I’d scan the shelves for new issues then take my chance to furtively leaf through the pages when there was no one else near me, no one who could see what I was looking at, because if anyone did, they’d see what a weirdo I was. Waiting, again, until there was no one at the cash register, unable to look the shop owner in the eye, I’d pay (my hands trembling with excitement) and stuff the magazine into my bag as fast as I could. Relief! The hard part over, my heart pounding inside my chest, I’d rush back home to secretly enjoy the pictures of the amazing women within my precious cargo.
It’s a scenario apparently familiar to countless fans of female muscle who grew up at the time when a trip to the newsagent’s was the only way to get your fix.
I would have been in my late teens when I saw these images of Zuzana. They’re images I spent hour upon hour with. So much muscle, so much detail to enjoy. Her meaty, booming bicep; her freaky, granite glutes; triceps whose striations have striations…
Many years later the internet allowed me to enjoy Zuzana in motion, both on and off stage, and the excitement was barely less intense. Whether it was the younger, leaner Zuzana or the later jaw-droppingly huge Zuzana of so many WPW clips, she was a fascinating, beguiling combination of muscle and beauty. Little wonder she is one of very few women who almost every female muscle lover has on their all-time list.
In this last week of voting for the FMS Hot and Hard 100, I don’t wish to unduly influence the waverers among you who are still compiling your lists by posting too many images of the hottest hard women of the last year [like you did yesterday?! – ed.] And on top of that, as I’ve recently reached, shall we say, a “certain age”, I’m kind of in the mood to look back on my female muscle lovin’ life thus far.
So, all week on FMS, it’s some of my all-time favourite female muscle moments, starring some of my all-time favourite muscle women. And with apologies to Monsieur Proust, we’ve decided to call it À la recherche du chaude et dure perdu, or…
REMEMBRANCE OF HOT AND HARD PAST
1. These Glutes Were Made for Walking
She walks towards the camera, which then swings around and follows her up a staircase and onto a landing. Then we switch point of view as the camera overtakes her and now she’s walking towards us again. She smiles into camera as she passes along. Fade out.
Described as above it doesn’t sound like much. But when “she” is Sophie Duquette in heels, when her mouth-watering body is at its full and curvy muscle peak, when that fantasy body of hers is covered only by a triangle of fabric up top and a “skirt” that barely manages to cover 50% of her glorious rear… well, it’s amazing how scintillating a forty-seven second clip of a woman doing nothing but walking can be.
It’s so far from the HD clarity we are so spoiled with now – I’m guessing it’s about ten years old – but I tend to think it’s actually better for it, or rather, I’m all the better for it. If, ten years ago, I’d watched Sophie in HD – particularly the walking up the stairs behind her rippling legs section – so excited would I have been that I might well have found myself in intensive care, never able to safely watch the clip again. Ever.
And to think there are actually men out there who wouldn’t find this sexy.
Despite the fact she has a dream name for fans of not very good puns – Gorgeous R-ASS-atti… I’m just looovin’ her ASSets!!!! are, believe me, two of the better ones – it’s really Kayla Rassatti‘s dream body that has really got some of the brethren excited (myself most definitely included) and set some of the boards alight with tributes.
She’s been described as ORGASMICALLY GORGEOUS!!!, with the same poster sharing later that he just couldn’t keep his hands off himself – I’m gunna have 2 go clean myself off. And while it’s not exactly my style to be as candid as that, I have to admit, I know how he (I assume he’s a ‘he’) feels. I know exactly how he feels.
I keep expecting to get all jaded, but nigh on 30 years after my first dose of The Madness, and there are still women, and Kayla is absolutely one of those women, who, on first sight, can give me the same kind of thrill I got that very first time.
You’ve probably guessed with all the quotes from other members of the brethren and all this riffin’ about myself that what I can tell you about Kayla in terms of facts is strictly limited. It amounts to her nationality (Australian), her base (the Gold Coast, Brisbane), and her division (figure). As far as I’ve been able to tell, she competed for the very first time at the Australian Amateur Grand Prix in March last year, and failed to place in a Figure “First-timers” class. After that, information has been hard to come by, but it appears that by the end of the year she had won her pro card.
