When a video is too long but a picture is not enough…
Check out more of this genius here
Elena Shportun
Two’s Up of the Day
TWELVE-pack? If only Elena had remembered to move the medal…
Katka Kyptova and Elena Shportun
Abs of the Day
Sunday, the day of rest. A day for lounging around at home. And if you get to be the lucky lucky man who spends his day of rest lounging around with Elena Shportun‘s impossibly deep abdominals ridges to gaze upon, well, I hope you appreciate what you have and never ever complain because buddy, you have got it oh so good.
Express Yourself!
What do these two pictures have in common? Why is it they appeal to me a little bit more than your average snap of a muscular beauty?
The answer is expression. On the left, the open mouth gives the impression that as she flexes she’s saying Yeah! That she loves showing off her muscles. On the right, Brandi’s pout makes me think that by flexing her delicious body for the camera, she is turning herself on. Both women know they’re hot, and by emoting even just a little bit, in their different ways, they are transmitting that to the viewer, ie. me. And that little bit of expression gives my imagination so much more to work with, and consequently elevates these pictures beyond the norm.
Slave loves a good picture of a muscular women, but loves a good picture of an emoting muscular woman even more. Hope you enjoy the examples I have chosen as much as I enjoyed choosing them!
The ‘Yeah!’
Angelica Mielczarek seems to know the effect her body can have on a man. Wouldn’t you be wide-eyed and open-mouthed if you saw her? Her expression is like a mirror to the viewer/gawper. Wow! Look at her! becomes Wow! Look at me! Very sexy.
Most Muscular
A most muscular pose without any expression is a wasted opportunity, but Lindsay Cope knows how to make the most of it. Yeah! she seems to be saying, Check me out! What muscle woman doesn’t love displaying the results of her hard work, and through her expression Lindsay puts over the self-confidence, vanity even, that Slave for one cannot resist in muscular females, especially ones who are as drop-dead gorgeous as Lindsay is.
The Roar
When flexing those guns or finishing their set of 200 press-ups, the feeling just can’t be contained. It has to be let out. And so like mighty lionesses after a successful hunt, their feeling of strength and power is expressed in a mighty roar. Grrrrrrr! Roaaaar! The gym quakes. Knees go weak. Bunnies flee. She is the queen of her jungle.
Routine Emotion #1: Tonie Norman
Some routines are more memorable than others, some women just have the natural ability to connect with the audience, and as far as I can tell, it’s the ones who are most expressive on stage that achieve this.
Exhibit A: Tonie Norman. Not the biggest, not the most successful, but always a routine worth watching, because, like the routines of way back when, it’s always more of a performance with Tonie, and as these pictures and close-ups illustrate, she’s got a pretty wide variety of expressions to communicate with. I particularly like some expression with my abs and thigh pose, not an easy thing to do given the amount of strain involved, but Tonie pulls it off effortlessly. Again, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, like she’s shocked that she’s just made so many men in the audience grab their crotches all at once.
The Pout
Nothing better than a big-lipped pout to communicate how sexy she feels posing for the camera, or how into her own body she is. Like Brandi at the top of the post, Gretchen Imes revels in her muscularity, or at least that’s what her pout says to this viewer.
Tongues
Heather Foster sticks it out on stage (and incidentally shows incredible control of her lower lip in the process), while Kashma’s seems to be unusually long. Nice. She gets better and better, doesn’t she?
Routine Emotion #2: Elena Shportun
These days, few female bodybuilders give their routine as much artistry and expression as was prevalent in the past. Think of Natalia Murnikovene, Diana Dennis, even Cory Everson. Nowadays, routines often seem to be just a collection of poses set to music, rather than a ‘performance’. But Elena Shportun keeps the flag flying for artistic bodybuilding routines, always giving an emotive, creative and consequently memorable turn. I reckon she would have made a great actress. In fact, she still might!
Homage
On the left, Liang Yue Yan pays homage to her ancestors by terrifying any Mongolian invaders, while the lady on the right seems to be paying homage to Betty Pariso’s famous tongue-out most muscular.
