Tampa: [Reader Request] Barbie

I have, my female muscle lovin' friend tells me a couple of weeks before the Tampa Pro, a new crush - Barbie Titus. Do you know her? Well, yes, we do. As my friend was finding out, and many have found out before him, Barbie is not a muscle woman you come across and then forget about, and the fact she's never featured on the blog before today is, according to editorial, nothing less than a crime. Do her justice now, you hear! screamed JJ as I left his office to start work on this, our first Barbie post.

No pressure then.



She first crops up around four years ago as a Figure competitor, winning an NPC Europa show (left) then placing 4th in her class at the Nationals. Even between those two shows she appears to have come a long way, and the (sort of trademark) look - that look that you don't forget - is already established. "Barbie" - must be a fair bit of pressure on women given that name, pressure to conform to it, if you see what I mean.



And in many ways this Barbie does conform - the long blond hair, the spectacular enhancements, the flawless styling and make-up, and so on. But in so many other ways, she is as far from the "ideal" of her plastic namesake as it is possible to get. Big and strong, with that slightly-squarer-than-a-woman-"should"-have jaw (so beloved of female muscle heads). She's so Barbie-like feminine and yet so masculine, it's easy to imagine how many non-heads she has confused the hell out of as they find themselves both deeply repulsed by and deeply attracted to her at the same time.




2015 was a big year for Barbie. After another unsuccessful crack at a pro card in Figure at the Jr. USAs, she decided to switch to Physique. Back at the Nationals it was a case of too soon, but she made an impression - not least in the FMS office. It would be a whole year until we saw her on stage again, but it was well worth the wait. Again she was at the Nationals, but this time she was ready, won her class and turned pro. There's not nearly enough stage shots of her from the show, but she's spectacular in every one.



Interviewed just after she'd left the stage, Barbie already knew when she'd make her pro debut. Don't be fooled by her "I’m the worst decision maker ever, I just keep training..." IG persona. Her career to date would suggest she knows exactly what she's doing.



The pro debut was at the end of August last year at the Hurricane Pro. Barbie arrived among the IFBB pro elite and was good enough - even to my untrained eye obviously superior in every way to her Nationals' winning package - for 4th in a very strong line-up. Beaten only by Olympians Heather Grace, Michaela Aycock and Melissa Pearo, she finished ahead of hardened hard pros like Maria Rita Penteado, Angela Debatin and Olga Belyakova. She promptly disappeared back into her muscle-building bunker, but the female muscle lovin' world had been notified now.



One way of gauging just how taken the collective we are with a competitor is to see how many compilations of their Instagram clips are up on YouTube. Those channels where you find those kinds of clips, they don't - surprise surprise - necessarily do it for love but rather for the advertising possibilities. Many edits of the same woman suggests she's a nice little earner for them. She can be found on numerous such channels, with Fitness Instagram leading the way with six Barbie comps at the time of writing. It's also worth bearing in mind that Fitness Instagram tends towards Bikini and "Fitness models" - more mainstream-y in their appeal, and therefore more likely to get clicks. Barbie is one of their more muscular muses, combining muscle mass and mass appeal.



She "comps" well. She doesn't post that regularly, but when she does it's pretty much always a winner. Her IG has more clips of her training than anything else, and the faces she pulls and the noises she makes should be an editor's dream. Why they insist on putting (generally) crappy soundtracks over her I am at a loss to explain.



I'm also struggling to nail exactly how old Barbie is. Two fairly grown-up children have come out of her beautiful body - this much we know. And we also know that she doesn't, or at least hasn't, competed in a Masters' class when the chance to do so has been there - at the Hurricane Pro last year, for example, which was an over 40 Masters. So, if pressed, we'd have to say Barbie must be in her late-30s. Maturing nicely.




