HER PHYSIQUE A Celebration of Beautiful Female Muscle
BUTT BLASTING HOW BODYBUILDING FOR WOMEN STARTED FITNESS SUPERMODELS IAN SITREN: My Best Photos FIGURES IN THE LANDSCAPE
SPECIAL PICTORIALS LENDA MURRAY 8X Ms. Olympia TIMEA MAJOROVA Fitness Supermodel
HER PHYSIQUE MAGAZINE EDITOR AND CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER Bill Dobbins MANAGING EDITOR David Prokop ART DIRECTOR Terry Bratcher WRITERS Bill Dobbins Steve Wennerstrom Brenda Kelly Ruth Silverman Lenda Murray CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Bill Dobbins Steve Wennerstrom Ian Sitren Terry Goodlad Ralph DeHaan
TABLE OF CONTENTS EDITORIAL: WHY I STARTED THIS MAGAZINE ---Bill Dobbins LENDA MURRAY PHOTO PORTFOLIO This 8X Ms. Olympia is “The Shape of Things To Come” SUCCESS IN MODEL PHOTO SHOOTS ---Brenda Kelly IAN SITREN: MY BEST SHOTS TIMEA MAJOROVA The Most Successful Fitness Model ULTIMATE BUTT BLASTING Exercise Article by Timea Majorova FIGURE STARS PORTFOLIO The Supermodels of the Figure Industry DIET FOR DIVAS What Women Need To Know About Weight Loss FIGURES IN THE LANDSCAPE Dramatic bodies in dramatic settings. THE GREEKS DIDN’T HAVE A WORLD FOR IT Women With Beautiful Muscles Would Have Surpised Them EPILOGUE: THEY ARE ALL BODYBUILDERS Including fitness, figure, physique and competition bikini
HER PHYSIQUE: A Celebration of Beautiful Female Muscle Bill Dobbins: Why I Started This Magazine Modern bodybuilding for women started with some competitions in 1977. The sport became officially sanctioned by the NPC and the IFBB in 1980. Those early female competitors received a fairly warm reception. Lisa Lyon appeared in Playboy and was featured on TV shows like Tom Snyder’s talk show. Rachel McLish was lean, defined and shapely with superstar facial beauty. She got a lot of positive coverage and appeared on a lot of magazine covers. However, some of the women like the late Laura Combes were thought to be “too big and muscular.” Looking back on photos from that era that is a joke. Laura was hardly bigger than Rachel, just not as pretty or with a symmetry as shapely and aesthetic. Early physique women got a fair amount of coverage at the time from major industry publications like Flex and Muscle & Fitness. I know - I was the founding editor of Flex and worked for years at M&F. By the 1990s, under the editorship of Jerry Kindela, aesthetically muscular women were very evident in Flex. Kindela, who came to Weider from Flynt Publications, decided that including something a little more than 15% Rachel McLIsh - The Golden Girl of female bodybuilding and the first Ms. Olympia champion. women’s coverage in the magazine increased sales from those who were interested in the women without driving away readers primarily buying the magazine to see the men. So we had the perfect storm: The IFBB suppressing the women pros in a (vain) attempt to curry favor with the I.O.C. and an individual in a conflict of interest position of being Flex began publishing layouts called Power & Sizzle and even including nudes. So fans in charge of the pros while making money only from the male pros. The advertisers and of physique champions like Lenda Murray, Anja Langer, Sharon Bruneau and others physique magazines didn’t see (or want to see) the underlying reason for the “decline” of had a magazine they could purchase which featured photos of their favorites. the sport. They adopted a highly negative attitude toward the women and soon there were very few elite female competitors in magazine pages and hardly any getting contracts from Things changed when Peter McGough took over as editor-in-chief. Some muscular sponsors or being used in their ads. And fans of female muscle had to seek out various women remained in the pages of Flex but usually only in swimsuit or lingerie layouts. websites in order to admire their favorites. There were pretty much no muscular women With as little actual muscularity on display as possible. Meanwhile there were more to be found in print, and I found myself sharing my photos with fans mostly by means of and more fitness and then figure women featured over time - and eventually a lot of my female physique websites. “fitness models” who may or may not have ever touched a weight. Back in the 1980s Joe Weider told me it cost him $25 million to start a magazine. NowaThis coincided with problems for women’s bodybuilding in general. IFBB President days, with digital programs and electronic distribution the cost is mostly in acquiring conBen Weider wanted desperately to get bodybuilding into the Olympic Games and was tent. As somebody familiar with computers, a former editor and a photographer/writer convinced the presence of the pro women was prevnting that. Promoter (and head of as well, this puts me in a position to publish a magazine that gives adequate attention to the Pro Division for the IFBB) Wayne Demilia had been staging (and making money all the physique women - bodybuilders, fitness and figure competitors and the top fitness from) both the Mr. and Ms. Olympia contests. He stopped promoting the Ms. Olym- models. And to explain to their fans who they are and what’s going on in the world they pia but was still deriving income from the Mr. Olympia and the advertisers who put inhabit. And so I created Fit & Fabulous. money into the show. Suddenly, according to Demilia, there seemed to be very few interested in sponsoring the women and their prize money was cut drastically. Imag- Fasten your seat belts - it’s going to be a bumpy flight! ine that.
LENDA MURRAY The Shape of Things To Come This 8-time Ms. Olympia champion is considered by many to be the most aesthetic, symmetrical female bodybuilder of all time.