Which all suggests that she might be in a hurry to make her name in the female muscle world. And the fact that her next contest will be at one of the biggest shows of them all – the Arnold Classic in a couple of months’ time – only serves to underline that.
But while her bio, her contest history, her “profile”, we might say, are all a bit sketchy, fortunately her Instagram is bounteous. And speaking as someone who has probably spent a little more time there than good doctors would recommend, I think I’m as qualified as anyone to claim that Kayla Rassatti effing LOVES muscle.
She loves muscle on her men, she loves muscle on her women, but most of all, Kayla loves her own body. As mentioned here the other day regarding Rene Marven, it’s all in the eyes. And those eyes tell me Kayla just loves her own muscles.
A killer body, yes. Sexy pecs, sexy glutes, and sexy sexy sexy abs. But it’s what she does with it, or rather how she presents it that’s the real killer. And I reckon that’s the reason why I (and so many others) find Kayla so totally, utterly thrilling.
Sit back, relax, and ENJOY! That’s what I’m going to do, anyway…
I remember where I started. I did not look like this then.
Angelica Enberg is a figure competitor with lofty ambitions. She finished 5th in her class at this year’s Swedish Nationals, a class she describes as containing women of “brutal quality”. Her contest prep is more fraught than most because she is a type-1 diabetic and so has to constantly monitor her blood sugar levels. She likes a selfie more than most, and it is her penchant for revealing more than most in those selfies that has brought her to the attention of the female muscle lovin’ brethren. She’s just 22, and as cute as a button. And she’s the last of our svenska muskel kvinnor this week.
ANGELICA: IN HER OWN WORDS
I’ve done so many team and individual sports since the age of 9. They’ve always been a lot of fun and I’ve always been good at them. I last gave up football two years ago and subsequently bought my first gym membership, and there I began to slowly but surely build up an extreme interest. Extreme is the word!
Training is, and has been my life since I was 9, my life. It allowed me to survive my tough childhood. From being so depressed and destroyed at such a young age, through training I’ve built myself up into a strong person.
After finishing 5th at the Swedish National Championships: It was a 5th place for me! I’m satisfied. It is, after all, the Swedish National Championships!
On Dani Reardon, posted to Angelica’s Instagram: My #WCW! [Woman Crush Wednesday] I’ve been following you for a very long time and I admire your hard work. One day I will have your results. I’m chasing you!
I will tell you something… I like the attention. I do! And I’m not shy about admitting it. I think almost everyone, no matter how you market yourself, it feels good to show off what you have achieved. People feel good to be praised for what they do… You would never want to spend 15 hours a week at the gym, if you couldn’t show off what you have accomplished. I want to be able to showcase my hard work.
Sometimes people ask me, “How long time will you do this for?” and I just stand there, shake my head and say, “It is a lifetime journey.”
New goals are set. I’m definitely going to come back bigger, stronger. It takes a LOT of time to do everything clean. But it’s not impossible, and I’m gonna show you that. Time to improve.
Here are some real Christmas female muscle treats…
Well, if only this had been posted a few days earlier, I’m sure a lot of wives and girlfriends would have found themselves with a pair of bling dumbbells like VeVe’s under the Christmas tree. I know mine would! There’s always next year…
On October 26th the oldest bodybuilding show of them all, the NABBA Universe, took place at its long-time home of Southport on Merseyside. Since 1966, a Ms Universe has been crowned – 48 consecutive years by my reckoning – and Ms Universe 2014 was Brazil’s Dora Rodrigues. But, as always, there was a large contingent of fine British female physiques in the three “Figure” classes, doing their thing in their thongs.
TONED FIGURE
In recent years, this class has been the one where British women have enjoyed the most success, and this show was no exception, with Brits first and second.
