Danni's For Sale

News that British Natural Bodybuilding champ Danni Theresa was offering fans the opportunity to buy any number of posing suits and other outfits from her has certainly got my imagination working. If I could have any posing suit. or indeed any item worn by an FBB, which would I choose? And once purchased, what would I do with it?



First though, Danni's offer in full.

I have several competition bikinis, including those I wore when I won the UK and World Championships. I also have micro bikinis from photoshoots I have done. They are available to buy and come with complimentary photos of me wearing them.



Any questions or special requests, send an email to: themuscleminx@gmail.com or danniterresa@gmail.com I can send the items freshly worn and unwashed if preferred, and it can be a video of me flexing while wearing the item, rather than photos. I can also buy specific items and wear them for a photoshoot, then sell them to you. You just need to let me know where I can purchase them.



Danni is obviously a muscle lady who values your custom. Sounds like she is (literally) willing to bend over backwards for you, and she's famously partial to the kind of minimal outfits that get the pulse racing. I have received a lot of emails from fans wanting to buy the extreme micro-bikinis, she notes elsewhere. They have proved (probably because of the photos that come with them!) to be very popular.



I bet they are.



Now I dare say you are aware that this revenue stream is mined by plenty of FBBs. You may even be the proud owner of a posing suit (or two or three hundred) yourself - it wasn't that long ago that a reader who owned a suit once worn by Debi Laszewski got in touch when we featured a pic of Debi and the suit in a post. Even if you are, but especially if you're not, my question is: What would your dream purchase be?



A Denise Masino posing suit - perhaps from her kinky 2004 Olympia routine, nipple imprints still intact? You could own a piece of FBB history. How about something Rachel, or Cory, or Kim, or Lenda wore? For Euro fans, how about Juliette's or Valentina's or (for UK fans surely the ultimate) Andrulla's Olympia winning suits?



I reckon if it was a return on your investment you wanted, something you could easily sell on later for a whacking profit, then you could do worse than invest in gold - advice as true in life as in FBB fandom. Denise Rutkowski's or Renne Toney's.



Rather than a posing suit, perhaps something from a legendary photoshoot - perhaps lingerie, perhaps a dress. Perhaps the remaining bits and pieces of fabric that were once a shirt ripped to shreds by Angie Salvagno, or Julie Bourassa.




For me, just about anything ever worn by Gina Davis would do nicely, but her evening routine posing suit from 2004 would be the ultimate. As would Denise Hoshor's legendary (in my house) 1998 WPW photoshoot sling bikini thing.




Ideally, I'd like to have a Gina and/or Denise clone (as they were when they wore the garb, and they'd stay like that forever!) come wearing the item as part of the deal, but failing that, muscular mannequins (modelled to the exact specifications of Gina and Denise's bodies, naturally) would be (a distant) second best. If I collected enough we could open the FMS Museum of FBB Memorabilia! More realistically(!) framing the piece with an accompanying photo plus a signed photo as she is "now" would be entirely appropriate decoration for the FMS office, even if they would need regular cleaning from all the furious tributing that would be going on during lunch breaks.



And suddenly I find myself starting to wonder what my dream Zuzana, Tazzie, Marja, Alina and Oana buys would be, and which items of a more contemporary vintage I might like to have on my office walls. I sincerely hope Danni makes a mint out of her offer, but another, unintentional result could well be a more packed than usual inbox for many of our favourite FBBs past and present. Remember to ask nicely now!

Enjoy!

And please, any suggestions you lovely readers may have for the FMS Museum of Memorabilia. What exhibits would you like to see hung in there? It's the usual email address: 6ft1swell@gmail.com, or if you prefer, the comment box below.

Sunday Sizzler

The sizzle returns to your Sunday...

ERICA CORDIE... OR NOT?

This photo has caused a bit of chat this week. Posted on "dessert shop owner" Erica Cordie's Instagram with an invitation to "caption this shot for me", on the one hand, Hello Hot Beef (good name!) on Tumblr reckoned that "Amazonian Queen Erica Cordie has reclaimed her throne with a single photo", while on the other, on the forum whose first rule is... this: Are we sure it's her and not someone else?

OK, fella, are you paying attention?

What you do is go to Erica's Instagram and find the post. Then, you look at the comments and see that she has credited the "awesome" @gwburnsphotography. Click on that link and you go to his Instagram. Find the photo there - you don't have to scroll down very far - and you see this: "The incredible physique of @erica.cordie".

Unless he's lying too...



