On Fandom: Chapter 5

Exposure.



A female bodybuilder with 'zero per cent body fat' has caused a debate over whether she is healthy after showing off her ripped physique in the gym.

The woman, who has not been named, filmed herself striking a series of poses to display her muscly figure - including her washboard abs.

However, some social media users suggested that it was 'dangerous' for her to sculpt her body in this way.

The video was posted on LiveLeak with the caption: 'Well this just went from hot to dangerous'. It shows the bodybuilder, believed to be from the US, pouting at the camera as she flexes her biceps.

One person commented: 'The dietary discipline to get very low is nuts ( nobody is at 0 especially a woman) but its unhealthy and ugly'. Another person described it as 'a step too far', while one suggested it was 'bad for her body'.

However, others said they admired her dedication, with one commenter writing: 'It's her life though, so more power to her.'

A healthy body fat percentage for women aged 20 to 39 ranges between 21 and 33 per cent, according to the Royal College of Nursing.

Mail Online, 12th November 2016



The female bodybuilder in question, one of FMS' Women of the Year 2015, Eleonora Dobrinina. Her location, as I'm sure you know, Toronto. That's in Canada. The video, hardly new. But The Mail was by no means the only news source to pick up on the LiveLeak post. Ella, without being named once, was suddenly all over the world.



This has happened before, of course. Georgina McConnell, teenage muscle girl, and Dani Reardon and her late-night shenanigans, to name but two examples. It goes from one media source to another, each one adding slightly less to the (already incredibly low) standard of journalism on display. Pure reproduction, with, perhaps, worse punctuation (The Mail's needed correcting) and more pictures.

But this week I'm not interested in the media. I'm interested in us.



Not a hard thing to be an Ella fan. Not hard to follow Ella on Facebook, or Instagram (where she's posted many many of these "shocking" clips). Not hard to type some encouraging (polite, supportive, not creepy and obnoxious - remember?) comments for her. Many do, maybe you're one of her 300,000+ followers already.

Good for you.



Not such an easy thing to tell the world that though, is it?

When your colleague at work or whatever suddenly shows you their phone or your friend sends you a link - "This is fucking freaky!" - and suddenly you're looking at Ella's "shocking video" or The Mail's article and you are expected to react.

What do you say?

Yeah, very freaky. That's Ella. E-le-o-no-ra Dob-ri-ni-na. I follow her on Instagram. Used to be a lot smaller but in the last year or so she's really muscled up. So dedicated, and such a show-off. She posts loads of clips like that, maybe not quite so extreme but yeah... Sexy as hell if you ask me, a woman so enjoying her own body. Look how proud she is of herself. Major turn-on. And she's from Canada, not the US like it says there. 0%? She'd be dead. It's bollocks. You read The Mail?! Damn.

Or maybe not.



My own recent history at such moments is mixed - see previously on FMS here and (most recently) here. You'll note that my finest hour involved being a bit on the drunk side and righteously indignant and not with people who I regularly spend time with, so I don't congratulate myself too much, and fully expect if someone had shown me Ella I would have reverted to type and just mumbled something vaguely negative (but not too negative) and got myself the hell out of the conversation sharpish.



Given the number of female muscle heads who, like me, choose to keep their passion largely under wraps, I doubt I'm the only one who tends to act so shamefully at the moments when I really should be more Brian Eno. I could, after all, really bore the pants off the next guy who discovers some female muscle in the mainstream and wants me to go "Eew! She's disgusting!" like a good red-blooded man should.

But instead...



She did pretty well this year in her debut pro season. Man, you should see her all tanned and oiled in her posing suit, she really goes for it on stage. Maniac poser! Believe the judges had to tell her to calm it down. Total exhibitionist.



Mad as a balloon too, her Instagram is hilarious! Check out her transformation, it's incredible what she's achieved in six years. Made herself extraordinary is what she's done. Look at that bottom! How sexy is that?! Oh man, you're not telling me you prefer her before? You are having a Turkish! Seriously?! You've got to be some kind of weirdo to prefer her before. And what with you being a Mail reader and all...



Will I finally stick my female muscle lovin' head above the parapet next time?

Will you?

to be continued...

On Fandom: Chapter 4

Different strokes...



A little of what I fancy

What's your thing?

I honestly never expected us to be so damn diverse. Really. First contact, ("finally someone who understands me" and all that) and I was like, I like abs, you like abs, we should just talk about muscle women forever and never get bored, right?

Wrong!

