A New Golden Age? Part VI

PIU: I think my pic of Dona Oliviera is one I treasured, I must still have it somewhere, I supposed I paired it fairly randomly with the Asha Hadley because of the pumped deltoid pose as well as the other obvious attractions both have to offer.

FMS: Yes, Dona still looks amazing, and she was a favourite of mine too, as Asha is today. Of course I only knew Dona from the magazines - the on stage shots and the glamour. On the other hand, I/we can see Asha on stage and glammed up, but also drenched in sweat at the gym, enjoying herself on a day off, taking in a baseball game etc. etc. She puts herself out there via social media, so - though I may be deluding myself - I feel like I actually "know" her to some extent.

PIU: And Dona's back and was still looking great in 2014 at 53!



FMS: My next pair are Tonya Knight and Sharlene Franken. Again, Tonya, arguably as much media exposure as an FBB ever had. A tour of Britain even, if I remember correctly. She was on TV at least twice while she was here.



And yet, she remained remote for me. I never had - and still don't - any sense of the person behind the muscles.

PIU: Certainly remember Tonya's visit. Still got her appearance on the Jonathan Ross chat show on VHS somewhere. And bought the Bicep Bombshell tape from one of the big record stores in Oxford St. (remember them?)



FMS: Sharlene is kind of in direct contrast. She is only known via her own social media. One of the Muscle Moms you mentioned, she uploads clips and selfies. Mostly she's working out, flexing, posing. She updates almost every day, and her Instagram has become one of my favourite follows since I first discovered her.

The final part of this "conversation" (for now) follows tomorrow...

FBBTV: From VHS with Love

I remember seeing a brilliant hour-long documentary that aired on prime time ITV at 9pm called "Muscle Madness". It was a kind of "Pumping Iron II" thing that focused on Carolyn Cheshire prepping and competing in a big US contest, maybe an early Ms O. I remember watching it with my parents trying to hide my excitement and arousal, and also failing in an attempt to surreptitiously VHS record it!

Not my experience, but it's a familiar scene. Stumbling across female muscle on British TV in the mid/late 80s and early 90s while the family was watching meant suffering both physical and mental torture. Stumbling across it when watching alone meant setting world records for the sofa to VHS dash. Who knows how many wedding or christening or family holiday tapes were "lost" to enthusiastic young female muscle heads need to get a tape - any tape - into the machine at those moments?

I imagine most of those tapes have long been discarded just like mine were, but thankfully there are some among us - heroes every one of them - who lovingly preserved their precious hoards, and then, later, gave them to the world to enjoy.





Know of any more examples of early female muscle from UK TV that are out there?

Bernie Price popped upon What's My Line? once apparently, then there's Donna Hartley's appearance on The Last Resort, any of Carolyn Cheshire's appearances on Schmoel, sorry Noel Edmonds various shows, or, "The Holy Grail" of Carolyn on Bodymatters. I still hold out hope they are in a box in someone's loft...

The Way Legs Were

With the notable exception of the (then and now) freaky pair of legs that belonged to a certain Bev Francis, back in my formative years as a female muscle head, the only legs around were rarely as muscular as the majority of women who compete in the physique division today. However, it is, as Einstein once said, all relative, and at the time, the women I saw in the muscle magazines I obsessively bought were more than big enough to get my teenage eyes popping out of my head (among other things).

So today, courtesy as ever of the heroes who scan and upload images from those 1980s mainstream muscle magazines, a trip down memory lane, a bit of nostalgia for all those furtive purchases we made in newsagent's all over the world and the women that made those purchases so urgent. Today, we remember the way legs were.

Rachel McLish

I don't remember this image particularly, but it serves to indicate how little muscle (by today's standards, and even, in some ways, by early 80s standards) it took for a woman to be 'muscular' back then. I arrived at the female muscle party just a little late for Rachel McLish in her competitive pomp, but it seems to me she actually got bigger after she stopped competing.

Carla Dunlap and Clare Furr

Brian Eno named-chacked Carla in a recent interview, provoking some bizarrely hysterical reactions from the female muscle brethren (more about that on FMS in the future). He says, I remember in the early 1980s when female bodybuilders first started appearing and there was one I really liked, Carla Dunlap. She was Ms Olympia or something like that. She was this amazing black woman, absolutely musclebound, beautiful. 'Absolutely musclebound', he says, and that's exactly what Carla would have seemed to be at that time, not just to Eno but to me too. To her right, Clare Furr's (slightly later) thighs seem positively other-worldly compared to Carla's. 'Absolutely musclebound' back in the early to mid-80s could become 'hardly musclebound' almost overnight.

