding tournaments for females here. And he does not foresee this situation changing. Our society will never accept a woman displaying her muscles in public, he adds.



23 year-old Dana started lifting six years ago, inspired most of all by her "idol" Juliana Malacarne. She faced criticism from within her own family first of all, particularly from her mother, as well as being told (by men) in the gym that Bodybuilding wasn't for women. I smile and try to explain, she says. Some are convinced, most are not. Her sister is one of the few she has brought round. It's given her more confidence, sister Nathalie says. She's more positive and creative, and a lot more charismatic now.



She's also gained enough support from within the male Bodybuilding community to have training partners and someone to share the costs of travelling to foreign competitions with. And through media exposure (within and outside Jordan) she's become something of a role model - not just for Arab women who want to lift, but also for those trying to empower women in the region more generally. Bodybuilding for women challenges deep-rooted notions concerning women, says Hala Ahed, one such activist. Women exist primarily to breed, and as motherhood is their key role, participation in other activities is limited. Women are "soft", she continues. They need a man's protection. Female Bodybuilders turn all of this on its head.



Dana may well be aware of her status, but from what I have read she's a lot less concerned about overturning cultural prejudice than she is about becoming Jordan's Malacarne. Her recent trip to Canada was just the first of many steps she plans to take before reaching the ultimate goal - the Olympia. Her recent runner's-up placing qualified her for a contest offering a pro card for winners - next year. I'm so proud of myself, and so hungry for the next step! she says. 2019, here I come!



Now if any of this is familiar, then you may recognise this woman...



Back in 2010, virtually the same story was being run in the English-language Arab media (and elsewhere) about Jordanian Farah Malhass. No matter what it takes, reported Gulf News at the time, 26-year-old Farah Malhass is determined to become the first Arab woman to enter an international bodybuilding competition. "No one understands why I want to be an international star in Figure," she says.



With her tattoos (another taboo) and her muscles, Farah was even more repulsive to traditionalists than Dana is, "a sitting target for Jordan's hardliners" according to the writer of the Gulf News piece. Like Dana, Farah travelled to Canada to compete, and according to Middle East Eye, she ended up settling in North America after 2010, although information about what happened to her after that has proved hard to find.



In another eight years' time, perhaps women in Jordan will be able to pursue their muscle dreams with less prejudice. Perhaps they'll even be allowed to compete without travelling abroad. Perhaps the country will take pride in the achievements of the "Jordanian Malacarne". Perhaps Dana will have become something of a national celebrity, and an inspiration to generations of women in the region. Perhaps...



But I wouldn't bet on it.

You can read Middle East Eye's full article on Dana here, and Gulf News' 2010 piece on Farah Malhass here. You can also follow Dana's quest on her Instagram, and she also has her own YouTube channel with (so far) a handful of clips from the end of April.

Around the World: Saudi Arabia

Around the World is an occasional series celebrating the female bodybuilders of a particular country, and examining any issues peculiar to muscle women there.





The state-sponsored explosion of female-only gyms in Saudi Arabia last year was truly a seismic shift in a country where previously the involvement of women in any sporting activity was pretty much forbidden. So it was sad to hear that one of those gyms had had its licence suspended after a video filmed there and circulating on social media was accused of "promoting the gym disgracefully and breaching the kingdom’s code of conduct", according to the Saudi General Sports Authority's Chairman.

We are not going to tolerate this, he continued. The General Sports Authority asserts that it will put an end to such misdemeanours that are deemed offensive to society. All such irresponsible people will be under pursuit. Under Saudi law, publishing material through social media that is "inconsistent with public order or morality or religious values" is a crime that can get you five years plus a £500,000 fine.



The clip in question stars a woman identified as a "Tunisian kickboxer" who was - she's since been fired - a trainer at the Riyadh fitness centre performing a series of (impressively powerful) kickboxing moves, and also (apparently because this isn't in the part of the clip I've seen) doing some zumba. What's landed all concerned in such hot water though is not so much what she's doing but what she's wearing.



Saudi women can now lawfully obtain driving licences, attend sporting events (in three cities!), and access some state services without the permission of their male "guardian". Female students are even allowed to carry their mobile phones while on campus now, but wearing lycra and a singlet while working out in an all-female gym is, it seems, a clear and present danger to society. The General Sports Authority's swift response is to be applauded, tweeted a media adviser to the young, "reforming" King Salman. We are on the path to moderation, but without social breakdown, he added.



