Hot and Hard: Cindy 750cc

I want LANDOLT!

His fist punctuated the sentence by thudding into his desk.

LANDOLT! LANDOLT! LANDOLT!

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Swell noted the veins that were appearing on his editor’s temples and forehead.

OK, JJ. We’ll do Landolt. Now breathe, relax, or we’ll be calling another ambulance.

Another ambulance. Just like the one that had taken JJ away in September when Swell had disappeared yet again to Stockholm, unable to resist the thrill of lurking in Sexy Sophie’s gym. He’d left JJ to run the blog with the FMS minions, which had proved too much for JJ’s meatballed heart. While the editor convalesced, the minions had let things slide. For weeks there’d been no new posts. No FMS.

Swell didn’t blame the minions for what had happened. JJ’s heart attack had been coming for years. Nor did he blame them for indulging in the FMS archive at the expense of writing the blog while both he and JJ had been gone.

It was his fault. He blamed himself. He owed JJ and he owed the blog. It was time to put things right. Time to leave Stockholm and Sexy Sophie behind and get on with helping JJ stay out of the hospital and get the blog back up and running.

Besides, the Landolt post was half-written already, put together in September when she’d made the Hot 100 of the German-language version of Maxim.

How wonderful that a muscular female – one of FMS’ own Hot and Hard 100 – should make a mainstream ‘Sexiest Woman Alive’ list. And not only that. Cindy had received some mainstream TV attention in her homeland. And a movie part. It was sign of the changing times, of female muscle (re)entering mainstream consciousness and looking like it was going to stay. A cause for celebration, surely.

But on the other hand, he’d found himself writing, Cindy v.2014 wasn’t quite the same Cindy we’d all fallen for in 2011. Would Maxim Deutschland Schweiz Österreich have featured her in their countdown if she had remained unenhanced?

JJ eased himself back into his chair and popped a couple of his heart pills.

Plenty of pictures. Funbags front and centre, he said, swallowing.

10th May 2013 – the incision was made in Florida, “around the areola”. 750cc saline implants were overfilled to 1,000cc “for a round and full look and to avoid rippling”. The “funbags”, as JJ called them, had been born.

Cindy’s decision. And one she had been considering for some years, apparently. And of course he wouldn’t for a moment deny her the right to do unto herself whatever she felt she needed to do. But he also remembered the Should-I-Or-Shouldn’t-I? poll she had instigated on one of the fan forums, especially so because he had cast his own vote with the majority against surgery, feeling as he did so that whatever he and his fellow female muscle fans thought, Cindy was going to go ahead and do it anyway.

Nothing preachy now, JJ warned. I don’t want any boo-hoo she’s not natural and therefore not on the FMS love list anymore bullcrap. Is that clear?

A good editor always knows what his writers are thinking, and across his desk JJ could see that Swell was most definitely deep in dangerous thoughts…

Was she still defined by her muscles or have the boobs taken over?

JJ’s fist slammed into the desk, jolting Swell out of his reverie.

THUD! CLEAR?

OK, JJ. All clear. Funbags front and centre. You got it.

Follow Cindy on Facebook

Isn’t It Iconic, Don’t You Think?

One of you lovely readers, responding to the Women of the Year 2013 post from just before Christmas, commented that ‘that first pic [of Alina Popa] could be iconic‘.

For some reason, these words stuck in my head. I looked at the pic again, closely. And, yes, I thought to myself, absolutely, it is, indeed ‘iconic’. What bothered me though was why. What makes this image, more than the others of Alina in the post, more than all the other countless images of Alina (excepting a handful perhaps), ‘iconic’ exactly? What, precisely, is an ‘iconic’ image?

The first port of call was the dictionary, which defined ‘iconic’ as relating to or of the nature of an icon. OK… So let’s look up ‘icon’ then: 1. An image; a representation. 2. An important and enduring symbol. 3. One who is the object of great attention and devotion; an idol. 4. Computer Science A picture on a screen that represents a specific file, directory, window, option, or program.