Erica probably wishes she hadn't asked for the caption. Suggestions range from the illiterate: Your fucking sexy pls can I sex you baby. To the illiterater: I wonder get laid with you, maybe you broke my d**k! (Thank the Lord he starred out the middle of the dick word. It would have been so rude otherwise). To the illiteratest: When you say you're going midevil on her ass... and she come out like this. (So that's why Midevil European history was always a bit of a struggle for me - I was spelling it wrong).

The life of a Female Bodybuilder...

She's So Shredded: Hayley Hirshland

I remember posting the picture on the left (above, right) in 2013 and all of the positive comments I got. Unfortunately, that physique was achieved by forgetting to eat, was fuelled by caffeine and cigarettes, and was supersetted with pretty dangerous Insanity workouts. Think what you want, but I love being strong and I'm hella proud of the work I've put into completely reconstructing my body. No special supps, no pills, no waist trainers, but whole foods and A BUNCHA HARD WORK.



Shredded Hayley Hirshland isn't backwards in coming forwards about her love of her own muscles and strength, and the key to that self-love is, I think, to be found in the story told in the above quote. The old body was loathed, the new body is loved. And Hayley is all about spreading that message to young women far and wide.



The 25-year-old from Wisconsin was a competitive figure skater in her youth, and comes from a golfing family. She started lifting initially at school, but became serious about it during her second stint of living in Japan - she had previously spent a term studying there - working for a Japanese golf channel. It was not uncommon to work for over 12 hours a day, she says. I would take the easy route when it came to nutrition by eating out constantly and not making the correct choices when at work functions. I was never overweight, but found that I had gained quite a bit after a few months of living abroad so I decided to make a change. I joined Gold’s Gym in downtown Tokyo, began lifting first thing in the morning before work. By August 2013, a matter of months after she had begun to train consistently, she was featured on the cover of Woman's Shape and Sport, a Japanese fitness magazine.



By 2015 she was also writing for a Japanese fitness magazine, and it was after a request from her editors there for a story that she first competed, "so they could get an idea of how the competitions in the United States work". She chose an NPC contest, Pride of the Midwest Championships, and finished 3rd in her Figure class. I didn’t enjoy myself, she says. I knew that I couldn’t succeed against athletes that may have been using PEDs, but I thought I would give it another chance in a drug-tested competition.



Whether you agree with her reasoning or not, without the opportunity to compete in a "natural" show, Hayley may have never competed again. Instead, though, she cleaned up at the Wisconsin Natural Championships, winning both her class and the overall title in the Figure and Fit Body categories, resulting in not one but TWO pro cards! I wanted to give bodybuilding competitively one more chance, she says, so I went into the competition solely for the experience. I honestly was so shocked!



Success there was followed by success at her first pro show, the Central USA Natural Championships, and most recently she finished 2nd in the Figure class at another pro show in Sacramento. And there will be no stopping her now. After meeting all of the incredible athletes, coaches, and attendees and feeling confident in my performance in the gym and on stage, I've caught the bug and can’t get enough! I'll forever be grateful to the WNBF for making competing one of the best experiences!



And while all this has been going on, this "truly mesmerising" beauty has not escaped the attention of the brethren. Some fans are just as all about natural as Hayley herself is, enjoying her "natural breasts" as well as her "natural muscles", but even those who are not can't help but love her "hard and sensual" bottom, her "electric smile", and those abs - "if I put my fingers in those grooves between her abdominal muscles, it would hurt like a vice if she flexed!" I'm no purist, but count me in for all of the above and those gorgeous delts she's fashioned. Hayley is one stunning young woman.




Her travels have taken her back to Japan again now. She speaks (and more impressively writes) the language, you know (as well as Mandarin and Spanish), and she's on a mission to spread her own version of the strong-and-shredded-is-sexy gospel. The bodybuilding scene is just starting to make waves in Japan, but it is still relatively underground, especially for Japanese women. Unfortunately, there are still social stigmas for women that do not have extremely "skinny" body types and much of the fitness industry targeted at women is still flooded with gimmicky "diet" products. I went from someone who was sickly thin to an athletic, strong woman with curves, strength, and confidence. I personally believe that weightlifting allows for a woman to build a beautiful physique, but more importantly, gives her the confidence to love and appreciate the body she has for what it is capable of doing as well as what it looks like. If you feel good about yourself, you begin to radiate confidence and can spend time and energy focusing on the things that truly matter!



She's an international traveller, a polyglot, a natural bodybuilding champion, a writer, and a female muscle advocate. Follow Hayley's Japanese adventures on Instagram.