You have to think that sooner or later that former UKBFF British Bikini champ Kelsey Yung (aka “TinkerKel”) will walk off with the winner’s trophy. She finished second (to the gorgeous Nicola Bentham) at the 2013 Universe, and also finished second (to Brazil’s Caroline Crozeta) at this year’s NABBA Worlds in Belfast in June. And here, once again, Barrow-in-Furness’ finest had to settle for second place, though the fact that she is the reigning NABBA Ms Britain is probably some consolation.
Beating Kelsey on this occasion was 26-year-old Charlotte MacGill from Bolton in Lancashire. Charlotte works (all these NABBA women are amateurs remember) as a sports rehab physio. It was only when she got her current job that she began training, inspired and encouraged by her bodybuilding boss, Stuart Cosgrove. He got me interested in weight training, she told a local newspaper after her win. I started to notice the changes in my body and went from there.
Within a year she had won the NABBA North-West show, and now has her first international title. Competing in international competitions is very rewarding and a lot of fun, she says. Especially so when you leave as the champ, I imagine!
TRAINED FIGURE II (short)
This class was packed with quality. This year’s and last year’s Overall Ms Universe winners (Dora Rodrigues and Italian NABBA veteran Flora Conte), the reigning NABBA Ms World (Auren Malvestiti of Brazil) andFMS fave Cinara Polido (with her involuntarily twitching glutes) made up the top four. However, two British women muscled their way into the placings, finishing in the same order as they had done at the NABBA Britain five months previously.
Corinne Ingman from Harlow in Essex was awarded 6th place. She’s a British powerlifting champion, a NABBA Figure competitor, and for her next trick she fancies taking on the UKBFF Physique class and gaining her pro card, apparently. Given the current trend towards muscularity in that class, she looks as if she has a great chance of making her mark there, which is slightly ironic when you learn that officials from the UKBFF once told her she was “too muscular” to be a Physique competitor!
I think Corinne looks like the kind of woman who’s prepared to strip down to the bare minimum and give everyone in the gym a good gander at her progress anytime she’s feeling nice and pumped. In other words, she looks like FMS‘ kind of woman. One to watch for sure – and you can do so via her (regularly updated) Instagram.
Sadly, there’s no video we can find of Corinne at the NABBA Universe, but we did find a clip of her routine at the NABBA Britain in May. So why not?
But we had the opposite problem for the woman who beat Corinne to the NABBA Britain title and finished one place above her again here. Despite an exhaustive search, we failed to turn up a single new picture of NABBA favourite Kay Goodwin that didn’t have a big bad watermark on it – though we did find video (see below). You may remember Kay from previous posts, when, among other things, we reported that she had moved category from Toned to Trained Figure this year.
Success has followed. In 2014 she won her first (regional) show in the class, took the Ms Britain title, and has finished as top Brit at both the NABBA Worlds and now the NABBA Universe. Guess more muscle suits her! I first caught the “bodybuilding bug” after going to see a friend compete in a show, Kay says. Seeing all the girls on stage, all glammed up looking fabulous and the physiques on display was inspiring and got me thinking “could I really do that?” Turns out she could. She really really could.
TRAINED FIGURE I (tall)
Northern Ireland’s positively Amazonian Linda Cassidy finished 5th in the taller of the two Trained Figure classes, and I can pretty much guarantee that though her routine (as with all NABBA routines) is over too quickly for my liking, you will not forget it once you’ve seen it. Linda is a personal trainer at The Columbia Gym in Banbridge, County Down, who specialises in “high risk” clients – ones who have been referred to the gym via their GP, that is. Seems to me having Linda put you through your paces would be pretty “high risk” to most male heart rates…
And finally, the familiar face of Wales’ most muscular female firefighter, Sarah Hallett, who placed 3rd, higher than any other British Trained Figure competitor.
She says she’s gone through some “big life changes this year”, but the package she brought to the Universe stage was just as hard and vascular as she always seems to be. Readers may be familiar with her work for Fit Vids, and I can assure you that if you do decide to put your hand in your pocket and fork out for the whole video set, you will be treated to some of the most insane vascularity you have ever seen. Highlights include the cameraman’s audible gasp as Sarah flexes her abs, and a seemingly never-ending set of bicep curls that leaves her entire upper body covered in pumping cord-like veins. Seriously, buy it (he said, shamelessly angling for a free Fit Vids pass!!!)