Alina is many things, but she’s definitely not meaning number four. The other three though, all seemed to fit. But although I felt I now had a better handle on the meaning of the word ‘iconic’, I still wasn’t really any clearer on what makes an ‘iconic image’.

I dug a bit deeper.

What I found was that it is generally agreed that to be ‘iconic’, an image has come to have a symbolic meaning that is readily understood. The image causes people to think about what it represents, rather than what it is. So, when you see Che Guevara, it’s violent revolution. Gandhi, and it’s peaceful revolution. Einstein with his tongue sticking out is madness and genius in the same place. The Stars and Stripes is whatever the USA means to you. In religion, there’s the cross, the crescent, the star of David…

I see…

But now I had a new doubt nagging away at me. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say the image of Alina represents something like ‘the beauty and strength of the muscular woman’. Well, then isn’t it the case that any image of Alina does the same? Isn’t it the case then that any image of any muscular woman represents the same thing?

The answer is obviously ‘No’. So I’m back to square 1, not really any clearer on why this image strikes us as ‘iconic’ while others don’t. I decided to take a different approach, starting with the image itself. I looked at Chris Zimmerman‘s image of Alina again (hard though looking at Alina so much was, I really had the bit between my teeth now…)

What I came up with was: 1. It’s an image of a woman who, by general consensus is something approaching the epitome of a female bodybuilder, and what’s more, she’s in absolutely prime condition; 2. The subject, though a female bodybuilder, is not hitting any conventional bodybuilding pose, nor is she wearing the conventional ‘uniform’ of a female bodybuilder – the posing suit; 3. Zimmerman’s style is, it seems to me, (and I say this with no specialised knowledge of photography at all, so I may be completely wrong) all his own – nobody shoots these women quite like he does.

OK, now to test the theory!

1. Does the female bodybuilder in the image have to be at the top of the sport, and does she have to be in prime condition?

When I thought about other iconic images of female bodybuilders, these two sprang to mind immediately. I imagine Bev Francis and her most muscular in her orange posing suit at her biggest and best seems to answer the question in the affirmative. This image of Kim Chizevsky will, I imagine, be a little more controversial, but to me, this is the image of Kim. I don’t know why I associate this pose and the black posing suit with her more than any other of the FBB ‘icons’, but I do.

Having dealt with one era of female bodybuilding, I moved on to Lenda Murray. Choosing one image of her as iconic was, I found, much more challenging because there were so many more candidates. Nevertheless, as I searched through my (not inconsiderable) Lenda archive, for me, this image stood out.

Who else? I thought. Iris, sure, but it’s hardly the case that only Ms Olympias or should-have-been Ms Olympias can qualify as icons. I doubt I’ll get too much stick if I say I think the two images below are iconic, and Cathey Palyo and Melinda McNabb never came anywhere near being crowned Ms Olympia.

And so I broadened the search to two of my all-time favourites, and, as with Lenda, found myself struggling to find the defining iconic image of either of them!

With Denise Hoshor, I found I could narrow it down to one set of photos, but when trying to pick one from the set as the iconic image of Denise, it proved impossible. And furthermore, as with Lenda, I was aware that other fans might well put forward other sets or shots of Denise as more apt to represent her at her iconic best.

With another of my all-time favourites, Gina Davis, I couldn’t even narrow it down to a single set. There are so many top top photos of Gina (I looked at so many goodies while I was trying to choose I did begin to wonder if there was a bad photo of her out there) that the best I could do was make a short list that never got any shorter than the wonderful images below.

So confused had I become that I’d forgotten what the immediate question had been!

Ah! Does the female bodybuilder have to be at her peak and at the top of her sport? From the selection above, I could only surmise the answer was ‘yes… maybe’. Bev was a yes, as was Kim. Lenda, it seems to me, had a few peaks at least, and in my iconic image of her, ‘The Naked Sleeping Lenda’, she certainly wasn’t in her contest prime. Neither Palyo nor McNabb were ever at the ‘top’ of female bodybuilding and in the image I selected Palyo wasn’t in prime condition, McNabb absolutely was.

