Prof. Pennypacker’s Pectarium

Like many fans of female muscle, Pennypacker was, at times, curious to know who he shared his passion with. Ultimately, he decided it was an impossible task to try to identify who, exactly, the ‘sthenolagniacs’ are. However, the questions about the group to which he felt he had come to belong are certainly ones familiar to the author, and may well be questions readers have asked themselves at one time.

from Pennypacker’s diary 10th October 2011
I find the statistician in me is not gone. How many of us are there? Do we number in our thousands, millions, tens of millions? Are we numerous enough that we are almost certain to know a fellow female muscle worshipper, even if we do not know that is the case? How many, I wonder, have I met in my life? How many are friends, though we would never speak of it and so never know?

from Pennypacker’s diary 12th November 2011
At times I feel like such a diletante. The knowledge some of the forum bods have of the history of female bodybuiding, their knowledge of the training methods and lifestyles of the women, their knowledge of when and where the competitions are, even the bars where the women go after the contests… I have so much to learn before I feel I can talk to them without feeling like a schoolchild being quizzed by a university lecturer. Oh, the irony of that!!!

from Pennypacker’s diary 17th February 2012
From what I can understand, I am unusually old and developed sthenolagnia (how much new vocabulary I have learned?!) relatively late in life, but this is based only on the confessions of those who are prepared to share this sort of thing, and only then when protected behind the anonymity of the internet. Hardly empirical.

//www.youtube.com/get_player

from Pennypacker’s diary 22nd February 2012
Like mad monks in the most extreme of orders we practise our common religion from within our own cells, never meeting, passing notes to each other under doors.

from Pennypacker’s diary 9th April 2012
A thought on the prevalence of available material. Statistically speaking, it holds that at any given moment a female muscle worshipper somewhere is more likely to be masturbating to an image or clip of Annie Riveccio than one of Georgia Fudge. It amuses me to think that this might be remembered as Pennypacker’s First Law. Ha!

from Pennypacker’s diary 4th May 2012
For a moment I lifted my head above the parapet. Received email from cousin Larry. The family is worried about me. I wrote hundreds of words in reply, confessing to everything in some detail. Candid and unapologetic, I was ready to ‘come out’ as they say. Never pressed send. Deleted it and wrote something about being kept busy with the renovations to the house and various loose ends from work that needed tying up. Promises that I would visit him and do the family rounds in the summer. I wonder if this is a common experience, something other female muscle lovers go through.

from Pennypacker’s diary 19th July 2012
What I know. 1) Sthenolagnia exists all over the world and it is a taboo fetish everywhere even though 2) it takes many different forms. 3) The lovers of female muscle are as varied in age, social status etc. as the male population itself.

from Pennypacker’s diary 28th August 2012
Bank holiday with the family at Larry’s. Conversation turned to the Olympics and Larry, never one to hold back on his opinions, spouted forth about how impressed he was at the ‘Amazonian women’ on display at the Olympics in London, how wonderful the physiques they had developed were and that kind of thing. I agreed wholeheartedly, perhaps a little too wholeheartedly – there was more than one comment made about this being the first time me and Larry had ever agreed on anything. Could Larry possibly be one of ‘us’? On the train home I daydreamed of a test. Sending him pictures of Rene Campbell. Subject: A Real Amazon.

Enjoy!

Rebekah Kresila by Muscular Girls in Motion
Viviana Violante by ‘the street fighter’.

Forza e Bellezza: Festa della Liberazione

25th April: Liberation Day in Italy

Mainstream society may have become a little more tolerant of female muscle over the years, but this apparent acceptance is generally reserved for those women who require muscle to achieve high levels of athletic endeavour. The admiration reported in the media for Jessica Ennis’ Olympic body, for example, seems to suggest that ‘muscle for purpose’ is something mainstream society may tolerate. Nevertheless, that tolerance is not without conditions. If a woman ‘goes too far’, further than is deemed necessary for her purpose, noticeably further than her contemporaries in developing her physique, as Serena Williams has done, the amount of admiration or tolerance diminishes considerably, or simply becomes outright rejection.

But although Serena has ‘gone too far’, she still falls into the ‘muscle for purpose’ category. Female bodybuilders do not.

Consequently, all female bodybuilders challenge traditional notions of femininity, of what a woman should look like. In doing so, it has been argued that they ‘liberate’ themselves from the gender roles ascribed to them.