お楽しみください！

FBBUK: Michelle Dickinson

Now I should probably say right off that events in the Rugby World Cup have meant that a bit of a rewrite has been necessary to some parts of this post. You see, Michelle's husband is none other than Alisdair Dickinson, loosehead prop for the Scottish national rugby team so robbed of what would have been a heroic victory in yesterday's quarter-final with Australia. Even before that match, he was the most high profile British man married to a female bodybuilder that I have ever come across (and he's even more high profile now!), and as we will see, he very much plays a part in his wife's journey to bodybuilding success. He also has a more indirect effect on where his lovely wife's bodybuilding head is at now - but more of that later.

Anyway, on with Michelle's story...



I've never wanted to be super skinny, says Scotland's Michelle Dickinson, that would be easy! I wanted shape and muscle, not everyone can achieve that...



Michelle had discovered she had a passion for lifting some time before her husband pointed out that she probably wasn't getting the best results because she was lacking focus. He said to me “Michelle you train so hard but for what?" she recalls. "Why don’t you set yourself a goal." It made me think and he was totally right, I was busting my ass in the gym but never really had anything I could measure my progress by. So at that point I decided that my goal would be to compete in a figure competition.




That first contest was the BNBF (British Natural Bodybuilding Federation) Scottish championships in 2014. Michelle came third, and received an invite to the British finals, where she would compete in the Athletic class. She has amazing quads from all angles, wrote one commentator at the time. As she is walking out you can see some feathering, which is rare in an FBB. Even rarer, I would imagine, in a natural FBB in one of the Figure classes. There was clearly something very very special about this 28-year-old beauty from Edinburgh. You might say that she was "a natural"!



Of course she won. At only her second ever contest she was a national champion, and had gained a pro card and entry to the DFAC (Drug-free Athletes Coalition) World Championships in Miami, where she placed fifth. It was time to set new goals for 2015.



I would be lying if I said I don’t compete to win, says Michelle. Of course everyone wants to win but I am naturally a competitive person and I want to be the best. She set her sights on a bigger challenge, the NABBA Scottish Championships in April.



And, yes, you guessed it. Michelle won the Ms Athletic class there too. But that wasn't even the biggest show or the biggest title she would be competing for this year. My main focus will be the Scottish Grand Prix at the SFN Expo in Glasgow, she told Power Burgers soon after her NABBA triumph. I will compete in the Bodyfitness class.



With her husband away with the Scottish national rugby squad for long periods of time preparing for the Rugby World Cup, Michelle began her own preparations for the biggest annual bodybuilding show in Scotland. And as she did so, her combination of muscle and beauty began to get noticed in the female muscle fan world. "What a looker!" they commented on the fan forums, she was described as "gorgeous", "stupendous", "amazing". Glamour shots taken in the countryside around the Dickinson's idyllic Midlothian home were my own personal introduction to Michelle, and got me onto her Instagram faster than Craig Joubert left the field on Sunday.



Hang on, I thought to myself. I know that guy. Dickinson... And the penny dropped. A "famous", in a manner of speaking, husband. Model looks. And muscles - but not of the size that makes the mainstream world run screaming. It began to occur to me that Michelle (and Alisdair) Dickinson could be a very very good advertisement, a very positive image of female muscle for the wider Scottish (and British) public...



Michelle, however, was suddenly not enjoying what she calls "the rollercoaster ride" that is the life of a competitive bodybuilder quite so much. In an interview with Gym Transformation after her BNBF win in 2014, she was asked about her hobbies outside of bodybuilding. I am a complete home bird, she said, and love living out in the country with my hubby, 2 dogs and my chickens. I live a very simple life and love being outdoors with the dogs and just spending quality time with my husband.



It proved to be a life that she would miss more and more with her husband away so much before the World Cup and her prep for the Scottish Grand Prix at the end of August grinding towards peak week. She struggled through it, looked amazing on stage (see a little bit of Michelle in action for yourself in this clip from a member of the audience at the show) but ultimately finished outside of the placings.



And a few days later, she revealed her plans for the future to her Instagram followers. What we put our bodies through in order to step on that stage is not healthy. Putting myself through weeks of dieting and ridiculous training and missing out on so many experiences that I won't get back has made me realise that I need balance back in my life, the sport becomes an addiction and you become selfish in the way that everything comes second to your training, diet etc. I've now done 2 years of it and feel that it's time to put the things that mean the most to me first and that's family.



Right now, I certainly wouldn't begrudge Mr Dickinson a bit of time with his wife, the man was robbed of a place in a Rugby World Cup semi-final, a chance that doesn't come along too often. But at the same time I can't help feeling more than a little sorry that such an amazing advert for British female muscle, and such a great female muscle talent, has hung up her posing suit. Let's hope that when his and her wounds have healed, this isn't the last we hear of the marvellous Michelle Dickinson.