What about the second conclusion I’d drawn from Zimmerman’s Alina pic, the point about her not being in a posing suit and not hitting a regulation pose? Again, you can see that, based on the above selections the answer was a rather unsatisfactory ‘sometimes, but not always’.

ARRRRRRGH!

Perhaps the third point would prove more fruitful, the point about Zimmerman’s style? I perused his Facebook offerings and other pictures of his in my collection. I had to agree with his assertion that he can ‘light the shit out of muscular women’. His style is certainly unique among FBB photographers, and there are many many fantastic shots among his body of work.

Are there some female muscle photographers more iconic in their style than others?

Bill Dobbins sprang to mind immediately. Like the image of Bev Francis’ most muscular above, one other image I am absolutely certain no one will argue is iconic is the one that adorns the cover of his finest achievement, The Women: Photographs of the Top Female Bodybuilders.

Yes! I thought. Dobbins and Zimmerman, photographers with an ‘iconic style’, photographers who, through their work, create the iconography of female muscle…

Perhaps there is something there, but at the same time I was sure that it was Women’s Physique World that had given us more iconic images than any other source, and neither Dobbins nor Zimmerman had anything to do with that. In fact, I realised that images I would call iconic had been made by a wide variety of photographers and in a wide variety of styles. Square 1 again!

Have you reached any conclusions at all?! I hear you cry.

Well, yes. Sort of. Just bear with me…

The fact that Bill Dobbins‘ image of Nikki Fuller was a cover made me wonder if that was something that could make an image more likely to become iconic.

Check out these ones of Diana Dennis and Juliette Bergaman…

They’re familiar, aren’t they?

Well maybe, just maybe, that’s because both of them were WPW covers…

And the other thing that did occur to me was that so many of the images I thought of when I tried to conjure up ‘iconic images’ in my mind were images I had first seen in the magazines in my early female muscle lovin’ years. Perhaps it is the case that an image from those days when there were so many fewer images around is so much more likely to be thought of as ‘iconic’ because almost all female muscle heads of the same generation had almost identical experiences of first seeing them?

Having said that though (he said, indicating the imminent arrival of another unsatisfying conclusion), as with Chris Zimmerman’s image of Alina, there are, it seems to me anyway, images that, as the reader who started this whole sorry thought process off said ‘could be iconic’ being produced now.

Cindy‘s glistening abs; Anne Freitas‘ freaky ‘Christmas tree’

Gabriela Bankuti by Zoltan Vegh of Fitness Exposure (now there’s another female muscle photographer with an ‘iconic style’…)

Sorry I haven’t really got to the bottom of anything. It might have something to do with the goddess being photographed, the point she’s at in her career or her conditioning. It might have something to do with the pose or lack of it, and/or what she’s wearing (or not wearing). It might have something to do with the style of the photographer, or how old the image is, or when and where you first came across it…

Perhaps the only conclusion I can reach is that you know an iconic image when you see one! But even so, they are GREAT pictures, aren’t they?!

Man, you’re probably saying to yourself, this guy has far too much time on his hands! Well, in my defence, I was on holiday. But, yes, OK, I should probably go and get something to eat now.

Enjoy! And I’d love to hear what you think the ‘iconic images’ of female bodybuilding are. Comment box or 6ft1swell@gmail.com, as always.

Woman vs Food: Cindy

According to Cindy’s website, The difference that an optimised nutrition plan makes to your training is astounding, the results are night and day! We’ve all heard the saying, “You are what you eat”. Well, when it comes to building a great physique, this applies three-fold. You simply CANNOT expect to create your perfect body shape whilst feeding it with poor quality nutrition.

And Cindy, a qualified nutritionist, you may remember, will make a Custom Nutrition Plan just for you. For €99.95. That’s quite a few subs. Worth it? Cindy thinks so. What you will get for your money isn’t merely a diet sheet, it’s an education in maximising your progress through optimised nutrition. Put an end to the guesswork and get your nutrition in PERFECT order!

