Female bodybuilders

[asterroc]

I hate bodybuilders. Not the people, but their bodies. I find them disgusting, as in I can become physically nauseated looking at them. It's not simply that they're not human, but that they *were* human and no longer are.

But that said, one of my LJfriends in a locked post recently linked to two photo sets of female bodybuilders, both pages originally in Russian (Babelfish does a sufficient translation), which are worth relinking. Not because of anything in particular about the bodies, but because of the photography. See, most bodybuilding photography is about the bodybuilder's muscles. But these two sets express the woman behind her muscles.

The first set by Martin Sholler is from the book "Female Bodybuilders" and the photos are face-on portraits of the women. They are not photos of bodybuilders who happen to be women, they are portraits of women who happen to be bodybuilders. There is personality in their eyes, their mouths, that tell us if they're fun people to be around. Even their choice of how to style their hair, what earrings and bikinis to wear, tell us who they are.

Perhaps more amazing is the (NSFW) set by Bill Dobbins, "Amazons". This one reveals the sexuality of female bodybuilders. You don't - or at least I certainly don't - think of bodybuilders as attractive (I do not find bulimia enjoyable), and yet these nudes and lingerie-clad forms are displaying exactly that.

I still find bodybuilding quite bizarre, and their bodies repulsive, but it sheds a new light upon the women hidden inside the muscles.

Comments

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

Bodybuilding and bulimia are pretty opposed, imho. Bodybuilder have to ingest INSANE amounts of food/nutrition to maintain their muscles.

[q10.livejournal.com]

yeah... i'd guess there are probably a fair number of competitive weightlifters with eating disorders (your competition pool is determined by body mass, which i would presume creates incentives to manage body mass pretty closely), but this seems like it ought to be one of the many respects in which bodybuilding and weightlifting are drastically different activities.

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely add competitive fighters (wrestling, the extreme stuff, etc.) to the list for eating disorders. I had a coworker who would crash diet for a week before a fight.

[q10.livejournal.com]

yeah - the only reason i thought of this at all was that i knew somebody in college who used to wrestle competitively.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Well, what I meant was that body builders generally cause me to hurl.

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

lol

[tiurin.livejournal.com]

The latter set seems more like a testament to steroids to me.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

I understand your feeling. I like my hunky guys, but there seems to be a point where it becomes a gross obsession with body image. Funny how body image can swing to either extreme - thin or buff. I guess I'm happy to be pudgy after seeing both sides :-)

The NSFW link was interesting though. I thought the lady in the second picture was quite beautiful until I saw her hands. Yikes!

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

God yeah, those nails really bothered me. The first woman her body isn't all that far beyond the norm.

Hm, I just realized, all the women on that page are black, aren't they? Huh.

[calzephyr77.livejournal.com]

I think at least two are white...it's hard to tell the ethnicity sometimes because of whatever they rub on themselves to make them shine. The second lady looks kinda red.

[l0stmyrel1g10n.livejournal.com]

i'm sorry, i still find them all disgusting. they don't look like people. certainly not like women.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Oh I do still find them disgusting, but now in an interesting way, like watching a train wreck on TV.

[q10.livejournal.com]

i think those pictures (first set - haven't looked at the second) are made more or less infinitely more garrish by the various makeup issues and unnaturally high contrast and saturation of the images.

[erin-trying.livejournal.com]

There's a lot of debate in general about a photographer's responsibility in creating a flattering and/or objective representation while shooting a portrait. These pictures, regardless of your opinion of the women themselves, are definitely weighted towards stigmatization and distortion in my opinion. Some discussion of the topic: http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2008/11/28/05?utm_source=wnyc&utm_medium=stripblurb&utm_content=general&utm_campaign=imagestrip

[q10.livejournal.com]

say what? we have those kinds of obligations now?

i just meant that i think they'd work better as pieces of visual art if a slightly more subdued approach were taken to those variables. i'm not saying the general effect being applied don't have their place, but, in my subjective and mostly untrained opinion, they ain't workin' here.

[ayashi.livejournal.com]

@_@ that is really weird to look at.

Is it really bad if I wonder if their breasts (what little are left) are hard like muscles? :P

I can't help but wonder who would want to do that to themselves!