A small number of women in the history of the sport, however, have not just flown in the face of society at large, but have also challenged the definitions of acceptable muscular development laid down by the federations that run the sport.

Change judges, presidents, acronyms, but the concept is still the same. A female bodybuilder has enormous limitations if she wants to compete. Many more limits and boundaries in comparison to their male colleagues. In bodybuilding, subjectivity is part of the game. The federations and the economic interests behind them, that actually control them, draw the lines within which female bodybuilders can operate. What a bodybuilder ‘should be’ is always dictated by the federation and competitors must comply with codes and standards that come from above. But I have never bent to the will of others. Never have I tried to accommodate different federations’ guidelines that wanted me softer, smaller, less hard.
Viviana Violante

Viviana Violante was born in 1965 in Milan. After an injury picked up while skiing put an end to her ambitions as a shot putter, Viviana entered a gym as part of her recuperation in 1985.

I was shy, insecure and perhaps thought that with a strong and muscular body I could build a sort of ‘armour’ to protect the Viviana that was a little afraid of the world. Or maybe the desire to change and create a body, shaping it with its own hands drew me to the challenge. At the same time I wanted to be different. Maybe it was a way to get out of that ‘normality’ that scared me so much. Or maybe, more simply, we are born with this passion and it is innate. More likely is that it is a mix of all these reasons. And once I had taken the road it was with the same intention I have had ever since, to grow and improve. My first contest was a bit of a game… but once I took the stage the emotion was so strong, so all-encompassing that I wasn’t able to do without it.

Her first contest, ‘a bit of a game’, was in 1991, and by 1994 she was competing at European level. Three years later she had been a WPF World champion and turned pro on the IFBB circuit. Her fan base grew as a result of the greater exposure she was now getting, but she always placed very low. In 2000, she hung up her posing suit.

Viviana Violante retired because Viviana Violante wanted to. This is not the story of a woman ground down and forced towards retirement because she was bitter about how she had been treated as a competitor. In fact, she has never suggested, to my knowledge anyway, that retirement was anything less than what she decided she wanted to do at that stage, a decision that was entirely hers alone.

And although she found that she was able to enjoy some of the sports she had always loved – mountaineering, snowboarding, paragliding, boxing, and canoeing among others – she did not give up the weights, and continues to train to this day.

I will always be a bodybuilder. I love being ‘big’. I train every day and I find peace through being a bodybuilder. I don’t need to compete to feel this. I’m training to be as I like to be: large, tight, hard! Without being subject to obligations, limitations or rules dictated by federations or judges. In freedom!

Female bodybuilders might free themselves from the constraints of their prescribed gender roles by developing a muscular physique, but if they then deny themselves the physique they really want because of the constraints imposed by bodybuilding federations, why bother?

We can see that Viviana feels her ‘liberation’ came only after she had retired, so is this the only way for female bodybuilders to truly ‘liberate’ themselves? To turn their backs on competition? To opt out of the sport entirely so that they are no longer at the mercy of the whims of (male-dominated) federations and their ever-changing guidelines? Does real freedom for female bodybuilders mean the end of female bodybuilding competitions?

Thankfully not. The key to ‘liberation’ according to Viviana, lies in the attitude.

I’ll just tell you what I always say to the girls who want to compete and ask my advice: ‘GIRLS, train TO BECOME WHAT YOU WANT TO BE, NOT WHAT OTHERS EXPECT YOU TO BE.’ Women should be free to choose the type of physique they desire. So there will be those who like to be softer and those like me who love to be less so. The true essence of our discipline requires that every athlete, every bodybuilder wins her own competition with herself. And the real competition never ends, because with every workout we ‘fight’ against ourselves, against our limits, against what we want to correct and modify.

I love our sport. The most important thing that I gained was NOT the muscles, but the knowledge that if I want to achieve a goal I can do.

For more, visit Viviana’s website

Viviana Violante today

Happy Liberation Day!

Back Back in the Day of the Day

Ciao! Grazie a tutti per aver letto il mio blog. Oggi abbiamo una delle più grandi donne italiane, se non la più grande di tutte, la leggenda, Viviana Violante.

One of the true beasts of female bodybuilding, with a back that was big enough to build stuff on, I can recall the shock and awe I felt when seeing pictures of Viviana for the first time all those years ago. From behind she was particularly impressive, those never-ending lats spread and spread and spread, and just keep on spreading to the horizon…

Viviana, 1998

Buon divertimento!