More details on Cindy’s website if you’re interested in the Custom Nutrition Plan.
Or just interested in Cindy.

Abs Week: Tummy Love

The thing is I love my abs. I honestly and truly do. I don’t know very many women who are able or willing to say the same, women who are happy with what they’ve got going on around their tummies.
“Ann”

Like “Ann”, I don’t know many women who are truly happy with their stomachs, and I seriously doubt you do either, dear reader. Today we’re celebrating the rare breed that are. The rare breed who with diet, discipline and sheer hard work have beaten the biological hand that nature dealt them and sculpted away their natural feminine fat. And what they have revealed are six-packs so satisfying that they just have to show them off to the world.

Back to “Ann”: I have gotten to a point where I am completely and totally confident in the way my stomach is shaped because I have gotten there the healthy way. I wasn’t swayed by the quick fixes of diet pills or fad diets or anything like that. I have been able to do this by watching what I eat and putting in the hours upon hours of blood and sweat and tears to make myself stronger and leaner. It finally shows.

Over the last two years or so I’ve pushed myself up to lifting three times a week, running multiple times a week. I do at least a 15-minute ab workout 5-6 times a week. I have paid attention to what I eat, being careful to focus my meals on lean proteins and lots of vegetables. Let me tell you what that has done.

It makes me pause for an extra few seconds if I happen to walk in front of a mirror shirtless.

It makes me start counting down to summer when I’ll be able to strut just a little bit more in that polka dot bikini.

As a result of their efforts, what “Ann” and the women you can see here today have that the majority of women don’t have is CONFIDENCE. And confidence is an attractive quality for a woman to have. Especially when she’s showing that confidence by lifting up her hoodie/shirt/vest etc. and showing off her abs, or, even better perhaps, strutting along a beach in a polka dot bikini!

Female muscle heads like you and me ‘get’ “Ann”. We understand why she would do what she’s doing because we appreciate the results so very very much. And we really don’t understand why someone would not want their woman to have sexy abs. Do guys like this actually exist? Are there really guys who would look at a woman like “Ann” and think she would be OK if she had a belly rather than a six-pack? Hard to believe, but then again I’m not the best at seeing things from the point of view of the female muscle unlovers of this world.

Now here are a pair of interesting images. They’re not just lifting up their tops to show off their abs, they’re lifting up their tops with their teeth! A whole new sub-niche of female muscle photography may just have been born…

The lady on the left is unidentified, and has got herself slightly cross-eyed in her efforts here, which is not the best look but should nevertheless be applauded, but on the right we have Nadege Pedretti and despite her lack of muscularity elsewhere, I think we can all agree she’s got sex appeal in spades.

Of all the current female bodybuilders, few exude the kind of self-love that drives the likes of me and you wild like Suzy Kellner. Her recent fitvids clips are a case in point – if you haven’t seen them, I suggest you move heaven and earth to do so. At the end of one clip, she finishes a set of hanging leg raises, struts away from the camera, past a couple of open-mouthed male gymgoers, then turns back to the camera, in full view of those men, and then, grinning from ear to ear, hits three or four incredibly sexy poses. And no, I’m not sponsored by fitvids, but really, move heaven and earth to see Suzy in her element.

And here’s another woman who can’t get enough of herself showing herself off to the likes of you and me, perennial FMS favourite, Cinderella Landolt, who, we believe, is currently ‘recovering’ after having breast implants. I can’t say I’m either pro or anti cosmetic surgery, for me it all depends on how much, how and where, but whether you think Cindy should have left well alone or not, I bet you can’t help being curious about the results. And knowing there’s a legion of fans out there waiting for the first pictures of her new self is probably not too bad for Cindy’s self-confidence.

And we begin as we started, with “Ann”: I am not perfect by any means, but being able to say confidently and completely that I love this part of my body, my abs, is something I will always be proud of. Always.