Of course the one place where you can’t help expressing yourself (unless you aren’t doing it properly) is the gym. Larissa shows us a range of expressions as she punishes her sexy body.
First, an Ooooo
Then, an Aaaah
And lastly, a Grrrr
Double Whammy
And finally, a couple of screenshots of Marja Lehtonen. Now don’t you think they would be so much blander without the expressions? In too many posing videos there isn’t enough eye contact with the viewer in my opinion. Often the ladies look slightly off camera as they take direction. Sometimes they even just stop posing and wait for the director to tell them what to do next. I hate this: it’s lazy on the part of the film-maker, who could just edit the bloody thing a bit, and the less eye contact I get, the sooner I tire of the clip. 
No danger of either of these things here. Marja’s got you in her sights, gives you wide-eyed open-mouthed, then the roar. Double sexy!
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!
Gymnastic Fantastic
More strong, athletic, flexible muscle babes to fire up the imagination.
Bat girl in training
Now, any girl with a pole in her living room is probably worth trying to get to know.
I reckon a little higher and that’ll be just about head height for me.
Her flatmate only comes out of her room when she’s practising her pole moves.
OK, so she’s cheating with the wall there, but hell, I’ve tried this move and unless I’ve had a wall to help me, it’s not ended well. And my abs didn’t look nearly as good as these while I was doing it. So just imagine the possibilities and give her a break.
Now that’s how you do it! No wall, just strength and balance. Very sexy.
Alicia Sacramone
We’ve had Lingerie Football, perhaps Naked (Artistic!) Gymnastics next?
Like a woman with a pole in her living room, it’s also worth getting to know a woman who can bend herself into this position. And if you aren’t sure why that is, look at the picture and think about it. And if she happens to be a gorgeous Asian fitness competitor, well, that’s the jackpot!
Open Wide
Julie Bourassa‘s car wash is one of the most successful local businesses of recent times. If you’re in Montreal and fancy giving your car the extra special buff treatment, I recommend it.
Open Wide 
This is Katka Kyptova, and a couple of moments’ later three of the men behind the VW ad got hard-ons that ripped through the panel in front of them. Another of the men fainted. When interviewed about the incident, Katka seemed unfazed. It happens all the time, she said. Last week I made a whole pub full of men spontaneously ejaculate and/or faint when I got up on the bar and did the splits.
Open Wide: Elena Shportun
I wish you could just flip pictures around and see the same photo from behind.
Open Wide
The magnificent Fabiola Boulanger showing off on stage at the recent Canadian Championships. Easy to see why she won. This move brought the crowd to its feet, and no doubt caused a fair bit of upstanding for male members of the crowd too.
Airborne
Deceptive though the angle may be, she’s still pretty bloody far off the ground. And it all looks rather effortless. Nice.
Levitation?!
Enjoy!
Dr Strangejudge: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the 2011 Arnold Classic Europe
Elena Shportun’s victory at last weekend’s Arnold Classic Europe has stirred up a lot of heated discussion on female muscle forum boards.
The gist of most of it has been outrage at how Elena could be placed above women who were more muscular, and particularly why Katka Kyptova wasn’t given first place because of her size and conditioning.
This is certainly not the first time (and it’s unlikely to be the last) that female bodybuilding judges have made a decision that confuses, even angers, fans of the sport.
Now, say what you like about the judges, but they have been chosen to judge for a reason, they are (presumably!) qualified to judge a female bodybuilding contest. I, and I bet most of those on the forum boards who have complained about the result, are not. As a fan, my own judgements about a competitor are pretty subjective, and if I’m honest, are based largely on how much she turns me on!
If fans really care that much about female bodybuilders who are ‘robbed’ of titles by judging decisions, they should start a poll that you have to pay a small amount of money to vote on. It would be a kind of ‘internet audience’ or ‘fan’ award, and the pot could be given to the winner of the poll when the voting was over.