LENDA MURRAY Lenda Murray won the IFBB North American Championship in 1989 (the only international IFBB amateur contest held in the US) which earned her an IFBB pro card - and brought her to my attention. Lenda came out to Los Angeles early in 1990 and I did photos of her and wrote an article about her titled “The Shape of Things To Come.” in which I predicted she would win the Ms. Olympia title. I was that impressed. Back home in Michigan everyone from her gym was telling her she would not be able to win the Ms Olympia that year on her first try because she “had to pay her dues.” When the layout appeared in M&F she posted in up in the gym and says that was the first time she really believed she had a chance to win the championship that year. Which she did. It also pretty much shut up her detractors. After winning the contest in October 1990 in New York Lenda was backstage and somewhat at a loss. She was not really prepared for the reality of winning the title and didn’t know how to react. “Do I have to get on the bus to go back to the hotel?” she asked me. No, I replied. You’re Ms. Olympia you can do what you want. Take a taxi. She was planning to go to the banquet afterwards but had her whole family in town. “Do you think Wayne Demilia [promoter of the competition] would mind if my family came with me?” No, I explained. You’re Ms. Olympia. Bring whomever you want. Sure enough Demilia cleared off a large table just for Lenda and her entourage. Sitting at the table she wondered, “Do I have to sit here or can I circulate around and talk to people?” Lenda, I told her again - YOU’RE MS. OLYMPIA DO WHATEVER WHAT YOU WANT! That was - and is - Lenda. The opposite of a diva. Aggressive and competitive on stage, shy and self-effacing off it. Lenda Murray went on to win eight Ms. Olympia titles and is considered by many to be the most aesthetic of modern female bodybuilders.SW
SUPERMODEL PHOTO SHOOTS: Tips For Success By: Brenda Michiko Kelly A new supermodel is born! Is getting in front of a skilled camera lens all it takes? Not! There was a time when every supermodel was in the making. The hidden story that led to success is behind the scenes where real detailed focus comes in to pay off big time. There is no substitute for preparation. If any supermodel was discovered with just a camera phone ‘a la natural’ it is in pretend land. If you want to jump stars to supermodel status in the physique industry read on. Here are some basic modeling fundamentals to know about so you can get on the right track right from the get go.
Choosing A Photographer Quality matters here. A great photographer really can launch your career if you do your part. Remember that all photos are not the same and shooting a lot of pictures with mediocre photographers is just going to get you a lot of mediocre photos. Don’t waste time shooting with photographers who aren’t good enough to do you any good! If you are a beginner, working with beginning photographers make sense in order to give you the experience you need to become a better models. And to add photos to your portfolio. But some beginning photographers are much better than others. Look at a photographer’s work and make your judgment. There is no use wasting your time posing for pictures you can never use for anything. If you a more accomplished model, be very selective in who you work with. It doesn’t matter how many photos you pose for if they are so mediocre that they are only going to get lost in the “noise” and nobody will ever notice. Be proactive in finding photographers. Introduce yourself to local photographers and alert any out of town photographers when you are travelling. Let them know you are ready to shoot! Do: Make sure photographers who shoot with you on trade send you the photos they promised. Do: Give proper photography credit. Some photographers will give a lot of direction and some will pretty much let you do the move and groove. If you are left to yourself, do you have enough material to fill an entire shoot with different sets of movement, position and expression? Each set up takes at least an hour. You will need to have experience moving in front of the camera.
Practice Modeling Expressions You’ve worked on your body. But what about your face? Practice expression and versatility of movement. Extension of self is a different feeling in front of the camera. What feels like it looks like one thing to you might look totally different when you view it from the ‘other’ side in print or on a screen. Work to have a variety of moves and positions ready to go. There will be positions and expressions your photographer will like and want you to hold. The end result can be the shot you were looking for so learn to breathe during a pose while holding your expression steady and stomach in with an effortlessness type feel. It takes focus. Facial expression? Check. Have you practiced in the mirror yet? Good. Keep it up. I like to use the vowels. Aaey. Eeei, Ayee, Ohhw, Uuuw. Practice keeping your lips in a relaxed smile with different expressions saying the vowels slowly. The best models do not smile for all they are worth showing every single smile line on their lovely faces unless something like that is called for in the shot. You will want to have many different expressions not just one or two. Have some key memories to think of when needing inspiration. Skin Prep For a glowing body complexion in front of the camera without Photoshop, exfoliate! Skin cells are fresh for 3 days before they slough off so for best results, scrub, spray tan and moisturize - all 3 days before. This is best done with a test run so there are no surprises of weird coloring of a tan gone bad or allergic reaction break outs. On the morning of your shoot, moisturize with your own product to go under any other oil application applied later. I like to bring my own moisturizer and oil mixture since my skin is sensitive. Do: Wear disposable gloves to apply color if you are doing it yourself to avoid discoloration of palms, knuckles and cuticles. Don’t forget your feet! If they will be out, get a pedicure or do one yourself. Scrub away any calluses and trim nails. If using body paint, remember to blend lightly from the leg down to the ankles and feet. Ankles, knuckles and bottoms of feet and hands ‘take’ body color more so they need less.
Wardrobe You never have enough wardrobe for photo shoots. Ideally, you should have different outfits for every photo session. What you wear doesn’t need to be expensive, high-quality fashion. It just has to look good in pictures. I used to wander into any bikini store I came across and look for suits to wear. Sometimes a $10 bikini, a cute top or pair of boy shorts are just what you need to fill out your wardrobe. You can also shop on the Internet. Remember, you don’t have to purchase lingerie at Victoria’s Secret in order to have something that looks good in a photo. Although there is no problem adding outfits to your collection that you’d also like to wear in real life. Pack with attention for the best set up looks. Choose 5-10 different set up looks. A full day of shooting is usually a 3-5+ set up plan. If you don’t have a stylist you can become your own with some help and input from your photographer. If he is any good, he’ll have clear ideas on styling depending on what kind of lighting and backdrop he’s using and what make-up choices are being made. Do: Accessorize with the rule of 3. Find 3 things that go with the ‘shot’ wardrobe. Like, bikini shot set up #1 would include bikini and 3 things that compliment like; ear rings, necklaces, sheer scarves, cover – ups, anklets, hats, sunglasses, flowers, beach theme items and don’t forget the high heels! You can always ditch any accessory during the shoot if it doesn’t work in. I like to have more than one option of them and choose with my photographer on the day of. What looks good to you alone in your dressing room might not be what works best when you are all put together.
Do: Leave room for last minute inspirations of choice changes! Do: Have the time of your life building your personal style and see it materialize in pictures!
