(More) Summer Lovin': Bumbum #1

Despite hot, hard and disproportionately developed competition from the likes of Suelen Bissolati and more recently Alessandra Alvez, Gracyanne Barbosa remains Brazil's bumbum #1. Heading towards 7 million Instagram followers - Suelen and Alessandra both have less than half a million, and even Eva Andressa Vieira with 4.6 million isn't in the same league - and, although not a competitive Bodybuilder, Gracyanne was in your Hot and Hard 100 for the fifth consecutive year in 2018.



Mostly, it's Gracyanne's spectacular lower body, her world-renowned bumbum and thunder thighs, that get all the attention - and rightly so. However, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's noticed that recently as well as adding definition to her prodigious size down below, Gracyanne has also been getting bigger and more defined up top.



This is all good. As a female muscle lover, more muscle is always good. But spare a thought for Gracyanne. Suddenly nothing in her wardrobe (that isn't super stretchy) seems to fit anymore. For a while I could still do my jeans up as long as I didn't have any underwear on, she explains. But now I can't even do that. Worse still, her ever-growing body has actually destroyed a fair portion of her wardrobe. Not that anyone's complained, but it's pretty awkward when your top just rips open in public, she says. And I'm having my lingerie custom-made now because everything off-the-peg bursts at the seams as soon as I put it on. Not that her husband's complaining...



Is her love of pole fitness responsible for this growth spurt?

Or is it - notwithstanding somewhat ridiculous accusations that she is the "Queen of Fake Weights" (ie. that in her training videos the amount she seems to be shifting is just a few actual weights plus a load of 0kg "fake" ones) - simply that she trains really hard?



Whatever she's doing, it's working.



Ai karamba!

[NB: Gracyanne Barbosa had nothing to do with the making of today's post, and all quotes attributed to her are completely made up - FMS Legal]

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!