Female Muscle
A lot of physique fans might not appreciate how new and fundamentally
revolutionary female muscle is in our culture. Men were considered to
have beautiful muscular physiques—just look at the Greek statutes.
For sure, you will not find an image in all of history showing women with
the same kind of muscular bodies.
Paving the Way
In the late 1940s and early 1950s a few strong athletic women flourished
on the scene, (e.g. Abbye “Pudgy” Stockton). Although she
had a strong attractive body and helped pave the way for women bodybuilding,
she was primarily a “strong women” and weightlifter, and not
a bodybuilding in the current sense.
It wasn’t until the late 1970s that the first real physique contests
for women took place. Although some women attempted to be actual bodybuilding
competitors, this was somewhat subdued, because women were required to
wear high heals and this prohibited them from doing actual muscular poses.
However, starting in the 1980s both the NPC and the IFBB began sanctioning
bodybuilding contests for women. These women competitors were not very
big by today’s standards, but the best ones got super ripped.
Early female bodybuilders were generally well received. They got good
press and considerable television coverage. The media was on the prowl
for something new and exciting, and it didn’t hurt that these women
competitors were considered sexually attractive and not too extreme.
In the early 1980s, most female bodybuilders had only been working out
seriously for about two or three years—and many generally started
competing within a few months of beginning intense gym workouts. So, they
usually were not big enough to “scare the civilians”.
However, the nature of bodybuilding-type weight training is that athletes
who do this kind of workout and have the natural genetics for muscle,
tend to keep getting bigger and more ripped. That is exactly what happened
to the female bodybuilders of that period. Within a very short time, about
two or three years, the women athletes actually started to look like bodybuilders
and suddenly, they weren’t as popular. Everyone likes seeing a beautiful
woman, but ironically these women appeared more masculine and that was
a complete turnoff.
A Genuine Threat
Although both men and women play tennis, basketball and golf, and both
genders run track and do gymnastics, it just didn’t sit well with
many that women were now competing in bodybuilding. This new trend posed
a threat to a lot of people, both men and women alike. Female muscle frightened
a few and made others angry. It threatened their view of morphology (what
bodies are supposed to look like) as well as gender identity. To many,
these women looked like men. Men were supposed to look muscular, not women.
For quite some time, this was the mindset of many and some might say that
the female bodybuilding physique constituted a unique and powerful subject
for serious art photography.
Promoters and federations took note and it wasn’t long that they
wanted an alternative to hardcore female bodybuilding, where they could
feature women with less muscular development. And, thus, that is when
fitness came on the scene.
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