Make-Up Please! Hair and Make-Up can make or break your best shot. Outstanding artists can truly make a beautiful complexion and hair pieces look perfect for shoot durations so do look into a pro for the job. I do know models who can do their own make-up and hair more beautifully than any one else but that is pretty rare. Most need help or at least practice before an outstanding shoot. Do: Make sure your face foundation shade blends well into your neckline. Don’t over glitter. Unless it is in your theme for random shades of flashy areas, use low or no glitter. Do use false eyelashes. They look better than 5 coats of mascara for sure. To line eyes, use short sketchy strokes until desired effect is established. One hard black line looks just like that sometimes – hard black line. By the way, that is an eyeliner Don’t. Do change up your make-up shades and colors during the shoot set up switches. Guys: Yes, you will wear make-up. It’s OK. It washes off. Some foundation, lip color or clear gloss, sometimes blush and some eyeliner are called for. Ask a girl whom you trust for help with an opinion if you are not sure. Long hair should be washed the day before not the morning of! Super clean hair is slippery and can be fly away so it doesn’t hold style as well. Slightly ‘dirty’ hair is better for holding and styling. You will be surprised at how ‘sexy’ your ‘dirty’ hair will look!
During your shoot: Start your shoot with the most ‘natural’ or low key of your set up looks and build to your most dramatic makeup or any super oily or wet set ups. If lines on your hair or body are an issue, plan carefully on what you wear in what order. Don’t start a shoot in your tightest outfit with a lot of elastic everywhere. It could pull off your tan or leave indentations on your skin for the rest of the shoot. Hot posing tip: When you hit a pose your photographer likes, make smaller moves around the big picture instead of changing up the entire look. Do: Fill the pose. Change one thing at a time, either a head angle or arm placement. One at a time. Not both at once. Use all angles and not just ones you are comfortable with. Don’t abruptly change dramatically from pose to pose like standing to sitting. Know what happens when you move your angles such as bringing your elbows closer to the camera to appear bigger and bending away to minimize. Do: Practice in front of a mirror poses that are standing, kneeling and lying down. Practice facing front, back and both sides to find your favorites and also to especially find out which poses you should never do in front of a camera ever again!
Don’t be afraid to touch your own body – with care. For instance, when placing hand on hip, do not push, grab or pull your skin. Same with your face. Hands and fingers matter! Practice hand placements. You can spot an amateur model by the unaware hand ‘claw’ marring an otherwise beautiful photo. Make sure your fingers are extended and relaxed. Not splayed out unless you are being scary. Where is your thumb? Put it with the rest of your hand. It is not to be out alone unless you are hitchin’ a ride.
Nude or ‘partial’ Nudity Guidelines: No one should try to force you to pose nude. This is a personal choice of each individual model. Trust in your photographer is essential. Do realize you are in a ‘Body’ industry if you are interested in fitness modeling for a career. Don’t shoot photos you won’t want to see on the web in five years. Be very, very careful whom you do nude photos with if you care about that sort of thing. Remember, in the age of the Internet whatever photos you shoot are out there forever. You might later ask a photographer it take the nude photos he did of you off the Web, but everything is everywhere so you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
All Model Alert Do be careful and watch out for bogus photoshoot projects or other projects someone offers just to hit on you. They are truly time wasters of talented peoples’ priorities. Make certain you are easily available for shoots and remain careful about being taken advantage of at the same time with self evaluation and references. You don’t need a “manager” you need jobs. Sometimes you have to pay for stuff because “free” is too expensive so figure in a marketing budget. Do: Cross market wherever applicable with other key project team members. Buying everything yourself can get expensive so network with other models, companies and many models sell photoshoot items on their websites or eBay. Do: Maintain a high market value by awareness of control of your image. Promotion of your name brand includes protection. Buy your domain name, protect it. Don’t let some “fan” build you a site and register the name to other than you. W Do: Use websites, social media and appearing at Expos to raise awareness of support to be visible to as much of your fan base as possible. Sponsors look for superior pictures with high interest number stats as a huge plus on consideration of sponsorship so have promo packages ready to go in paper and digital forms.
TIMEA MAJOROVA
The Most Successful Fitness Model
TIMEA MAJOROVA - FITNESS COMPETITOR
somebody of Wayne's stature, that it was accurate, on the money and out to be followed to the letter. Unfortunately, that turned out Before Timea Majorova (pronounced "May- to be quite a mistake. or-Ova") was a successful, international fitness model and entrepreneur she was an an In any event, Timea began losing muscle. She dieted hard and started doing hours of amateur and pro IFBB Fitness Champion. Timea is Slovakian. Slovakia used to be part cardio ever day. She showed up at the Arof Czechoslovakia, which was one of those nold Fitness Contest in 1998 prepared to be rewarded for all her efforts. Instead, she was efforts to put different ethnic groups together in the same country that gave us that pretty much ignored. At least she had attracted a lot of attention out of her Ms. Olympia wonderful national called Yugoslavia. Fitness appearance, even if she hadn't placed as high as she expected. In Columbus, she The Czechs and the Slovakians, however, placed badly AND was hardly noticed to have a much better relationships than the Serbs and the Kosovo Albanians, and Timea boot. Hardly a step in the right direction.
too much rather than too little. For people like this, too much is never enough and nothing succeeds like excess. So instead of abandoning her efforts to “lean” herself down, Timea devoted herself to working twice as hard, dieting to the point where she barely had energy for her workouts and grinding out the cardio no matter how badly she felt.