Tonya Knight and Mary Roberts

As I recall, images of women training like this one of Tonya squatting were far more numerous in the magazines of the 1980s, and only if you were lucky would there be the kind of 'glamour shot' the we can see Mary Roberts in here on the right. It sometimes came (again, this is as I recall, so don't take this as gospel) at the beginning or end of a training photoset, I guess as a way of showing how the hard work pays off. I found, in general, that these shots were much more attention-grabbing, presumably because they were more unusual.

Marjo Selin


And gradually, legs got bigger. Compare the next few groups of images. I really can't say if they are at all chronological (this post is simply not that well-researched!), let's call it 'legological' or perhaps 'podological' (!). I just wanted to illustrate the point somehow. By the time you get to Jackie Paisley, who is (and I do know this) very much late 80s and into the early 90s, legs have, well, you can see for yourself, changed.

Lisa Lorio, Janet Tech and Juliette Bergmann in her early days.


Sue Gafner and Dorothy Herndon


Marie Mahabir, Rene Casella and Jackie Paisley


Sandy Riddell and Anja Langer

Two of my favourite pairs of legs of the period (among many). I was especially taken with Anja's calves. Even today, as I look at the way they bulge outwards so that you can see them even when looking at her leg front on, they are magnificent, so at the time they would have been quite literally breathtaking.

Cory Everson

This image, for me, evokes a lot about that time in my female muscle life, not least the way the women in the magazines used to always seem to be glistening. The style of photography of the time, no doubt, nothing more, but I came to think of that sheen as the glow of health and vitality that only female bodybuilders possess. Impossible to post anything about the 80s without her, Cory is the epitome of female muscle in that decade, her legs as much as any part of her wondrous physique. Funny now to think that once upon a time I couldn't imagine Cory and her contemporaries getting any bigger or better.

Enjoy!

Ms International: Did You Know…? [Part 1]

…the first ever Ms International was held in 1986.

The field included legends such as Kay Baxter, Sue Ann McKean, Penny Price and Anita Gandol, as well as Juliette Bergmann and Bev Francis. The winner, however, was none of the above. The first woman to win the title of Ms International was Erika Geisen.



Who?



Though born in Germany, Erika competed for Australia. She had made her pro debut in 1983 and was crowned Miss Asia. She finished 11th at the Olympia the same year as her Miss I win. She competed once more at the Ms International, in 1988, and came sixth.

…in 1988 there were two Ms Internationals.

The IFBB had sanctioned the first Ms International, but in 1987 it took place under the auspices of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), and there was no IFBB contest of that name. The following year, however, both the IFBB and the AAU organised contests called ‘Ms International’.

left: Cathey Palyo, IFBB Ms International 1988

right: Cathy Butler Corish, AAU Ms International 1988

The IFBB show was a pro-am event (as it had been in 1986), while the AAU’s version was just for amateurs. The 1988 IFBB Ms International was Cathey Palyo (more about Cathey later in the week, which should be exciting news for anybody who remembers her!) while the AAU Ms International was won by Cathy Butler.

…Tonya Knight competed at the Ms I in 1988 and 1989 but you won’t find her listed in the results.

At the 1989 Olympia, Tonya had somebody else take her drug test for her, and was consequently stripped of her placing and prize money at the two previous Ms International shows. Naughty girl!



However, she made a triumphant return to the Ms I in 1991, when she claimed the title, seeing off Anja Schreiner, Shelley Beattie, Debbie Muggli, Marie Mahabir, Sue Gafner et al (talk about a QUALITY line-up, that’s just the top 6!).

…Paula Bircumshaw showed the Ms I judges her middle finger in 1992.

You probably do know about this, I’ve actually noted this event before
(see Real Iron Ladies).



The judges gave the title to the extremely marketable German beauty Anja Schreiner – not the first or last time there has been a controversial winner of a female bodybuilding show – but it was the shenanigans to prevent the crowd’s favourite Paula Bircumshaw retake the stage for the presentations that led to the audience riot and Paula’s unique message (as far as I know, I’m sure there’s been plenty of women who’ve wanted to give the judges the bird, but as far as I’m aware Paula’s the only one who’s actually done it).



Guessing (correctly as it turned out) that the crowd would be up in arms when the winner was announced, the judges changed the rules during the competition with the sole purpose of preventing Paula from retaking the stage. Instead of inviting the top 10 back for the presentations (as had been customary in previous contests), they only called the top 6 back. No one was fooled as to their motives, and amid the consequent outcry, Paula did in fact come back and let the judges know what she thought.