Yeah!

And more of that part of the body tomorrow.

Meanwhile, you can read the whole article by “Ann” (although there’s not much else besides the quotes) here. And don’t forget to vote for your personal Abs Queen or Queens (see Saturday’s post).

Enjoy!

Hot and Hard: Cindy Landolt

When I first saw her profile in one of the fitness forums I frequently visit, I thought …wow, this woman’s picture is probably a CGI graphic! Unreal! I was wrong, Cindy is 100% real and aside from being super fit, I think she is super pretty… (Louis M. Sanchez, The Quant Method)

There is definitely a tendency for interviewers, male interviewers anyway, to go a bit mushy when they talk about Cinderella ‘Cindy’ Landolt. Swell may have been guilty of this himself, back at the end of 2011 when Cindy was one of FMS’ Women of the Year I wrote:

Long dark hair, and a set of abs that were made to be massaged and licked all night. Eyes that shine with health and vitality, and then there’s her long shapely legs. And she’s very friendly on the forums…

God, it’s embarrassing to read my old posts sometimes! ‘And she’s very friendly on the forums’! Yuck.

I’ll console myself with the thought that I wasn’t the first, and I won’t be the last, to be made to go all blushing schoolboy as a result of Cindy’s obvious charms.

But there is so much more to this woman than just stunning looks and a perfect body. Try, it’s hard I know, but try, try to look beyond the long, dark hair and the long, shapely legs.

She graduated from Business School. And in 2009 she started to put that theory into practice when she opened her own personal training company, Cindy Training, in Zurich in 2009. Four years later, and she’s one of the highest profile fitness models in Europe, and her business has gone international – she now runs her training programmes in London, Sydney and elsewhere in addition to Switzerland.

It’s a pattern we have noticed here at FMS, the women we adore are not only high-achievers in the field of fitness or bodybuilding, but have also achieved in other areas of their life, be it business, another sport or whatever.

Recently, on one of the major female muscle fan forums, one of those questions us female muscle heads love to ask each other was posed by one of the members. It went something like this:

Let’s say you have a friend that isn’t into female bodybuilding. His reasons are typical (too masculine etc.). If you had to pick one woman to open his mind, even change it and ‘convert’ him to FBBs, who would she be?

There was lots of replies, and lots of suggestions, but few of them took into account anything other than appearance. Choices included Cindy Phillips, Gina Davis, Mavi Giola and so on, chosen because they were ‘more feminine’ or ‘prettier’ or ‘the hottest’.

Granted, bodybuilding and fitness is all about the aesthetic, but not one reply mentioned any of the achievements of the women, either within bodybuilding (titles etc.) or outside it. Not one.

We’re all guilty of this. I’m as guilty as you are (if not more so). Just look at the images I’ve chosen of Cindy today – I didn’t choose them because they show her at her most successful.

But let’s go back to the question posted on the forum, shall we? Let’s say we choose Cindy Landolt as our ‘one woman’ to show our FBB-sceptic friend. She’s conventionally beautiful as well as being muscular (though not muscular enough to be accused of being masculine), so far so good.

Now, wouldn’t it be good if as well as showing him Cindy, we could also tell our friend that she’s a graduate who runs her own successful international business?

Don’t you find beautiful, fit, successful international businesswomen attractive?!

If our aim is to open minds, why not use every means necessary?

So pick your own favourite female. What else has she done? What other achievements has she got outside of having sculpted a magnificent physique for herself (an achievement beyond most people to begin with)? Why not find out? When that conversation with your friend or family member comes, why not give yourself more chance of making them think again?

And while I’m at it, I’d probably also throw in the fact that Cindy is multi-lingual to strengthen my argument with my FBB-sceptic friend. Being Swiss she already has German and French, and the fact that she’s training people in London and Sydney adds English to her skills. If my friend’s dream woman is someone like Cheryl Cole or Tulisa Contostavlos, well, they barely speak English.

Brush up on your own Swiss-German (while admiring Cindy in motion) by watching this interview with her from Swiss TV.