And so to Tampa and her second appearance as a pro. Not the most photographed woman on the stage - I get the feeling she has a limited number of poses, all playing to her strengths of course (again, she knows exactly what she's doing) - either by our hero Mr Rivieccio nor by J.M. Manion for NPC News Online, but every single one is worth a little of your time. And once again, for such a relatively inexperienced competitor, Barbie over-achieved. 6th in a 35-woman line-up, and interestingly the very first Physique routine from the show put up by Maximum Muscle Report - a nod to the broader appeal she has than some of her higher-placing rivals perhaps?

It's not shot from the greatest of angles, but glutemen won't be complaining...



As far as I know my female muscle lovin' friend won't be either. Last I heard he was still on his Barbie exploration trip, and still loving every image and clip of her he was clicking on (no doubt with his left hand). It would hardly be surprising to discover there are heads all over the world doing exactly the same thing, as well as a few non-heads, confused as to why, but finding they can't help themselves nonetheless.



For James

Enjoy!

Tampa: Big

Irene, one week before the Tampa Pro

One of the observations I made when I wrote Monday's post last Friday (confused? read Monday's post!) concerned Irene "Too Big for the World" Andersen. Emerging from the pool, she displayed "incredible muscle mass", and looking again at the picture (below), I'm even more impressed - not least by that big, bulging, beautiful trap.



One of Wings of Strength's innovations - first in effect at last year's Rising Phoenix I believe - is that there should be, on top of the prizes for placings, a "Most Muscular" award as well. Aleesha was the first winner of it at the RP, but this season either I haven't been paying enough attention or they haven't had one at any of the previous shows in 2018. No prizes for guessing who took it home from Tampa though.



You can't please everyone, and the prize - or rather the need for the prize - has had plenty of criticism from fans of the "big is always best" variety. Admirable though there commitment to pure size is, occasions when the biggest FBB in show has been the winner are few and far between in FBBing history - IFBB FBBing history at least.



By introducing the award, WoS have at least acknowledged those FBBs who choose mass over all other considerations have a right to do so, and allowed them to go against current judging trends and still earn some prize money. I'm pretty sure Irene would have preferred the judges to award her a top 6 placing - she was 8th - but at least she was acknowledged with a prize (and she got a little share of that prize pot).



"Too Big for the World" she may be, and she's certainly "too big" for the IFBB judges. But on this occasion, Irene was just big enough to be the "Most Muscular" woman in show.



Size still matters. Especially in such a great posing suit!

Enjoy!

More from Tampa tomorrow.

Tampa: Triggers

Thirty-five beautiful, muscular Physique dreams strutted their stuff in Tampa, and luckily for the armchair fan, legendary lensman (and Annie Rivieccio co-star) James Cook was there. Well over 300 images are now up on FTVideo's free site, which in my experience involves a commitment of three plus hours if you want to check them all.

I think the reason why his work has such enduring appeal is the fact that above all he is a fan. He takes the kind of pictures others don't, capturing transitions as well as poses, for example. He also tends to go in closer than your average contest photographer, allowing us to see more detail. Vascularity lost from a more distant shot, the trickles of sweat, the hard graininess of the muscle. They are images worth taking your time to appreciate, and for the last three plus hours that's exactly what I've been doing.

The result of my efforts are these 20 individual images - my pick of his bunch.



I couldn't help but be transported to the show. I recalled the "front row fantasy" of one of C. Moore's cohorts, detailed in a post last November. A new experience, I thought, for new pros like Alyssa Isley (left) - no naked, gooning female muscle lovers at NPC shows. A veteran like Angela Debatin (right), however, has seen it all before. She might even recognise one or two of her adoring jackers, remember his favourite pose, and eyeball him just as she hits it. BANG! goes her tricep - he shoots, she scores.



