One-Armed Wonders: WPW Legends

Truth be told, it was the women in Muscle & Fitness, Flex and Musclemag that set me on the path towards the raving female muscle head I am today. The majority of women who featured in Women's Physique World way back when I personally didn't discover until I got a dial-up and hopefully typed the magazine's name into the search field.

In memory of that moment the motherlode was revealed to me, a selection of five (I think not at all controversial) bicep legends from that time. Women who may not have been among my very first female muscle discoveries - even if a couple of them do go very very way back indeed - but who certainly did their bit to seal the deal.

SUSAN MYERS



She has no weak spots on her, says the commentator over Sue's 1988 Jr. Nationals winning routine. She's well-balanced, she appears to be thick all over, she's ripped, she has great skin tone, she poses well, and on top of that she's really pretty.



Sue was, indeed, much more than "just" her biceps, but the lure of those arms, those thick, bulging biceps in particular, has stood the test of female muscle lovin' time for myself, and many many others. Sue's baseball biceps are addictive, warns one.



Proceed with caution then to this WPW official preview. And you can also watch a much later Sue featuring on that Montel show (or one of them anyway) in the 1990s, before heading back to her 1988 routine (plus breathless backstage interview).

If I'd found better pics of Susan, by the way, you'd be looking at them.

PHYLLIS PADUR



She was, I believe, in the late 1980s only briefly a competitor who was in the WPW spotlight, but like Sue Myers, Phyllis Padur still gets talked about (by geezers like me, of a certain age!) when "Best Biceps Ever"-type conversations are had, and also when a more contemporary muscle woman's biceps jog the memory - I recall Michelle Gavin's beauties being referred to as Padur-like peaks, for example.



Phyllis' nickname was "Funky Peaks"!

CHRISTA BAUCH



A prolific subject for the WPW and Ray Martin lenses, a few years ago, Christa was still, well into her 60s, more muscular than she had any right to be and receiving offers from men less than half her age. In her 1980s-90s pomp, she was hot and hard all over, but I had a particular hard spot for her biceps, especially when they were threatening to burst right through the fabric of whatever classy outfit she happened to be wearing.



Personal faves include the dress with the sheer sleeves - Christa applying lipstick at one point, the kind of thing Ray Martin did so well, taking you into the FBB boudoir - and the white dress, apparently painted on - I may be misremembering but I swear you can see her abs through it! But any time spent with Christa was good time, including probably more hours than is healthy playing "Dress Me Up!" on her website.



Christa competed twice at the Olympia in the 90s, but you can go way back to the late 1980s (and the glory days of Eurosport) with this routine. There's also an offical WPW preview to enjoy here. When you've stopped playing at dressing her up that is.

JOAN LAUTH



Like Phyllis, Joan is still lauded on the forums by those who remember her bringing something truly unique to the late '80s female muscle lovin' world. Her biceps are not so much the greatest split-peaks of all time, more like the only biceps in history that grew extra biceps on top of them. Her peaks have nice peaks! a newer fan exclaims.



Back in 2013, it was rumoured that the (then) 48-year-old was thinking of competing again - and she still had plenty of muscle to show off. Around that time she was also a vocal critic of the IFBB's "plans to kill" Female Bodybuilding, penning an open letter to the IFBB bigwigs that accused them of trying to "send Female Bodybuilding back to the Stone Age". Joan knows - she was there, at the same high school as Cory Everson!



"Joan of Arms" was the title of her first WPW feature. Wennerstrom, as usual, nailed it.

MICHELE MAROLDO



But, if I had to choose just one pair of biceps from that discovering-WPW-on-the-internet era, I would have to choose this pair. I don't recall the exact moment my eyes bulged out of their sockets while a dial-up image of these "otherworldly" arms loaded line by line, but I'm pretty sure they bulged good (and weren't the only things bulging).