Women like Cindy are incredible and incredible-looking.

Really incredible-looking.

More Cindy? Visit www.cindytraining.com

Unbuttoned/Unzipped of the Day

Cinderella Landholt

With pictures this hot, I’m pretty sure that I could write just about anything today and you won’t read one word. Let’s call it the Cindy Effect. You’re not listening, are you? And where are your hands now? Above the table, please. Oh I give up. I should know better than to post pics like these and expect anyone to pay any attention to me…

The Ennis Effect Needs You

FMS don’t like to blow their own trumpets, but we did, after all, coin the phrase The Marsh Effect to describe the increase in women lifting weights as a result of Jodie Marsh’s foray into bodybuilding and its subsequent press. However, credit where credit is due, The Sun has beaten us to it this time, today reporting on how Jessica Ennis’ showing at the Olympics has given rise to what they are calling ‘The Ennis Effect’: a surge in women craving six-packs just like Team GB’s golden girl Jess.

So far, so good. And the article goes on to say that personal trainers are reporting a huge rise in women seeking washboard stomachs.

But before you start dreaming of a nation of women working out and toning up those abs in sweaty gym sessions, the next sentence betrays the true nature of the article: And one Harley Street clinic, LoveLite, has had a 200 per cent increase in women booking in for tummy-fat removal since Jess’s triumph.

Oh dear. So this isn’t going to be about the sweat after all?

Well, yes and no. The article focuses on three women inspired by Jessica’s bod, her abs in particular, and the lengths they have gone to to achieve the Ennis look. But two of the three have gone to clinics rather than gyms, one to have ‘non-surgical lypo’, the other a ‘tummy tuck’.

Nevertheless, Natalia Ryumina, an actress from Croydon, deserves our congratulations for taking the hard way. I could never get rid of that last layer of fat around my tummy, she says. Consequently, a top personal trainer was hired, new movements targeting specific abdominal areas were introduced, Natalia started travelling with an abdominal exercise gadget so she’d never miss a workout, and now, she says, I look at my tummy in the mirror and I can see the definition I’ve always wanted.

However, Natalia had a pretty good exercise regimen going even before she was allegedly struck by the Ennis bolt during the Olympics, so if we’re going to take the article at face value, we can only conclude that ‘The Ennis Effect’ is going to be good news for Harley Street clinics, and not such good news for fans of female muscle.

But if Claudette Santana hasn’t managed to bring a smile back to your face, don’t despair, for there is a ray of hope in the article. Apparently, 72% of women would rather have an athletic figure than a skinny one. Now, even if that means two out of three of them go to the clinic, that still leaves one out of three hitting the gym.

So, at this dark time of the year, let’s focus on the positive. One in three of 72% of women who want washboard abs might go to the gym as a result of Jessica Ennis’ Olympic exploits. It’s something to cling to, isn’t it? Certainly better than nowt.

And it gives us an excuse to post some sexy abs, so it can’t be all bad…

81% of men, according to The Sun, would prefer a woman with an athletic build to a skinny one, so let’s all do our bit to help the Marsh and Ennis Effects and refuse to settle any longer. Let’s start insisting on it, shall we?

It might involve us getting off our arses and getting ourselves into the best shape of our lives. I mean. You can’t expect her to do all the work while you sit on the sofa and scratch your plums, can you? Too much effort? Well, what about if you ended up cuddling a woman with abs like these every night?

FMS can only conclude that if we are to avoid becoming a nation whose female stomachs are all the result of cosmetic intervention rather than exercise and sensible diet then we all have to do our bit. New Year is approaching. Resolution time.

So, in a final bid to make you resolve to make your resolution increase the amount of female muscle lovin’ happiness in the world today, I leave you with…

Enjoy!

Absession

My absession was becoming a problem. Pictures like those of the wonderful Cinderella Landholt above had become burned into my brain as though with a branding iron, and I could think of nothing else. Whatever I was doing, images of muscular midriffs would pop into my head.