I honestly never expected there would be so many differences, so many different forms if you like, of female muscle appreciation, that there would be so many different tribes let's say, so many different ways to worship at the female muscle altar...



NEVER TOO BIG

The only women you want to talk about are the biggest beasts of all. Natalia Trukhina is the latest goddess to join your mega muscular pantheon. and you are especially fond of (the seemingly limitless) pictures of the Russian behemoth next to smaller, inferior women and/or men. You imagine her overpowering you, smothering you, engulfing you in her mountainous muscles. Possibly, you are of the "feeble physique" type, and it's the feeling of helplessness you would have next to such animal power, such dominant female force, that drives you insane with desire.



REALLY NEVER TOO BIG

Ever met one of these? No matter who you are talking about, from a Bikini competitor up to Christine Envall (for example), and they just want to inject them and make them bigger. And bigger. And bigger. How much bigger would you like her to be? they ask. The answer they are looking for is not "a little bit I guess", it's something along the lines of "bigger than the biggest girl Tigersan has ever imagined... so big her clothes have to be made around her..." That's what they like. So you know.



*SA-WOOOOON!!!!*

THE SWOONIES

Guilty as charged. We use phrases like "on a date" and "adore" far too much, and if you thought the Really Never Too Bigs were out of touch with reality, just check us out. We daydream a bit more than we should. About dinner dates and walks in the park, and how romantic it would be to serve her up with her chicken and rice every night. Our new favourite is typically Cass Martin, we don't ogle her, we gaze at her, and we refer to her (as we did the many many others before her) as our "dream girl".



LOYALISTS

One woman men. Sure, they might have flirtations elsewhere, but in the end they always come back to their inamorata. They're no Swoonies though, no dreamers, every Loyalist I know has sessioned or otherwise actually met or at the very least regularly communicates with their betrothed. One that I know of has a veritable shrine in his bedroom. Another just can't stop telling the world (really, the world) about his one and only. So yes, you might get a few minutes chat out of them about another muscle woman, but don't expect to wait too long before their muscle goddess becomes the one and only topic of conversation on the virtual table. Ever.









THE TOO MUCH, TOO MANY AND NOT ENOUGH BRIGADE

Think you can be picky? Think again. Too much ink. Not enough definition. Too fake. Too real. Too small. Too masculine. Hair's too short. Don't like that mole on her left glute. Selfies bore me. I don't look at anything other than selfies these days. She is a Nazi. She's a slut. She didn't reply to my email. She was rude about my email. Don't really go for Figure women/full-on FBBs/them Bikini types... Have heard every single one of these for real. And more, many more. I could go on. They certainly can.



MUSCLE AND MEN

A free order of the UnHoly Church of Female Muscle Love. These guys (and I'm not necessarily excluding myself here) can do men with muscle and women with muscle. If you're feeling a bit shy, like it's not confession time, then you will probably get out of this chat. Later, you might wish you hadn't. Remember those Muscle & Fitness covers you used to like? The ones where Monica Brant or whoever was draped over some big muscle beast? Didn't you use to wish you were him? Didn't that excite you? Not even a little bit? OK, you're not going there. It's fine. I understand, and so do they. The rest of us look on, secretly envious. Look at them! They're so free!



Shanique, Ramona, Tina & Jessica - all hits with the ladies, apparently

THE LADIES

As we've already established this week, some of us are actually not men at all. And in my experience it's the ladies who provide the most exciting chat of all. Honestly, I never imagined in all my wildest dreams that I would ever have learned some of the things I have learned from the muscle women who've reached out and got in touch after reading the blog. You couldn't make it up. All said in confidence of course, except if you are a certain female member who regularly frequents the Girls with Muscle chat room (aka "The Perve Zoo" as one of my female confidants calls it!). That female lets it all hang out, rating images according to the intensity of orgasm it gives her. And to be honest she is really quite tame in comparison with some of these women. Muscle women are the horniest women alive. We all like to believe it. Well, in my experience anyway, it's true. And nothing makes them hornier than other muscle women.



This little (please, light-hearted, not to be taken too seriously) overview is a mere warm-up set. There are sub-groups of these groups, you know. And more groups out there. And within those there are different sub-groups, different niches. More than I could possibly imagine, I'm sure. As Dr. Bunsell says, "further research is needed".

And if you do find someone who does like to talk about female muscle like you like to talk about female muscle, like you can finish each other's sentences kind of click, then my advice is hang on to them. You may not meet another for a very long time.

to be continued...