The result, unfortunately, was predictable. Timea showed up at the 1998 Jan Tana looking like a wraith. She finished even lower in the standings. Worse, although she usually proved extremely competitive in the athletic round (this time on a rowing machine) she was barely able to get through the minute of effort involved and ended up lying on the is very popular and well received in the Czech capital of Prague. In fact, to promote Timea, like many really competitive athletes, ground afterwards, breathless and exhausted. an international women's physique contest, will almost always err on the side of doing the promoters put up a huge billboard featuring Timea, photographed by....er...Bill Dobbins. I first saw Timea at the 1997 Ms. Olympia Fitness Contest in New York. Timea had won the IFBB World Amateur Fitness Competition and qualified to turn pro. She showed up on stage wearing an outfit which left little to the imagination in the area of the glutes, and her performance sizzled with sex and personality. "Mommy," I said to Women's Physique World editor-in-chief Steve Wennerstrom," as I watched Timea do her routine (up-close-and-personal through a 300 mm lens), "now I know the difference between little boys and little girls." Actually, Timea did not do as well as she hoped in that contest. She was, according to head of the IFBB pro division Wayne Demilia, "too muscular." Of course, Timea assumed that whenever she got feedback from
That, it turned out, proved to be the end of the experiment. “If I couldn’t get the judges to pay attention,” Timea says, “I decided I should at least please myself. I didn’t like the way I looked with so little muscle. Being that small was not why I spent all those yearsin the gym working out. I don’t want to be a bodybuilder, but even at my most muscular I’m tiny compared to pro women like Kim Chizevsky, Yolanda Hughes and Vicky Gates. And it was pretty obvious to me at that point that, no matter what advice I had been given by the IFBB, being that lean and small was NOT what the judges wanted to see.” So Timea went back to the weights,
cut back on her cardio and less-
ened the serverity of her diet. It’s always easy to regain muscle than to build it in the first place, so the density, muscularity and hardness came back relatively quickly. Timea looked better and she felt much better as well. Her energy levels remained high, even during her diet. She was able to project the erotcially-charged personality that had attracted so much attention at her first Ms. Olympia Fitness. And her change of direction Paid off. Timea finished 6th at the 1998 Ms. Olympia Fitness in France, and 6th at the 1999 Arnold Fitness Championships in Columbus. “Everybody told me how much better I looked,” Timea exclaims. “Especially the judges. So I learned a lesson. Of course you have to pay attention to advice, but you have to learn to decide for yourself how you should look on stage. Fitness is not bodybuilding, but it’s not a beauty contest or bikini competition either. The judges and the audience want muscle---sexy muscle, for sure. Not too extreme. But still muscle. So that’s the last time I intend to compete looking so emaciated. I’m proud of having muscle, I think it looks good, so that’s the way I’m going to look whenever I’m in a show.”
TIMEA THE MODEL Timea eventually won a pro fitness contest and place well in a number of others. But as exciting as her routines were she was not a gymnast and the gymnasts were winning a lot of titles at that point. Plus became tired of dealing with te problems - and especially the poliics - of being an IFBB competitor. So she decided to concentrate on developing her career away from the competition stage. For example, to concentrateW on modeling - the best decision she ever made. Nowadays Timea Majorova is a soughtafter model both in the US and Europe. The is hired to work virtually ever fitness expo on the planet. She has her own competition in Hungary and is developed a range of products to be sold under her name. “I enjoyed competing,” says Timea, “and winning the IFBB World Amateur Fitness title and competing as a pro. But my life now is wonderful. I have so many friends all over the world, I get to travel, I can earn a living doing appearances and photo shoots - which I
really enjoy.” And she no longer has to deal with the physical and mental demands of competition, the wear and tear on her body and the constant politics.
Timea is a happy woman. And so are her many fans who get to see her at expos, in ads, on the cover of magazines and in numerous photo layouts.
ULTIMATE BUTT BLASTING By Timea Majorova - IFBB Fitness Champion It’s rare that you see a female physique competitor without a high, hard and round butt. The kind of glutes most women admire and would like to have. But there are some women bodybuilders, fitness and figure competitors as well as those who enter bikini contests - who don’t get the results they want from their regular workouts. And others who like what they have achieved but just want more of it. The problem is that most don’t know how to do the one primary exercise that best develops the glutes and the hamstrings. A fundamental power movement that makes sufficient demands on these very large muscles. Old fashioned Hack Squats. To do real Hack Squats you need to position your feet well forward of your center of gravity so that the effort is shifted to the glutes and hamstrings and away from the quadriceps. This movement is a squat/less press exercise but your rear comes down well behind your feet, not right over them. You can do this on a leg press machine but I prefer the Smith Machine because of how it allows you to set your feet. I position myself under the bar,
holding it across the back of my shoulders. I move my feet well forward. Then I bend my knees and squat down so that my rear just touches the floor behind me feet. The further forward the feet the more the back of the leg does the work and the less the quadriceps are involved. At the bottom I come to a dead stop and then I press back up - but only about three quarters of the way. If you straighten you legs more than this you end up hitting the quads, not the back of the leg. At the very bottom you are working the glutes. As you start up you engage the hamstrings. Stop at three quarters of the range of movement. Work the quads with conventional squats or leg presses. Start out light until you know what the correct weight is to perform 12 to 14 reps. At first it won’t seem as if you are doing that much. But the next day you will really feel that these muscles have been worked. And there is no other exercise to compare with this for developing and shaping the back of the legs - not squats, leg presses, leg curls or various machines
FIGURE STARS: The Supermodels of the Fitness Industry
FIGURE SUPERMODELS: Why Aren’t they Super-Famous? By Bill Dobbins When competition for female bodybuilders began in the late 1970s, the women involved quickly became media darlings. They were featured on televisions shows, in documentaries and even the subject of a Sports Illustrated article. Rachel McLish, the first Ms. Olympia, became practically a household name. A few years later Cory Everson was given her own cable television show and acting roles in movies and on television. Those days are long gone. Women in physique competitors got bigger and more muscular as they trained harder and longer. Of course they got bigger – isn’t that what the physique magazines say will happen when you follow the advice of their training and diet articles? But while everyone loves kittens not everybody likes cats. As as these women continued to develop a lot of people began to question whether their bodies were feminine/attractive/sexy/natural. In the 1990s we saw two new kinds of female physique competition: fitness and figure. The fitness women tended to have bodies suitable for gymnastics, because the ability to do a gymnastics performance helped them considerably with the judges. But figure involves no performance so the body type that tends to prevail – particularly on the pro level where there are no height classes – has long, lean proportions, talllooking if not actually tall. In other words, the successful pro figure physique could be described as being like a conventional fashion model with some degree of obvious muscularity and muscular definition. In other words, a “figure supermodel.” Given past history where we saw how successful the industry was in promoting women like Rachel and Co-
rey, you would think magazines and advertisers would be jumping at the chance to make use these new “figure supermodels.” After all, they are not only beautiful, sexy women but they train and diet like the target audience and use the products being sold by sponsors and advertisers. And yet this rarely seems to happen. Instead we usually see images of “fitness models” (who often don’t work out very much or, at least, don’t look as if they do) or simply conventional bikini models with exaggeratedly large breast implants. Rachel and Cory were champions as well as beautiful women so they could be promoted as something more than just sex objects. That is rarely true of bikini models. Additionally, in this age of the Internet, anyone can go online to newsgroups and see – for free – hundreds of thousands of photos of women much more “explicit” than any magazine or ad could or would want to publish. Some are worried that the “mainstream” won’t be interested in these women. Well, the general public at the moment seems totally uninterested in physique competitors, male or female. And in a world in which there is a glut of buxom girls in bikinis it would be hard to promote women like this and be heard about the “noise.” Focusing instead on long, lean figure supermodels, who posses both beauty and legitimate athletic credentials, would seem a much better option. After all, the idea of shape, sculpting and maintaining your body by means of weight training, cardio and diet is something that is totally mainstream nowadays. Men who work out are highly attracted to beautiful, “in-shape” women like this and many women in the general population would love to look like them – or at least,
more like them than they do.