However, not all the female fitness news coming out of Saudi Arabia is so comically reactionary. In the west coast city of Jeddah "tucked away from prying eyes", 41-year-old trainer Halah Alhamrani's FlagBoxing gym – its motto "Fight Like A Girl" - offers the ladies classes in callisthenics, boxing, kickboxing, and even (whisper it!) Crossfit.



Despite (or perhaps because of) its low profile, Alhamrani's gym - relying on "word-of-mouth publicity" - achieves exactly what the state wanted these all-female gyms to achieve. A rich and prosperous country Saudi Arabia may be, but having effectively stopped female participation in any sporting activity for generations, the country now finds itself with a sedentary, obese, and diabetic female population. This not only costs the state in terms of healthcare, but is also such an epidemic that it even threatens the reformists' stated aim to have women making up a fifth of the workforce by 2030.



But as well as encouraging women to exercise for their physical well-being, FlagBoxing gym (and, I would imagine, others like it) are also enabling their members to "find their voice". On a daily basis, women who have never done sports walk into my class, some with their mothers, says Alhamrani. They walk out more confident, and the mothers say to me "Thank you for offering my daughter such an empowering feeling". Changing out of their abaya gowns in the locker room seems to transform them. They "can't wait to come back". They say being at the gym is "like going to a party".



And I suspect that this, for all their talk of public morals, is really what the authorities are so damn worried about - EMPOWERMENT. A female population fit and healthy for work is what they need; a confident, vocal, organised female population (who can punch the shiite out of their husbands) is quite possibly their worst nightmare.



More about these stories can be found on the Emirati news source The National, who reported on both FlagBoxing gym and the recent Riyadh gym closure. Also the story was covered on Emirates Woman, in the Saudi English language Al Araby, and in the British press via the Express and the Mail, and you can also watch Arab News' FlagBoxing gym report (starring Halah Alhamrani herself) on YouTube.

One-Armed Wonders: Our Time Has Come

Our selection of wonders today comes with a story FMS found at the start of April. It's a story that, as an enlightened female muscle head who likes nothing more than the thought of being surrounded by strong sexy women, I honestly couldn't believe at first. Further research, however, has strongly suggested that there are plenty of men out there who don't want their significant others to lift weights and build muscle.

For real - read the previous sentence again if you have to.



Here's Teisha Cloos' story...

I was dumped because I lifted more weights than my boyfriend

Already it's hard to believe, no? Read on, you won't believe this douchebag's attitude.



Relationships end for all different reasons, writes Aussie Teisha. You could grow apart, fall out of love, or find someone else. For me, I was dumped because I "lifted too much". Seriously. The last message I received from my ex was, "It’s really off-putting that you lift more than me. Maybe you’ll be suited to someone else".



Any candidates? Teisha's in the Sydney area, I believe.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had a guy I was dating comment on the fact that I should stop weight training. And I’m sure there are other women who have been dumped, turned down or encouraged to not weight train because they will start looking "like a man". I started to feel self-conscious about the fact that I was a strong woman. It made me feel as if I could only date a certain demographic of men who also lifted to make sure that I was always the weaker person.



My ex saw the gym as a place for women to run for hours while leaving the weights room to the boys. I made the mistake of changing my workout to impress him. I stopped lifting heavy for months and it really impacted my mental health.

The damage these eejits can do!



I’m in no way a power lifter. I’ve just always been an athletic person and I eventually fell in love with weight training, she says. For me, the gym is a place where I can focus on myself and make my body into a stronger, healthier vessel. And so, she tells her (mostly female) readers, if you love the gym and lifting weights, you keep doing you. Don’t let anyone (especially a significant other) tell you otherwise.

Indeed.



And there is a happy ending.

After this relationship ended, I ended up dating a long-term boyfriend who became my first real love. It was a relationship where he encouraged me to keep fit in the ways I loved to. He even came to me for lifting advice when he was unsure about certain workouts for muscle groups. That’s the kind of person you want to date.



Now this is clearly good news for us, my female muscle lovin' brethren. You may not be about to have Anna Smith (above) or Mihaela Caiuteanu (below) or indeed any of the women whose beautiful muscles illustrate today's post fall at your feet when rejected by their muscle-hating boyfriend, but as the number of women lifting for muscle gains grows ever higher, the odds of you (I'm taken) finding love among the free weights get better and better - "Finally a guy who's not intimidated by my power!"



Read Teisha's article in full on JUNKEE.com

Our time has come, my friends!