At home, at work, on the bus, or just walking along the street, no matter where I was I could, without warning, be transported by my sick mind to a place where I was close enough to reach out and touch a sublime six-pack. And just as abruptly, I would be back in the real world to find my bath overflowing or I’d missed my station or my boss behind me, concerned. And worse, I’d be sporting the kind of unwanted, yet massive, erection that is generally frowned upon in public places. Help was needed. Professional help.

And so I began my search for a cure. Doctor after doctor, therapist after therapist. All had their theories, and all failed. One tried aversion therapy, showing me hundreds of images of toned and muscular tummies while subjecting me to increasing levels of physical discomfort. A total failure in terms of curing me, but the doctor involved has since published a well-received paper on the potential pain-killing properties of images of fit, muscular women as I found that I can endure a lot more pain than I thought I could if I know there will be another sexy six-pack on the screen in front of me in a few seconds…

At the other end of the scale there was abstinence. Ironic, but again, without effect. Having seen so many images of beautifully-muscled mid-sections over the years, denying me new ones is quite ineffective. It seems my brain has become a sort of massive filing cabinet of data. It takes hardly any effort to conjure up a favourite abs shot (see below).

There was acupuncture, which helped me give up smoking, but failed to ease my absessiveness; there was hypnosis, which just made me believe I actually was a female bodybuilder with rock hard abs (if I hear the word ‘jocular’ to this day I start touching my own stomach, flexing and moaning); there were endless cocktails of drugs, some of which were most pleasant, but none of which stopped me thinking about being on my knees, licking her ridges while she flexed; and there were endless, endless sessions of therapy.

Finally, I started the 12-step program at Absoholics Anonymous. Spending time with other absessives was a great experience, and definitely helped my collection of images of muscular women to grow, but failed to cure any of us. Is absession incurable? Are we all hopeless cases?

I turned to religion. The priest seemed more concerned about how often I was masturbating than my spiritual well-being. The Rabbi felt that if I turned my entire collection over to him he would be able to understand my problem and thus advise me better. He even offered me money, but when I refused, he threatened to inform my boss I was a hopeless pervert. I ended up paying him to keep quiet. The Imam told me I was doomed, but he was totally taking notes when I told him about my fantasy of being kidnapped by a troupe of kick-ass jihadi babes who grant my last wish before executing me. (No prizes for guessing what the last wish is).

And then, my brothers and sisters, I saw the light. The answer was to stop fighting, embrace this absickness and make it work for me, you and everybody else too. We don’t need curing, and we don’t need spiritual enlightenment. We are not sick, and we became enlightened long long ago.

Our own church, the Church of Abdominalism. A church that welcomes all who think a sexy, muscular mid-section is the most attractive physical attribute a woman can have, and preaches the spread of this gospel. We shall have no priests, we will call ourselves The Abdominalists and go out to spread the word and hasten the the Abdominalisation of the world.

And to those who oppose us, or call us ‘ridge-monkeys’, we shall turn the other cheek and go home and worship our abdominal goddess and ask that they be forgiven. For he who has not been abdominalised is doomed to never know the pleasure of the ridges, the ecstasy of the abstasm.

We shall oil the abs of a goddess to show our devotion, both as one and in private worship, so she shall know the priceless value of her spectacular abs. We shall lavish her with gifts of lean meat and fresh vegetables that her physique shall always remain so bloody abstastic, and through the happiness of ourselves and our abdominalised women, the truth of abdominalism shall become known by all.

Are you with me?

Or are you all tutting and shaking your heads right now?!

Gym Bodz: The Coregasm

No wonder she is smiling, findings published recent by the University of Indiana’s Center for Sexual Health Promotion (I’m sure British universities don’t have such interesting faculties) have confirmed that women can, and frequently do, have orgasms during exercise.