I wondered, not whether, but how many involuntary explosions thirty-five Physique dreams can induce in an audience of... And then realised I had no idea. How many people attend a show like Tampa? So I checked. The venue - the Tampa Marriot Waterside claims a maximum seating capacity of 2,500. Assuming they are all sold and - as legend has it - the vast majority of punters are not there to see the women, especially not the ones with proper muscles, then perhaps a conservative estimate would put the number of genuine female muscle heads at somewhere between 5 and 10% of that, or 125 to 250 chaps with the potential for involuntary explosions.



A lone wolf, I "reasoned" (while gooning away to well over 300 images, remember), would perhaps be a bit more self-conscious in the crowd, less likely to properly lose it. A couple of heads who have travelled there together, or come from different places and met up there, however, would have been talking about the moment when the Physique ladies (the FBBs were on the night after) stepped on stage for hours (possibly days) beforehand, working themselves up into a frenzy of anticipation. It wouldn't take much to push them over the edge, I reckoned, and once your female muscle lovin' "bud" has shown his appreciation, it would be harder still to hold back yourself.




And, I continued to "reason" (with at least one hand below the keyboard), with each "bud" you add to the group, the anticipation, the excitement, and therefore the chances they would really let themselves go would increase exponentially. Three heads together would be squirming in their seats. Four would be full-on writhing, and five might find themselves so caught up in the mutual moment that their explosions wouldn't be so involuntary after all. How stringent are the public decency laws in Florida? Were there, I wondered, any heads ejected from the auditorium for showing a bit too much love to the ladies and a bit too much to the rest of their row?



Who would this head travel with? Last year I had an entirely fictional experience (see "Czech Dream") with my best online female muscle lovin' friend, and he's never given me any reason to doubt he would be my first choice. We held hands as we watched, writhed, moaned and yelled out our support of the Physique ladies in that story, and (again) I saw no reason why it would have been any different in Tampa. We'd need a lot more stamina though - there were just six women in that Czechia Pro line-up, to take on thirty-five we'd have had to start training in early February... It had never occurred to me before that a female muscle head would need to do contest prep too!



Do the ladies get as excited as we do (or would, if!)? Well, actually, perhaps even more so. Swell has been taken into the confidence of a number of IFBB pros over the course of the life of this blog, and many of them have confessed to, on occasion, getting rather worked up on stage. Once the floodgates open, apparently, it can all get a bit overwhelming they say. And different women, it seems, have different "trigger" poses. Abs and thigh is probably the most "popular" (for fairly obvious reasons - think about what they are crunching down on!), but side triceps and chest, lat spread ("I just felt so BIG so WIDE!), and - as one would hope - front double biceps have all been mentioned. So you may no longer wonder, the next time you see a competitor half-stumble as they hit a lat spread, or seem to forget their routine halfway through it and just start freestylin', why this strong, graceful woman suddenly got so clumsy.



This knowledge has certainly added an extra dimension to my contest viewing, whether via pictures or video. It makes the "erotic theatre" of a female bodybuilding show even more erotic. Looking at Sammica Cash (above, right), I was at once in awe of her vascular lats (exactly the kind of detail only Cook captures), but soon my attention turned to her eyes. Was she, I wondered, just looking down to where she was going to plant her foot, or was there more? Is the abs and thigh Sammica's "trigger" pose and she's actually bracing herself for the feeling that she knows is about to spread right through her beautiful body? Show me video and I reckon I could tell...



Unfortunately, this isn't something the women discuss much - not even among themselves if what I've been told is to be believed. And I think that's a shame, because we never stop going on about the effect they have on us, it would be nice to hear a bit more about exactly why so many of them can't get enough of being on stage.



And while the credit goes to all the thirty-five women so beautifully shot by James Cook, I leave you with my two triggers during my three-hour plus trawl. The gorgeous Essence Monet, a woman I've been watching out for ever since her Arnold's appearance earlier in the year had Kai Greene screaming "WOW!" on the live feed commentary; and the equally gorgeous Nathalee Thompson, who I'd never even heard of, let alone noticed, before this show. Check out the full 300+ images on FTVideo/Gene X Magazine here. I wonder who your triggers will be, dear reader.