Heather Green
Federica Belli
Valerie Waugaman
Cassandra Creech
Christine Johansen
Anna “Blade” Johnson
Kerstin the Amazon
Fern Assard
Nancy Georges Viviana Soldano
Amber Littlejohn
Federica Belli
DIET FOR DIVAS
Things Women Need To Know About Weight Loss Dieting
there is much more attention given to women’s sports today than in the past). The end result is that burning calories to stay lean is more difficult for women than for men. WEIGHT LOSS IS NOT LINEAR If you over-feed a rat for a day it gains weight. If you underfeed it, it loses weight. A rat’s metabolism balances out on a daily basis, which is one reason this animal is often used for dietary experiments. The human metabolism does not work like this. You can take in excess calories for days or even weeks before you see a noticeable gain in body weight. You can do on a strict diet and have to wait a considerable time before the scale shows you are dropping pounds. I spoke to one competitive bodybuilder who told me he would begin a strict diet, write down all his food intake, count his calories (actually prepare his food in advance and store it in plastic containers) but would not see any really significant weight loss for weeks. Weight loss is not linear. It doesn’t proceed at a predictable rate. You have to take a long-term view, not worry about day-to-day changes and just stick with the program and give it time to work.
THE 5% DIFFERENCE Dieting for fat loss and weight control for women and men is about 95% the same. But there are some essential differences that women need to be aware of when developing a diet strategy. WOMEN ARE BOTTOM HEAVY When women express concern with putting on too much weight around the hips, thigh and butt, they are recognizing biological reality. Women carry a lot of their body mass below the waist, which is another consequence of the need to carry unborn children in their bodies for 9 months. A lower center of gravity makes that situation a lot easier. Women will generally put on fat in these areas first, and when they diet these are the last parts of the body to give up fat deposits. So although women will lose body weight on the right program as will a man, the loss of fat around the body will not happen in the same proportions. Women Burn Fewer Calories When you hear the term burning calories, it should be taken literally. Your metabolism takes fuel and oxygen and turns them into energy through a process of oxidation. Fast oxidation is fire. Slow oxidation is rust. The process of oxidation that provides us with energy to sustain life is somewhere in the middle. Fat doesn’t burn calories, nor does water. Your metabolic rate is based on the amount of muscle you have (although the brain burns a surprising amount of energy), how hard you exercise and for how long. That is, energy expended equals the amount of work done - whether that is a lot of work in a short period or less work spread over time. So women normally burn fewer calories at any given bodyweight because, as we discussed, you are generally smaller than men and a smaller percentage of your body weight is muscle. Add to that the fact that women, from the time they are girls, tend to be less active (although
WEIGHT LOSS IS NOT PROPORTIONATE Genetics determines where on the body the metabolism will access body fat from when it requires additional fuel. Women don’t store excess fat in the same places as do men, and the order in which areas of the body lose weight during a diet are different as well. Typically, the last place men get lean is around the waist. But that’s often the first place women see the pounds going off them. Women will usually experience fat loss in the upper body first, and in fact might end up with a lean waistline, and even defined abdominals, while still holding a lot of excess weight around their hips, thighs and butt. (There are exceptions. I know of several female bodybuilders who develop small waists only at the very end of their diets. But, as I said, they are exceptions.) The fact that it takes so much longer to see weight loss below the waist - and that is normally where you see the fat stored when you gain - is simply due to the biological nature of the female body. It is not cause to become discouraged. If you continue to stay on your weight loss program those areas may be the last to slim down, but it will happen eventually. NO SUCH THING AS CELLULITE You hear about this less nowadays, but some women are still concerned about something that has been called “cellulite.” This refers to dimples or pockets of fat that appear on the hips and back of the legs. Actually, the term was invented in order to sell products. There is no such thing. What happens is that connective tissue in the area can shrink, squeezing adipose fat cells in the area to pucker up as they become constricted. Since women tend to lose fat last in these areas, they can become convinced that they are dealing with some kind of “diet resistant” fat and be talked into buying products to deal with his problem. Fat is fat, and while it may take time to deal with these areas of the body you just have to keep on your program. Resistance and cardio training will help keep muscles, tendons, ligaments and other tissue healthy and strong, which will also contribute to developing a lean, shapely structure in all areas of the body.