Remember the WPW clip of her being measured at 18 inches? And then the guy rubs oil all over it! writes one forum poster. Well, actually it's a Ray Martin production (oil rubbing was generally not done by anyone but the ladies themselves in the WPW clips). Not sure they were 18 either, looks more like 17 to me, but hey, how could I forget?!




She'd been training for a good ten years before she even started competing in the late 1990s - 5'4" and chiselled, according to the WPW blurb. Michele has the best biceps and triceps in the history of the sport. And they've seen a few! A picture of Michele "now" back circulated the forums a couple of years ago. Not such a meat feast as she was back then - how could she be? - but OMG her bicep was still thrilling, still "otherworldly".



Enjoy!

Underrated: Robin Parker

A new occasional series, Underrated is not intended to be about judging decisions - if it was, we could probably run a post about every single woman who's ever competed! Instead, we aim to (re)focus on women who we think do not enjoy the prominence they deserve in the collective female muscle consciousness - someone a new recruit to the female muscle lovin' world would not necessarily come across.

Thanks to BM for today's suggestion, a woman he calls "an absolute legend".

UNDERRATED?



Search for Robin on the major fansites and you will find her. She has a page/thread on both, and on Girls with Muscle in particular, there is no little appreciation among the comments. She was "a great FBB" who "had an outstanding physique". She was "a pioneer in the sport", "mature muscle at its best", "phenomenal", "exceptional", "so stunning and built". Several fans say Robin was one of their all-time favorites".



Praise indeed. Stories from those who were lucky enough to meet her in her pomp recall "her mass and vascularity", and "her beauty". Another (much more confessional) sessioner recalls her being "by far the sexiest, most delicious, and most tantalizing woman I ever saw. She should be giving lessons to every sessionette. She knew just what to do and how to do it, and was the perfect mix of muscle size, strength, facial beauty and personality. She just oooozzzed sex from every pore of her body."



So, Robin was (and probably still is) rated by some, but for a woman who first picked up weights in 1985 then finally hung up her posing suit in 2006, there is precious little really quality material available, and most of it is from the last few years of her career.

CAREER



From training at home with "basic equipment" to becoming the Masters Nationals champion took her just four years, and the following year (1990), she appeared at her first open national level show - the Jr USAs. She finished 2nd behind Chris Bongiovanni in her Heavyweight class at the USAs in 1995, and was 2nd again (this time behind Lora Ottenad) five years later in 2000. In all she competed at national level eight times, and on five of those occasions made the top 5 in her class.



These days, that wouldn't be much of a record to boast of, but to put it into perspective, let's look, for example, at the 2004 Nationals, where Robin is generally considered to have been at something like her beefiest, even though, for once, she was among the Light-heavyweights. Including Robin, there were 20 women the class, and among those who placed below her on the day we find names such as Alicia St. Germaine, Gayle Frankie, Norma Nieves, Star Blaylock, Sondra Faas, Angie Salvagno, Heather Lee, and Debbie Bramwell. Only Dena Westerfield, Kim Perez, Elena Sieple and Cynthia Gonzalez (I know! WHO???!!!) placed above her. She competed among such quality line-ups throughout her entire career.




The year after that 2004 Nationals (her third), she finally won her pro card with her second Overall Masters Nationals win, and a year later she made her one and only pro appearance at the 2006 Europa Supershow. I could go on about the quality of that line-up, but I'll let you check it out for yourself. She placed a creditable 15th (better than a handful of legendary names) then thundered off the stage for the very last time.

APPRECIATION



As mentioned before, most of what we have got to go on regarding Robin was shot in the last few years of her FBBing contest life, the results of her twenty previous years of lifting only too evident in her thick, mature physique. That kind of size plus definition will do it for me every time, and when - as with Robin - a bucketload of ropey veinage is also on offer, it's not hard to see why she got such glowing reviews as a session provider. What that body must have been like to touch is quite beyond my level of comprehension, but to gaze at her and try to imagine is a game worth playing!



What does survive from her earlier amateur years reveals that physique-wise she was just as ripped (and only a tad less thick), and just as exciting. Facially the toll of those twenty years had not been paid so fully when she posed for WPW/Ray Martin, and her admittedly unconventional but undeniably alluring beauty shines through.