But until that happens, what you can do is to remember that the pictures and clips from the contest will still be out there five, ten, fifteen years from now, and they will still show these magnificent women in all their muscular glory as they were on the weekend of 8th October 2011.
So, I have learned to stop worrying and love the 2011 Arnold Classic Europe. Of the top five, four of them – Elena, Katka, Britain’s golden goddess Lisa Cross, and Simonha Oliveira from Brazil – are among my favourite female bodybuilders currently competing. The pics of the comparisons involving these four are truly mouth-watering displays of prime female muscle meat.
Simonha finished fifth, which, as I’ve already explained, is pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. As I find with most Brazilian women (muscular or not) the rearview is quite, let’s say, overwhelming, and when she sashays around the stage in that unique Latin American way, she exudes confidence, playfulness and sex appeal.
Britain’s finest, Lisa Cross, was as ripped and vascular as I’ve ever seen her. Any schmoes out there having a session with Lisa this week must have been in heaven! For me, Lisa’s unhurried presence on stage and her pouts and knowing smiles give me the impression that she loves being the centre of the audience’s attention, she’s well aware what an awesome sight she is. And that is very very sexy.
In third place, Nina Lobert, yet another in a (hopefully) endless line of massive muscle maidens from Germany. Now unlike the rest of the top 5, Nina doesn’t quite do it for me. However, her side chest pose is quite a sight. Imagine getting your hands on that!
And so to the top two…
Don’t you just love the way they always hold hands while waiting for the announcement of the winner? It’s so sweet and, if you have an overactive imagination like yours truly, at the same time it sets off some extremely suggestive thoughts!
Now, as I’ve already said, I’m not going to get into a discussion about the rights and wrongs of the judges’ decision. I just want to homour these two amazing women.
I’ve already eulogised about Elena’s abs in a previous post , but that’s not going to stop me doing so again! Her abdominals and thigh pose is, in my opinion, one of the greatest sights in modern female bodybuilding.
Her spermatic abs aside, when Elena hits this pose it really shows her body at its best. It seems to make her arms look bigger than they do in a double biceps pose, her shoulders suddenly seem broader, her waist more tapered, her thighs more flared. I think she is able to achieve this effect because her physique is so symmetrically balanced. In this pose, the whole effect comes together to enhance her individual parts perfectly.
And then there was Katka, dark-haired, sultry and sizzling with muscular sexuality. I have heard a rumour that her posing suit had to be made out of a special material from NASA that is used to coat the heat-shields on spacecraft for re-entry into the atmosphere. Without this material, members of the audience in the front rows might have suffered first and even second degree burns from the heat she was emanating. Despite this precaution, the judges found their pens melting when Katka was on stage. Maybe that’s why she finished second!
If this was, as she has said, her last crack at bodybuilding, these images should be treasured. Her routine was particularly sexy. I love it when FBBs get down onto the floor of the stage and show themselves off. It seems so right! Check out Katka’s calves in the first picture, her hamstrings in the second and her glutes in the third. Phwoar!
Before the contest, her blog whetted the appetite with progress pics and training clips from her preparation. She looked so damn good that I thought she couldn’t lose, and maybe it was this feeling that she was a cert for first place that has caused such consternation.
And it wasn’t only the fans who got a shock when the result was announced…
In sport, as in life, what you expect isn’t always what happens. And therein lies its drama and beauty.
The result will gradually become less important as time passes, but the line-up will live forever in the images and clips of this contest of wonderful wonderful female specimens showing off their bodies in peak condition. And that’s some consolation.
And yes, I have been reading a lot of books about Buddhism lately!
Clips from the contest will be added shortly on the Tube page.
Enjoy!
Abs Week: Elena Shportun
She is one of the most beautiful women in bodybuilding, and her posing routines are second to none in their grace, dynamism and expression. And to top it all there are her perfect, perfect abs…
Check out Elena’s posing routine on the tube videos page!
Female Muscle Slave 