DIMINISHING RETURNS The last part of a diet is the hardest part of a diet. Because weight loss is not linear, it not only proceeds at unpredictable rates, but can be faster or slower depending on how many pounds you might be overweight. The weight loss process usually starts slow and then accelerates - how fast depending on how much overweight you might be. But towards the latter part of the diet, as you are getting closer to your target weight, further progress becomes more and more difficult. This is called diminishing returns. So it can be discouraging for women to be working hard at dieting, lose a lot of body fat and still find they aren’t fitting into jeans they used to be comfortable in. Just keep in mind that the process will work given time and discipline, so remain patient and disciplined and don’t give up on your efforts. By the way, you experience diminishing returns working out with resistance exercises in the gym as well. An untrained female, starting this kind of exercise for the first time, could easily see her strength double or triple in a few weeks. But after these initial gains, diminishing returns kicks in and her progress will continue, but not at the same rate. FOOD AS A DRUG In my ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEED diet book (Amazon: Kindle) I go into detail about the difference between hunger (needing to eat) and appetite (wanting to eat). But there is another factor that needs to be taken into consideration: Certain types of foods can act on the body like a drug, and can actually be addicting. The three types of food that have the most drug-like affect on the body art fat, sugar and salt. Each of these foods (including salt, which is a mineral) was difficult to obtain in our species’ past and so we evolved a special craving for them. But nowadays they are so readily available, fast food and processed foot are loaded with them, that we can easily get too much of the “big three” too often and develop what acts like a physical dependence. The result of this kind of addiction and the subsequent over-eating are problems like obesity, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure - to name a few. This is not just a matter of people not liking how they look. It is a major public health issue. By the way, bodybuilders have learned that eating a fairly bland and repetitive diet makes dieting easier. Scientific research has shown the same thing. Obviously, most of us don’t want to live our whole lives eating nothing but boring food or putting the same things on the menu day after day. But there are plenty of healthy, nutritious and delicious foods you can eat that are not overly loaded with fat, sugar and salt as is what we call fast food and many processed foods. That’s why, in order to diet successfully, it’s best to stick to eating clean - that is, “real” not highly processed food, properly prepared, so that you are not adding unnecessary calories or ingredients that convert your food into the equivalent of a drug. BODY TYPE We’ve looked at the fact that women’s bodies differ from men’s in terms of size, amount and distri-
bution of muscle, water and fat retention, metabolic rate and hormones. But different women also have different body types, as anyone can clearly see looking at a room full of females. Some of those body types tend to be naturally fatter or leaner, and this has a lot of effect when it comes to successful dieting. The idea of somatotyping is based largely the difference people exhibit in body composition. That is, how much of your total body weight is fat, muscle, skeletal structure and water. Your basic body type will help dictate how much of what kind of diet you need to get lean and what kind of exercises will help you achieve this. Traditionally, the way body types are categorized as some degree or proportion of: ECTOMORPH - long, lean proportions, long muscles, low body fat MESOMORPH - thicker muscle mass, large boned, strong ENDOMORPH - rounder body, softer, higher fat proportion An example of an ectomorph would be most runway fashion models. An Olympic sprinter or weightlifter would be classified as a mesomorph. To see what an extreme endomorph looks like, tune in the next Oprah show. These are generalizations, and measurements involve how much of each characteristic describes your body, but this does serve to illustrate a general range of what different bodies are like. But while your genetics limits the changes you can make to your body composition, you can alter your physique quite a bit by diet and exercise. An endomorphic woman who exercises and diets to go from 30% to 15% body fat has made no changes in her genetics but will have radically altered her body nonetheless. You lose fat by diet and exercise. But our bodies each have a certain “set point” which they perceive as “normal.” As your behavior changes and alters your body composition, your metabolism will try to adjust to bring things back in line with the normal set point. To maintain homeostasis. To achieve this, it will recruit our brains, thoughts, appetites and emotions to help achieve this goal. So the problem somebody with a body like Oprah has is (1) she is a woman, and is smaller and has less muscle mass than a male; and (2) she is endomorphic, and her normal body composition tends toward being fat. In Oprah’s case, who goes up and down in body weight, despite having lots of money and all kinds of help from personal trainer and chefs, shows how much of the problem is behavioral and psychological rather than strictly physical. Again, knowing better and doing better are often two very different things. A quart of ice cream at bedtime will sabotage an otherwise terrific diet program. By the way, before anyone bemoans the fact that they might be more endomorphic than they like, remember that for 99% of the time our species has been in existence we always faced the possibility of famine. Women who were naturally fatter because of body type stood a better chance of survival than more slender, ectomorphic individuals. It’s just that times have changed and nobody has yet explained this to evolution. When you make changes in your body such as losing weight and/or gaining muscle, the trick is then to maintain this long enough for the body to consider this state normal and change the relevant set points.
BODY COMPOSITION When we talk about “losing weight,� the subject should really be concerns about altering and regulating body composition. Body composition takes into consideration all aspects of your weight: how much fat, how much muscle and its distribution around the body. When you are talking about dieting for weight loss, the real aim should be loss of body fat. The two things are not really the same. The body is not very specific about what kind of tissue it metabolizes when you diet strenuously. It is always using some proportion of protein (amino acids), carbohydrate (glycogen) and fat for fuel. In fact, the harder you diet, in most cases, the larger proportion of muscle your body will be using to metabolize for energy. So an effective diet avoids putting too much of this kind of stress on the body, and includes exercise to (1) burn more calories without having to diet any harder, and (2) stimulate your body so you sacrifice as little muscle as possible or even increase muscle mass. NEGATIVE CALORIC BALANCE Body fat is simply excess energy stored by the body for future use. When your body takes in more calories than it needs (positive caloric balance), it stores the energy as fat in adipose cells. When you take in more energy than you expend, you are in negative caloric balance. At this point, the body tends to make up the difference by metabolizing stored body fat - sort of like making a withdrawal from your energy bank account. Eating provides the body with energy and physical activity burns it off. The longer and more intensely you exercise, the more energy you expend. Your caloric balance is a measure of how much energy is taken in versus how much is expended. There are two ways controlling calories. The first is by eating less. The second is by exercising more. The most effective weight control diet involves doing some of both. SUMMARY Dieting for weight loss, combined with exercise to accelerate that weight loss and to maintain or build lean body mass is a process that is much the same for both women and men. You stay in negative caloric balance over time by restricting calories and doing endurance exercise, and you stimulate your muscles with bodybuilding-type resistance training. Women respond to this type of program just as do men - although your body type is a factor in how much or how quickly this response takes place - but there are differences, mostly due to the natural differences between the male and female body. Women tend to be smaller than men. Because of the preponderance in their bodies of female hormones, a larger percentage of their body weight is fat and water. Muscle is what burns calories, and since women usually have less than men do, even men of comparable size, dieting is more difficult for them. Because of bell curve distribution of physical traits, there will be some women who naturally have more muscle, more male hormones in their system and/or who are bigger than average. But the basic strategies for weight loss and improving body composition are much the same for everyone, no matter body type.