I always enjoyed those sensational legs, her chest, her arms, and her lush dark hair and deep dark eyes. Her smile too I always thought was a winner, and not long after I made my first virtual female muscle lovin' friend online, he shared Robin and Christa Bauch's (rightly) famous 2-4-1 Ray Martin video with me. I didn't watch much else for a month. It's freely available in its entirety these days - part 1 here. Not the best quality, but it doesn't have to be when Robin first strolls into shot, legs encased in sheer fishnets, ordering Christa away in her basso profundo voice... Turns out this clip (and the other four parts) still has the power to make me swoon all over the place.

NOW?

At the time of writing, FMS hasn't managed to turn anything up about Robin, unfortunately. We hope she and her family are well, and that she is still watching Real Time with Bill Maher. We hope, in fact we expect that, now well into her 60s, Robin is still the same great advert for the female muscle lifestyle that she always was.

So, you lovely readers, who do you think should be next on Underrated?

Hall of Fame #8

Michelle Baker in a purple dress by HerBiceps; the Abs & Thigh pose; the beautiful rears of Sophie Duquette and Debbie Muggli, as shot by Awefilms and Bill Dobbins respectively (and both C. Moore Glootz nominated); Christina Rhodes hulking out of an orange dress; Juliette Bergmann in a see-through top on a sofa; and Bernie Price at the 1990 NABBA Universe, nipple out after a wardrobe malfunction.

These are the (seven) exhibits to date in the (entirely virtual but you never know) FMS Hall of Fame, a series so in need of resurrection we'd almost forgotten it was dead.

We've gone back to the "original" format of a numbered entry and a single photo set we consider outstanding (though this is no way should be taken to mean that's the only type of thing we're looking to induct) - and chosen Heather Lee by WPW/Ray Martin.



We noted on Wednesday that we thought a series of posts for the "Underrated of the Female Muscle Past" was in order, and Heather could have slipped very nicely in there, but in the end felt she was more deserving of a place in The FMS Hall of Fame.



Remember Heather Lee? Such a popular woman in her early noughties pomp, she was, with her HeatherLeeNJ.com website and multiple racy photo sets, quite the pioneering self-sufficient muscle babe. A sort of naughty Cindy Phillips before Cindy Phillips, and an online media darling whose popularity far exceeded her competitive achievements before social media made such a profile commonplace.



But having made that decision, we were now faced with the task of selecting which of her countless photo sets would make it. There was a suggestion we should just put her entire oeuvre in, but to be honest I'm not as keen on some of her off-season shoots nor her work with HerBiceps - don't get me wrong, they are great, but they're just not quite as great as, for example, much of the stuff she did with Reg Bradford.



In the end I plumped for the very first images I saw of her, and that's mainly because I can recall very vividly the when and the where I first saw them and the rush of excitement Heather's own unique brand of muscular sex appeal had on me.

In those days the kind of affordable internet access I enjoy now was beyond my wildest dreams, but there was plenty of internet at work. Night after night I would stay at my desk until everyone else in the office had left - I didn't have to wait long, we weren't the hardest working team in show business - before using the (super speedy for the time as no one else was using it) office web service for my own personal pleasure. Invariably this started with a search of WPW samples, the best of which I would then print (in colour - I spared no office expense). And you can probably guess what followed.

These images of Heather were among my most treasured at that time, or perhaps "most used" would be a more accurate way of describing them. She was impossibly blond, impossibly beautiful (as I still believed at that time only American women could be). I loved her below-navel tattoo, her smile, her tan, and most of all, her muscles.



Sadly, I have not been able to find (in the FMS archives or elsewhere) the original images, so these three heavily-cropped versions will have to do. In the end, I actually scored points with the management for consistently working over my contracted hours and got a pay rise out of all my late night female muscle lovin' shenanigans.

Welcome to the Hall of Fame Heather, and thank you!