On Fandom: Chapter 3

Who are we?


And who is SHE?

In Dr. Tanya Bunsell's and study Strong and Hard Women: An Ethnography of Female Bodybuilding, the popular image of who we are was seriously challenged.

It is unsurprising that males who have been attracted to deviant muscular female bodies have been depicted in a negative light. Stereotypical muscle worshippers have been portrayed in documentaries such as Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends as weedy, nerdy, pathetic, "living with their mothers at 40 and saving every penny for sessions", repressed homosexuals with no social skills and something mentally defective about them. So far, no comprehensive study has taken place which interrogates this common knowledge – it was for this reason that I contacted you with the intention of learning more about males who appreciate female muscle.

Despite huge methodological issues, my research in the UK found that the majority of muscle worshippers were middle-class, university educated, and aged between their late 20s and late 40s. The majority were heterosexual and active gym members. That several trained is perhaps surprising and contradicts with other academics that have claimed that schmoes may deliberately "cultivate flabbiness or lankiness, perfecting a feeble physique incapable of lifting heavy weights... [in order to] better the contrast their bodies with the images of the powerful figures of female bodybuilding".

The demographics of those who took part in my study clearly give a counter-presentation of the stereotypes of muscle worshippers as weak and economically dependent, and a common thread between the muscle worshippers is that their attraction to muscular women developed in their teens.

This is a start in the right direction – but it is only that (my sample size was far too small to make any generalisations). Far more research needs to be conducted in this area – both from the women's perspectives (including the lived embodied experiences of the actual sessions) and from the perspective of the muscle worshippers. Indeed, I actually feel that the male muscle worshippers voice has been severely neglected in research on female bodybuilders (including my own) and I would like to see more work out there that begins to break down these taboos and stigmas and celebrates men who celebrate muscular women in all their complex beauty.

Dr. Tanya Bunsell (in an interview with FMS, July 2013)


Some of that complex beauty?

Sadly, the further research Dr. Bunsell called for at the time has not, to my knowledge anyway, been undertaken. However, I can offer my own observations though I'll not add anything more about the British FMS readers who were quoted in Dr. Bunsell's study, those "middle-class, university educated" readers but rather what I've learned from the virtual encounters I've had during my female muscle lovin' travels.

Call it "Dispatches from Schmoeville" if you like!



The main thing I've learned is there is no "type". I've had contact with guys in their 20s and guys in their 60s and pretty much every age in between. I've also had contact with female female muscle lovers (and I'm not talking about guys who pretend to be female for chat room larks, I'm talking about real women and yes, I'm sure).

We come from all over the world. As well as those who are native speakers of English, I've chatted regularly to female muscle lovers from Holland, Germany, France, Brazil, Argentina and the Czech Republic. The blog has received votes for the Hot and Hard 100 from readers in Europe, from North and South America, from Asia and Australia, and from Africa, and as I type, for example, my "audience stats" tell me there are FMS readers online from Denmark, Singapore, Argentina, Belgium, and Canada.



My own correspondence with fellow female muscle lovers confirms Dr. Bunsell's findings that it is more than likely that we discovered our attraction to muscular women in our teens. Wonder Woman, Gladiators, Pumping Iron II, Cory Everson on the cover of a magazine, chancing upon a female bodybuilder on TV... Common first experiences as recounted many times on the forums or related to me personally.

Is this just normal sexual development? Doesn't the guy who likes large breasts or Asian women or other guys discover his preference in his teens - whether he acts on it or not - too? Isn't this something all men, perhaps all people have in common?

I'm not qualified to answer my question, so let's just say it is, in my experience, something we do seem to have in common, whatever our age or location.


Why WOULDN'T you lift?

Dr. Bunsell also found that we tend to lift. Here I have found a kind of 50:50 split between those who do - often because it is thought to be a good way, perhaps the only way of having a realistic chance of meeting a muscular woman as an "equal" - and those who don't and who conform more closely to the "perfecting a feeble physique" type mentioned in the findings of other academics pre-dating Dr. Bunsell's study.

Our experiences of female muscle is, I've found, also very different. I've corresponded with a few who attend shows, who pay for sessions, some who say they go out of their way to surround themselves with athletic, muscular female friends and/or only have relationships with muscular women. And at the other extreme are those whose experience of muscular women is almost entirely vicarious, who have only rarely, perhaps once or twice in their lives, had chance sightings in public places.