Lea Waide
MY FAVORITE PHOTOS A Personal Portolio by
Ian Sitren
Sherry Goggin
Randalene Sergent
Ian L. Sitren - Photographer - SecondFocus Best known for his work during the growth years of industry giant Bodybuilding.com, Ian brought to the public the then new concepts of competition photograph coverage online for the public bright and early the first thing in the morning for both bigger NPC shows and the major shows such as the Arnold and Olympia. Ian also was the first to work with Bodybuilding.com to provide inspirational computer wallpapers of athlete photographs which he did almost exclusively for two years. Ian was also responsible for creating and photographing some of the ground breaking advertising of Bodybuilding.com including the introduction of Jamie Eason as a Bodybuilding.com spokesperson and athlete and world famous trainer Charles Glass training an English bulldog with weights in a gym! “I always reserve the right to photograph anything I find fun and interesting” says Ian. And of course he has never lost his sense for photographing women in more scenic locations. With that in mind Ian has now accepted the opportunity to be “Special Stills Photographer” in a few weeks on a movie shooting in Budapest. The cast including legendary women Ann Margret, Rita Moreno and Gena Rowlands. How fun is that! www.secondfocus.com
Stacey Naito
Duyen Ariss
Victoria Kirsanova
Wendy Lucas
Sasha Brown
Bailey
HARDBODY WOMEN
The Greeks DIDN’T Have A Word For It By Bill Dobbins
Erika Thompson/Daniel Hill
The Ancient Greeks would be surprised at the development of modern, male bodybuilders, but they would recognize that they are doing. But there is no precedent in Greece or anywhere else in history for women at all levels who develop their muscles for primarily aesthetic purposes.
Oksana Grishina True, they were the first civilization in the western tradition to fully celebrate the human body. And there was a reason for this. Human beings only began the transition from a hunter-gatherer way of life to an agricultural economy some 20,000 years ago, and the history of modern, agrarian societies only goes back 5,000 to 10,000 years. Becoming farmers changed human life dramatically. People began to live better than they ever had before. They had more to eat, developed increasingly sophisticated technologies, and started to trade across vast distances. Eventually, they created complex civilizations and such vast empires as that of Mesopotamia and Egypt under the pharaohs. But most of these early civilizations were theocratic in nature. And cultures in which religion rules tend to respect tradition more than they encourage innovation. “Man is the measure of all things” is a humanistic rather than theocratic philosophy. So a theocratic society is not likely to engage in wholesale glorification of the human form. Then along came the Greeks. The Spartans were a military culture, the Athenians invented democracy, so although they weren’t irreligious, priests did not rule Greek society. The Greeks took simple Egyptian geometry and created a complex system of mathematics. They calculated the circumference of the earth with surprising accuracy. They developed sophisticated systems of philosophy, the influence of which is still with us today. They were also responsible for another invention---the professional athlete. Games of athletic skill have probably been around as long as people. Most were based on the specific skills needed for activities like hunting and war: running, jumping, throwing, weightlifting, as well as facility with a variety of weapons. The Greeks made these games into an institution. The Olympics. And many of the participants in these games were full-time professional athletes who didn’t have to toil for a living but lived pampered lives, with the best of food and all that Greek society could provide, and the leisure to devote themselves full-time to physical training. Nowadays, we know what happens when talented athletes are left alone to eat, sleep and train with the minimum of distractions---you get superior athletes, with highly-developed, muscular physiques. So Greek artists didn’t create all those sculptures of male athletes simply because they lived in a humanistic tradition that
celebrated the human body (although that was certainly a factor). Instead, Greek artists used these athletic bodies as inspiration for their work because they lived in the culture which invented this kind of physique in the first place! There had been muscular men before, but never a whole class of professional athletes with a degree of muscular development and aesthetic quality never before seen on the planet. (We know this kind of historic transformation is possible because we’ve seen it ourselves. In our era, it’s called bodybuilding. Michaelangelo may have created inspiring images of the muscular athletic male, but he never saw the likes of Steve Reeves, Sergio Oliva, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Lee Haney. Until the invention of modern bodybuilding, human beings never looked like this in the whole history of the species.) But while the Greeks were busy inventing the modern athletic male body, it’s highly unlikely they would have thought to explore the same concept for women. Because women didn’t amount to much in ancient Greek society. For example, if a well-to-do Greek man gave a party, he invited his friends, but wives were not included among the guests. Wives stayed in the kitchen with the children. For female companionship, there was a professional class of prostitutes called “heterai,” who, like the Geisha, were also proficient in such cultural niceties such as massage, the playing of musical instruments and the art of conversation. So the Greeks were no more likely to include women in their exploration of the ideal athletic body any more than they would tolerate women becoming doctors, lawyers or ship’s captains, for that matter. And subsequent cultures, through Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment followed suit. No, the idea that women should be free to explore their natural talents in a whole range of traditionally male-only fields is a very modern invention. As is the sport of bodybuilding for women. So the female bodybuilding physique is disturbing to many becomes it’s so truly a new idea. When it comes to women’s bodybuilding, history is now. Forget the Greeks. They had the Olympics, but not the Miss Olympia. And if historical tradition doesn’t include the ideal of the athletic female physique, then maybe it’s time to start a new tradition!