Sometimes I’m so proud to be British!

Don’t forget to sign the petition to keep the Ms International as part of the Arnold Sports Festival. More MsInformation (couldn’t resist) tomorrow!

Meanwhile, how about a little more of our heroine…

Abs Week: Abs of Yesteryear

or THE ABS THAT MADE ME FALL IN LOVE WITH ABS

Anja Langer



My first Abs Queen. Soon after I first got turned-on to female muscle, I saw an issue of Muscle & Fitness in my local newsagent with Anja on the cover in contest shape in a black bikini (very similar to the image on the right if that is not the image itself). I couldn’t have stopped myself buying it even if I’d wanted to. And of course the reason I bought it was so that I could masturbate while looking at her, but while I did plenty of that, I also remember spending a lot of time just looking at her, following the contours of her muscles with my eyes and thinking how perfect her body was. And thinking the most perfect part of her body was her stomach (I doubt I even knew they were called abs then).


Tonya Knight



I’m pretty sure that the reason for my reaction to Anja’s, Tonya’s, and countless other female bodybuilders’ abs in those first few years was that I had never seen anything like them before, and they were so different from the norm. This must have been the reason for the intensity of my physical response to them. Sure, I’d seen athletes, but they weren’t wearing bikinis and deliberately flexing. This was a completely new concept to me, and these were a completely new kind of woman.


Sharon Bruneau



A female muscle Etna, Sharon smoulders in the kind of abs-revealing swimsuit that seems to have gone right out of vogue. And I think that is a crying shame, because once upon a time, there was a teenage female muscle fan who used to jump for joy when he found one of his pin-ups in a magazine who was wearing one.

Sandy Riddell and Valerie Scott model two more examples.



Whether these swimsuits revealed as much of the pec area as they did the abs (like Sharon’s above) or revealed just about everything else (like Valerie’s) didn’t (and still doesn’t) matter to me. There just needs to be a space where the abs go. For what it’s worth, I reckon the abs-revealing swimsuit (there is probably a proper name but I don’t care what it is) died because there are simply not enough women in the world who look good in them to make it economically viable. Or something.


Juliette Bergmann and Marjo Selin




MAJOR teenage crushes. While my classmates pasted the lead singer of The Bangles (whatever her name was) to the inside of their locker doors, and I pretended to like her too, of course, back at home I was drooling over the likes of Juliette and Marjo. Not only did they have the sexy sexy abs (as well as other muscles) that I desired, they were just so EXOTIC. I still find the young Juliette’s unique beauty absolutely mouth-watering, and as for Marjo, I didn’t even know how to pronounce her name (Mar-Joe? Mar-Yo?) and it doesn’t get any more exotic than that.


Alphie Newman



To a boy from the suburbs of London, Alphie seemed to be the epitome of the all-American girl. An all-American girl with a six-pack and muscles everywhere else too. And what’s more she was more or less the same age as me, leading to all sorts of fantasies. Unfortunately, in the suburbs of London in the late 1980s, girls like Alphie were in short supply. My imagination, though, was limitless.


Tara Dodane and Marie Mahabir



Issues of muscle magazines with contest reports of female bodybuilding shows were always must-buys. These days female bodybuilding is a footnote in the general muscle media, but once upon a time there were full page pictures of all the top placing contestants and their big hair and ripped abs.


WPW Covers



Whether there were abs on the cover or not, WPW was always a must-buy, but here’s two examples of covers that would have got me even hotter under the collar than usual, from issues that were over ten years apart. On the left, female muscle pioneer Kay Baxter, and on the right an image of Karen Netterstrom that I reckon has become one of the iconic shots of female muscle fandom.


Christa Bauch and Charla Sedacca



And inside the covers of those WPW magazines, physiques the likes of which I had never imagined. They were so different from mainstream portrayals of ideal beauty, they were so lean, their muscles so defined, and for me they were so exciting to behold. In those days, you thought you might be the only one who found these women beautiful and sexy, leading to all kinds of confusion. It’s a better world for female muscle fans now that I can share my love of images like the ones of Christa and Charla with you.


Laura Creavalle and Negrita Jayde: Unforgettable



And to finish, back to the mainstream muscle media. Two images that I would have first come across in the mainstream muscle mags as a teenage boy and then rediscovered through the internet many many years later thanks to the efforts of the lovely people who scan. These images of Laura and Negrita were so familiar after so many years that I could almost smell the magazine when I saw them again. The kind of images from my youth that made me the female muscle fan I remain to this day.

Enjoy!

And don’t forget to vote for your favourite abs!