Dubbed a coregasm because of its association with core muscle exercises, it is more academically described as an Exercise Induced Orgasm (EIO) or its less bench-shaking cousin Exercise Induced Sexual Pleasure (EISP). It only took the researchers five weeks to recruit over 500 women who had experienced one or both of them, which suggests that it is hardly a rare occurrence.

It seems to be especially common during abdominal and leg exercises, but why they happen is a matter of opinion. One theory I have read is that crunches, for example, stimulate the diaphragm, which in turn stimulates the vagus nerve that runs through the pelvis. Another is that movements involving quads or inner thighs lead to a continuous squeezing of the pelvic muscles until… BOOM!

And apparently, all it takes for women who haven’t experienced EIO or EISP, all it takes is a few more reps. One respondent reported that On my third set of 15 reps, if I crank out a few more and go to 20, well, yeah, I can have an orgasm!

Whenever I either do hanging leg raises or knee-ups, I get the best coregasm a girl could dream of. I’m guessing it happens due to activation of the Kegel muscles in conjunction with friction from moving your legs up and down. Either way, I don’t care why it happens, but just am happy it does. What a great motivator to do these exercises!

Seriously, us chaps may well be declared redundant one day soon. This is just another nail in our collective coffin. But in the meantime, it’s also a great argument to get your lady into the gym and cranking out those extra reps. Why not enjoy ourselves while we’re still allowed to?

And best of all, it could bring the gym to your bed. One woman held a leg and shoulder lift during sex and reported that it intensified the pulsing, and the same woman (there is one seriously happy guy somewhere in Oklahoma) reported using a vibrator while exercising at home to vamp up the intensity. Wow.

So, the next time you see a lady’s legs shaking after giving her all to a set of squats, she may just have done a few extra. And if you want to keep your woman regular at the gym, get her to focus on her core muscles, and remind her to give those pelvic muscles a good squeeze on every last rep.

Culled from Huffington Post, CBS News, MSNBC, and Men’s Health.

Enjoy!

Faces

You may remember seeing Martin Schoeller’s portraits of top female bodybuilders around four years ago when they were first exhibited. Now they have resurfaced again in the UK media.

Schoeller says, With Female Bodybuilders [the book], I am trying to show the vulnerability that I see and feel in the subjects when I am with them, to get to the complex emotions behind a mask of extreme physical expression. These women mirror our modern cultural hunger for size, aggression, and attention at any cost. We are in the age of Bigness.

Art it may be, but these pictures are not doing female bodybuilding any favours. The women stare blankly back at the viewer, one of Schoeller’s hallmarks, and the fact that they are in contest shape and look drawn and exhausted is accentuated by another of his hallmarks, harsh, unforgiving light.

Hardly a representation of female muscle that is going to win over the sceptics. Don’t blame the photographer, he has his own aims. But, as a Schoeller antidote, Female Muscle Slave would like to present other portraits and self-portraits of muscular women.

And I can be arty too, you know.

Slave says, My aim was to show how female muscle and beauty are not mutually exclusive, even in mainstream terms, and have juxtaposed the beauty of the women with the negative comments from articles on the Schoeller photos to demonstrate the falsehood of preconceptions about women with muscles being unattractive and masculine.

Heather Lee : Tatiana Butler : Gal Ferreira

They all look so ugly, like an old leather couch.

Diana Tinnelle : Rebekah Kresila : Christina Steele

Horrendously disgusting. Abhorrent. Yuk!

Elena Shportun : Andrea Giacomi

Looks like a bunch of men with girly hair and make-up on.

Cinderella Landholt

Ugliest women in the world!

Helene Ahlson : Mary Ann Graves : Christy Resendes

The stuff of nightmares.

Katka Kyptova : Virginia Sanchez Masias

There are better looking gargoyles on Hereford Cathedral.

Heidi Vuorela

Grotesque! Freaks! Gross!

Geraldine Morgan : Dawn Sutherland

They look like Iggy Pop.

The recent article on Schoeller’s work was in the Daily Mail online. You can also check out Schoeller’s work here, and to buy the book of female bodybuilder portraits go here.

Enjoy!