Congratulations to all the UK’s NABBA Universe women, whether they’ve made it into the post or not. We’ll be meeting one more on Friday, but in the meantime, enjoy!
When Kristin Rance joined a CrossFit gym in Washington [DC] about a year ago, she had one vision: muscle. The 30-year-old mother of two wanted to look in the mirror and see someone ‘who looks like (she) works out – without flexing’.
“Strong Is the New Skinny” was trademarked in 2012 by Marsha Christensen, a personal trainer and blogger from Texas. I imagine Marsha has made a fair few quid out of it, being as it is, as I’m sure you are well aware, on T-shirts as well as about 399 other products too. It has a Facebook page with over 100,000 likes, and plenty of gyms have built entire marketing campaigns around it to get women to weight train.
A measure of its popularity, particularly in North America, as the new ideal for women is the fact that the backlash has already started. It may be a healthier body image than the stick-thin supermodel look, critics say, but it is no more achievable.
The female athlete portrays a little bit healthier body image than Kate Moss, but it’s not realistic, says Boise State University psychologist Mary Pritchard, an eating behaviour and body image specialist, for example. We have kids, we have families. Our job is not to look and be like an athlete.
Nevertheless, the phrase, and the more general notion of self-empowerment through strength training, is, as they say, ‘trending’. Quite apart from the seemingly inexorable rise of CrossFit and the growth of interest in muscle building among women in North America, the trend has entered the mainstream, with high profile companies as diverse as Chevrolet and Always creating “pro-sporty girl” marketing campaigns.
And now, it seems, that trend is spreading across the world – well, the English-speaking world, the part of the world FMS‘ limited language skills allows us to monitor anyway!
Women across Ireland are abandoning the weighing scales and picking up weights to sculpt their bodies, according to the Irish Independent. In South Africa, the sport [of female bodybuilding] is reported to be “building momentum quickly”, and it’s a similar story in New Zealand. And here in Britain, the phrase ‘Protein Princesses’ has been coined to describe the new generation of gym-obsessed women, most recently mentioned in a Daily Mail piece that focused on how British women who work out are ditching sugar-dense cereals for protein-packed breakfasts.
And we’ve even come across evidence of participation in female bodybuilding growing in India. Starting last Friday in Mumbai, Indian women took part, for the very first time, in an international bodybuilding contest in their own country at the magnificently-entitled “6th World Bodybuilding Championship & Physique Sports Competition” organised by the India Bodybuilders’ Federation (IBBF). Athletes from over 50 countries were reported to be taking part, and in the build-up to the contest, the Indian media focused on pioneering female athletes like 31-year-old Leela Phad, who was due to be the first ever Indian woman to compete in the Physique division.
Pioneering Indian Physique competitor Leela Phad
To this day, her parents do not know she practises bodybuilding,the Times of India reported, which is not the whole truth, but does give an indication of the kind of extra problems female bodybuilders face outside the West. They know I am a trainer, Leela told dnaindia, but they don’t know that I will be competing. They are conservative and don’t like women wearing that particular attire [bikini] on stage, and are angry that I haven’t taken up the secure job of sales tax inspector to pursue sports.
One result of all this media attention on the rise of the muscular woman is a kind of redefinition of what a “female bodybuilder” is. To give one typical (and perhaps unintentionally hilarious) example, health24 begins its piece on “What It Takes to Be a Female Bodybuilder” thus: Female bodybuilding has become extremely popular worldwide with participants, often called fitness models, inspiring women all over the world to begin fitness training, modelling and competing.
It seems a “female bodybuilder” ain’t what she used to be!
But it would be churlish to complain too much about this when there’s so much to be thankful for. From Manchester to Mumbai and from Dunedin to Durban, more and more women are lifting weights, and more and more of them are going on to compete, even in countries where traditions have made it an especially difficult task.
And as their national media reports this rise, yet more women might be inspired to take up the sport. It’s like the opposite of a vicious circle, apparently known as a “virtuous circle” (although I’d never heard that phrase before).