I've come across men who are completely open about their passion for female muscle, who are open with their wives and girlfriends, their friends and their families, and work colleagues and anyone else who cares to know. The majority though keep their love of female muscle to themselves, even if they have a strong desire to "come out".

The internet has provided many of this silent majority with an outlet, a safe place to be open and to explore their love of muscular women with the like-minded without fear of ridicule. I'd say it's a fair bet that "It's so great to finally be able to talk to someone about this" (or words to that effect) is a sentence you have actually typed or read at some point during female muscle related correspondence with a fellow head.

At that point though, at least in my experience, at that moment where you feel the thrill of "connecting" with another female muscle lover, with someone who "gets it"... That's the moment where we truly reveal to each other how different and how spectacularly varied our individual appreciation of female muscle can be.


Are you appreciating?

to be continued...

On Fandom: Chapter 2

We do disappoint me sometimes.


And Bakhar

I'm not going to name and shame, but recently someone who we've gone into bat for previously on the blog has gone public with his complaints about some of the female bodybuilders he has had dealings with, accusing them of having mental issues - their minds turned to mush by all the steroids is his theory. Real playground stuff.

Think about female muscle pay websites. The successful ones, the ones that have stood the test of time, are run by people who, over a period of years, have built up relationships and contacts and developed know-how within the industry.

However, our man with the beef with the female bodybuilders identifies himself as a businessman and reasons that his success in business previously meant he fully expected his female muscle website would also be successful. Unfortunately, and I mean that sincerely, it hasn't quite gone as smoothly as he would have liked.

Perhaps because he didn't fully understand what he was getting himself into?

Not according to him. It's all the women's fault.


Don't make her angry!

The irony here though is that in terms of providing female bodybuilders with "support" and helping them "grow as a brand" as we heard Marcie Simmons put it yesterday in her definition of "a real fan", his motives have been absolutely impeccable and the successes that he has had so far have very much achieved those aims.

Let's take another female muscle head who we've championed on the blog.

He's a man with a video camera, and he knows where and how to point it (and how to edit what he's shot into terrific clips that I'm sure we have all enjoyed).

He shoots his footage at the big European expos - FIBO and the Arnold Classic Europe.


This is a clue

To me, and I think to his many subscribers as well, he's something of a hero - the man who goes where I'd love to go but don't and makes it possible for me to experience on some level what it would actually be like. But if we put what he does to the same test we subjected our pay website moaner to, a different picture of him emerges.

Does his work "support" the women he shoots? Does it help them "grow as a brand"?

Or perhaps he comes across as "an aggressive obnoxious schmoe" with his camera in their faces (without their permission?), getting his "something for nothing"...

Now I don't for a second believe I have painted fully accurate pictures of either of these men, but essentially you have on the one hand a guy who has given not inconsiderable financial support to a number of female bodybuilders, and on the other, a man with a camera who simply gets what he can when he can for free.


This is another clue

Who's the fan? Who's the schmoe?

Does it matter that the one who most accurately fits the "fan" definition has also behaved poorly towards some of the women he has contact with? Would it make any difference if we knew whether our man with the camera (apparently engaging in "schmoe-like" behaviour) films with or without the express consent of his subjects?

How do you feel about them?



I did warn you I wouldn't have too many answers!

[Though I'm guessing you will agree I do have some cracking - if not always strictly relevant to the text - pics in the archive that have never been used before!]

But my opinion is this. One of them has revealed himself to be actually obnoxious and prepared to publicly slag off some of the women who he has tried to help. There's no excuse for that. And it's not like he did it in a fit of rage or when he was drunk or something and later apologised for and/or deleted what he had said. No, he has repeatedly gone online to add to the original tirade and defend himself against others who have questioned his take on things. Whatever his good intentions when he set up his female muscle related "business", his recent behaviour has been deplorable.

And our man with a camera? Well, I hope he doesn't overstep the mark with the women he films. None of his videos contain footage of women trying to get out of shot, so if they do, he doesn't share it and that, I reckon, indicates he does approach them with some degree of respect. Moreover, some (not all) of the women he films seem to actually enjoy the fact he's interested in them. They put on a show for him and his camera if you like. Again, this tells me that he's not invading their space.

So, despite the fact that he has probably done much much less than our deplorable businessman to help these female bodybuilders, the blog will certainly continue to champion his work in the future. We remain subscribed to his (free) YouTube channel. There will be no more money spent at a certain female muscle paysite though.



I don't care if I am, according to Marcie's definitions, supporting the schmoe and condemning the fan. Only one of them has shown a lack of common decency.

to be continued...