Enjoy!

Tomorrow - Tampa: Biggest

Tampa: Reckoning

So, yesterday's post - which you would have read after the event - was written last Friday - before any of the results were in, after I'd seen prejudging pics from the Figure and Physique divisions, but before any of the Female Bodybuilders had got on stage.

In the post I made a few predictions, or perhaps observations would be a better word. The main three were: 1. Autumn Swansen looked amazing; 2. Angela Salvagno - sensational during prep - sadly appeared not to have made the show; and 3. FBBing was probably going to amount to a showdown between Alina Popa and Lisa Cross.

Well, now we know... How did I do?

1. AUTUMN SWANSEN LOOKED AMAZING



I was hardly going out on a limb, but - in a line-up of 35, remember - immediately noticing just how back-to-her-best Autumn was does give me a little bit of hope that I do talk sense from time to time. And - surprise surprise - the judges agreed with me!




It's not all about the placing, she wrote after disappointments earlier in the season in San Jose and Chicago. It's about the progress. Well, it all came together for her in Tampa, and Autumn got to go home with some money and a very big sword indeed.



Her routines are always a pleasure. If only there was video...



No wardrobe malfunction this time!

2. NO ANGELA



My assumption seemed reasonable at the time. Despite looking ridiculously ready about a week and a half before the show, Angie has had her health problems over the past few years, it didn't seem beyond the bounds of possibility that she'd be struck down as she attempted to peak. On top of that, there wasn't a single pic of Angie at the athletes' meeting or the check-in. She's hardly known for being camera shy, and there was also nothing from Tampa on her social media. So, I put two and two together...



BOOM!




How wrong I was! Here she was, back on stage for the first time since 2015, and back as a Bodybuilder for the first time since the same Tampa Pro seven long years ago. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been so happy to be wrong. Angie, however, had mixed emotions. Everything was great except my placing, she said (on her updated after Friday Instagram). I still have carb issues, which killed my conditioning. She's not going to make us wait seven years again though. I’m back and I will not give up. I will get into the condition and have the size I need to compete at the top, she promised. I'm Angela Fucking Salvagno and I will be back next year!!!



Believe!

3. POPA-CROSS SHOWDOWN



Not a one-two, but a one-four. If I'd predicted one or the other would win there'd be a big green tick above. Instead, I confidently imagined they would take first and second. So, with Pauline Nelson getting the runner's-up prize and (more surprisingly given her previous placings this year) LaDawn McDay claiming 3rd, it's a big red cross.




Alina was, understandably, over the moon. For all her achievements, for all her fame and for all her many many fans, the premier Female Bodybuilder of the last decade had never won a pro title before last weekend. This is a special night for me, she wrote, holding her sword aloft (and incidentally, doesn't it look a lot smaller when she holds it than when Autumn does?) It's always a wonderful feeling to be a champion.



Quite honestly, I'm surprised she can remember the feeling. It's been, in fact, ten years since at the World Amateur Championships Alina was actually judged the winner of a contest rather than been declared the should-have-been winner by us adoring fans.




A new experience for Alina, then, and a new experience for us as well - enhanced Alina on stage. The tut-tutters had already aired their views on the forums long before this show - "She was much better without implants," and so on. And there's also been doubt expressed in the wake of her victory that she'll be able to compete with Helle and Margie at the Rising Phoenix. Alina, it seems, has come back to a backlash!



I'd advise those making predictions about the Rising Phoenix to proceed with caution! And anyway, Alina's back poses have hardly "lost" any shock and awe, have they?

So, to answer the question posed at the beginning of today's post, how did I do? Well, I got 1/3, which is even worse, according to the Meat Loaf scale, than "not bad".

I've got to cheer myself up somehow, and trawling through the many many images of the show seems like a good way to do that... More from Tampa on FMS tomorrow.