The women of the world getting hotter and hotter and harder and harder…
Which only leaves us female muscle fans scratching our heads and wondering, Where exactly is this new horde of muscle-building women when I go to the gym?
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.
No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.
EVERYBODY LOVES IRIS
Inspirational then. Iris, the muscle sexy glamour-puss, is flanked by co-competitors Desiree Ellis and Antoinette Norman in Las Vegas, circa 2005.
Inspirational now. A glamorous Alana Shipp meets Iris at the Chicago Pro 2014, while a beaming Margie Martin meets her inspiration, and buys the T-shirt!
KYLED HARD FACT OF THE DAY
Angela Bassett is Iris’ favourite actress according to her website, and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, which stars (the not un-muscular) Bassett, her favourite film.
DEM GLUTES DOE!
Ever get the impression that all her contests were over as contests as soon as Iris turned around and faced the back? Above, dem glutes at the 2008 Ms Olympia press conference – Dayana Cadeau is on the left, revealing slightly less than Iris.
Below, dem winning glutes on and off stage…
KYLE BY NUMBERS
Iris’ birth date is 22.8.74, making her 40 at the time of her retirement.
Her lowest ever finish at a pro contest was 15th, at the 1999 Ms International.
SHE’S A LADY
Iris is every beautiful inch a woman as she prepares for a photo shoot.
KYLE IN MOTION
ZOINKS!!! !!!WOWZA
Shock and awe Iris Kyle style as she works the Super 7 System booth at an expo. All eyes are on her, the immense (and intense!) contrast with the bodies of the other booth girls serving to underline what an incredible physical specimen she is.
When we asked you lovely readers if you wouldn’t mind sharing your experiences of the Olympia weekend (“My Olympia”: Contributions Wanted!), we weren’t expecting to get thousands of responses, but we had hoped we’d get more than one!
Fortunately, it’s beaut (as the man himself might say), all the way from Australia – so you should bear in mind while reading that because of the time difference, the Ms Olympia was on Friday 19th September, but it was already Saturday 20th in Oz.
“Ozzy’s Olympia”
As usual, like many lovers of big muscles (I should probably say “addict”, by the way) I was impatiently waiting for this year Ms Olympia, mostly to see our “real” Queen of Muscle Alina, and to drool in front of Anne Freitas’s unbelievable ass…
And I was not disappointed!
This Saturday, I was working, but I could not stop thinking about what was taking place at the same time, far, far away from me. I was thinking, “At this moment, maybe Alina is on stage, maybe she’s winning this Ms O”, or “In what state of mind are all of those ladies?” and, of course, “How can those judges stay calm during the show? I mean, they HAVE to jerk off at least once, don’t they? Just to be able to do their job quietly!”
And the morning passed, and during the lunchtime break, I quickly went online to check if there were any vids or pics of the event… And they were all available!!! I immediately looked at them, of course, but I had to go back to work, so I only looked at what was most important to me: Anne’s ass! And, oh boy, it was really, really difficult not to wank immediately but I had to wait…
All afternoon I couldn’t get the pics of her out of my head. One in particular… I was continually thinking about her crotch. She looked like she had developed some new muscles, and that her vagina had now totally mutated into some new thing! And, all the time, I was thinking “Oh my god, how good it must be to be inside it…”
And when I came back home, it was too late to jerk off, because my girlfriend was already there… I had to wait until Monday (!!!) to finally release my load in front of Anne’s magnificent ass… And, of course, I’d had the image in my mind for two days, so it was only a formality to do it… it took only a few seconds before I ejaculated…
A week after, I’m still obsessed by this picture, and I’ve already jerked off twice in front of it today…
Many thanks to Ozzy for taking the time to share his Olympia weekend experience.
Check out Ozzy Female Muscle “The Blog of a Man Who Loves Muscular Women”, sadly rarely updated these days, but there’s a fair old archive to explore nevertheless.
If Ozzy has inspired you to write about whatever it was you were thinking and doing during the Olympia weekend, please email me: 6ft1swell@gmail.com.
Female Muscle Slave 