Inga Neverauskaite
Throughout history, the human body has been one of the primary and most traditional subjects of art. At first, depicted by artists for essentially symbolic purposes, after the flowering of the Renaissance the human body began to be celebrated for it’s own sake, “man as the measure of all things.” In more modern times, as artists began to explore the meaning of art itself, they increasingly turned to the “figure study,” which focused on “form for form’s sake” with no thought to it’s abstract meaning. Sometime around the beginning of this century, all this began to change. While a few artists continued to focus their attention on the human body, most did not. And the work of those who did was usually far from the figure study. How did this happen? One reason may be simply that the tradition of depicting the human body had pretty much played itself out. After thousands of years, everything that could be done had been done. There was just nothing more to say. But now there is a new kind of body, one that has never existed before: the aesthetically developed muscular female. Artists have dealt with the muscular male since at least the time of the ancient Greeks, but the look we associate with the modern female bodybuilder has only been around for a little more than 20 years. No artist of a previous era could have possibly concerned himself with this kind of physique. It did not exist and could hardly even have been imagined. When I first saw competitive women bodybuilders I quickly realized this was “something new under the sun.” How often does an artist get to be the first to explore an entirely new subject? I decided to try to shoot them, in a sense, in the way Ansel Adams photographed Yosemite, treating their bodies as dramatic landscapes. In pursuit of this goal I have often photographed nudes. Obviously, you can’t see the shape, form and detail of the body when it is covered. And what shape! What form! What detail! If Michelangelo were alive today, these are the kinds of bodies he would choose as models for his sculpture. But the nude, it turns out, has not only fallen out of fashion in the art world, it has taken on some very negative connotations in our culture as a whole. The nude has been replaced by just plain nakedness. There is more nakedness than ever before---in movies, books, magazines, videos and now even on the internet. But all this nakedness has been ghettoized. It exists primarily the world of “adult” movies or so-called “men’s magazines.” It flourishes in the X-rated world of porn. It is as if society has said, “Nakedness is okay, as long as it’s dirty.” But any kind of serious artistic nudity is not to be tolerated. It reminds me of a quote from Woody Allen. When asked if he thought sex was dirty, Allen replied, “Yes, but only if you do it right.” He was describing a world in which erotic nakedness is more acceptable (in its place) than artistic nudity. And in which the most prurient display of blatant (even underage) female sexuality in advertisements, commercials, music videos and the rest of the media is allowed as long as certain norms of style are observed---that is, as long as the women don’t show certain parts of their bodies or engage in sexual behavior that is just too crudely obvious. As I said, all this makes it a difficult time to be attempting serious body photography, shooting figure studies. Especially of female bodybuilders. Certainly, we are supposed to be living in an enlightened age. The “feminist revolution” that has been ongoing since the 1960s is supposed to have freed women to be able to exercise their talents and abilities in any field for which they are qualified. But this freedom that has been granted to women lawyers and judges, jet pilots and engineers and female athletes in all other sports is still being denied to women who wish to compete in the sport of bodybuilding. Why? It works like this: People who used to say that it was “unnatural” for women to involve themselves with business or politics are now saying the same thing about female bodybuilders. Those who used to deny women the opportunity to run in long distance races for fear they would “injure their reproductive organs” are today concerned that female bodybuilders will “turn themselves into men.” The logic is clear: Men have always been muscular, women have not. Therefore, any woman who develops extreme muscularity is, ipso facto, becoming masculine. Another line of opposition is based on the assumption that women can’t become that muscular without using anabolic drugs, so any woman who is highly muscular must be using some kind of chemical agent to allow her to develop this kind of body. But there is no research to back up this claim. In sports that are drug tested on a regular basis such as track, shot-put, discus throwing and weightlifting women continue to get faster, stronger and more powerful, and to develop more muscle mass and muscularity. What makes the aesthetic development of muscles displayed by female bodybuilders any different?
Suzan Kaminga Women have always been told by society what was to be considered attractive, and these standards of beauty have constantly changed with the times: being heavy or being thin; having big breasts or small ones; having an ultra-feminine, curvy look or being boyishly straight up-and-down; with milk-white skin or a glowing tan. Fashions in “femininity” have come and gone---but having aesthetically developed muscles was certainly never one of them. So it’s obvious that the way these women look challenge people’s deeply held beliefs about body conformation and gender identity, and causes many to react with anger and intolerance. So it’s no wonder that I sometimes find my work frustrating. I’m trying to do a kind of figure study that is too “respectable” for erotic publications and has too much nudity for most of the mainstream media. And I’m trying to explore the aesthetic qualities of a version of the female body that much of the public seems reluctant to accept. Fortunately, as the number one fan of bodybuilding for as long as anyone can remember, Joe Weider has continued to support bodybuilding for women since it’s beginning in the late 1970s and has given me the opportunity to make the photographs that were included in my book The Women: Photographs of the Top Female Bodybuilders (Artisan, NY, 1994) and Modern Amazons (Taschen, 2003) as well as the ones featured in my websites The Female Physique Art Gallery and The Female Physique Webzine/Gallery. Joe believes that, in spite of the current opposition they face, what these women have achieved will someday be recognized and accepted. It’s just a matter of time. It is unthinkable that something as revolutionary and significant as the physiques these women have created will long go unappreciated In my own case, I try to keep in mind a saying I heard not long ago: It would hardly be a revolution if everybody agreed with you the beginning, would it?
Swedish bodybuilder Irene Anderson - The Greeks would not have had a word for her.
FIGURES IN THE LANDSCAPE Photos by Bill Dobbins
Joele Smith
Brigita Brezovac
Arina Manta FEMALE HARDBODIES are creating a new awareness and definition of “femininity.� Whether they are bigger women bodybuilders or they have smaller and sleeker bodies like fitness and figure competitors, their physiques present aesthetically sculpted muscle. Because of this, I have always found the best outdoor setting to photograph them involves start, dramatic landscape: mountains, deserts, the beach, for example. While I can shoot them in soft, rolling hills or in an area with piney woods, these settings do not lend themselves as well to creating images that fully do these women justice.
Brigita Brezovac
Yaxeni Oriquen
Joele Smith When I’m ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I’m interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without. - Ansel Adams
Erika Thompson
Juliette Bergmann
Viviana Soldano Kerstin Schulze
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed. - Ansel Adams
Melissa Dettwiller
I am sure the next step will be the electronic image, and I hope I shall live to see it. I trust that the creative eye will continue to function, whatever technological innovations may develop. - Ansel Adams - 1983
Alina Popa
Chris Bongiovanni It’s always seemed to me that shooting these women with sculpted bodies is like Ansel Adams photographing Yosemite. These bodies are themselves like landscapes, and its a matter of choosing the right angle and lens, the best lighting conditions, to capture the detail and dramatic qualities of their spectacular conformation. Bill Dobbins
EPILOGUE: THEY’RE ALL BODYBUILDERS Physique competitors are all athletes and have some capacity for muscle. But the size and shape of their muscles, their metabolisms and skeletal proportions can all differ widely. Even a group of bodybuilders will show considerable variation in body size, shape and composition. Fitness and figure women will be more different still. That’s why they compete in different categories. And, for the most part, why it is very difficult for them to switch to another category of competition with any degree of success. Nor is there likely be be the same audience for each type of competition - although that is possible. In auto racing you have dragsters, sports cars, the “stock cars” of NASCAR, open wheel Indy or Formula I racers. Some prefer certain of these types of racing and others have different preferences. The fact that you like something more than something else doesn’t make it “better.” You just like it. These women are all very special and represent a development very new to human civilization - females who develop the muscle of their bodies for primarily aesthetic purposes. They are “something new under the sun.” And they all rise from one common source - bodybuilding. Fitness and figure women use the same basic bodybuilding dieting and training techniques as do male and female bodybuilders. They just bring different genetics to the enterprise and have different goals in mind. But they are all bodybuilders of a sort just as the guy who drives a jalopy around a dirt track on a Saturday night in your home town and the Indy 500 winner are both race drivers. And each has committed to pursue a difficult and demanding set of goals that are worthy of our consideration and respect.