Bodybuilding is a sport that attracts a lot of attention not only from men, but also from women. First of all, he owes his attractiveness to the fact that this sport allows you to “build” your body on your own.
The emergence of bodybuilding
Many titled athletes and athletes of this discipline consider Evgeny Sandova, the founder of bodybuilding, who attracted attention to his developed body in the late 19th century. For that time, his form was extremely outstanding. Its muscle size and strength struck the imagination of the people of that time.
He did not hesitate to demonstrate his muscles, and in some cases, covering himself with only one sheet or loincloth, he posed in the streets, causing surprise among local residents.
Bodybuilders of the last century
For a long time, sports related to weight lifting were revered only by men, and strong women of the nineteenth century mainly performed only in the circus. For the end of the 19th century, a woman with impressive muscles had no prospects of becoming revered in society. These women bodybuilders were treated like clowns who can only entertain the public.
Despite all the difficulties, it was these women who became the reason why women began to be reckoned with.
The rise in bodybuilding
After a lot of time, bodybuilding became more popular. This sport began to be used for training military personnel, athletes of other directions and ordinary people. The golden age of bodybuilding is still considered the period after 1939, when the bodybuilding contest was first held, and it reached its peak of popularity in the seventies of the 20th century.
Below are photos of women bodybuilders from the beginning of the 20th century.
This photo captures Katy Brumbach, who was popular in those years.
Here is Lavery Vali with the pseudonym Charmion.
And this photo depicts Louis Crocker, speaking under the pseudonym Louisite Liers.
Even at that time, female bodybuilders remained in the shadow of male athletes, but in 1965 the Miss Universe contest was held for the first time, which allowed women to take root even better in this discipline. Despite the significance of this phenomenon, the competition focused more on the external attractiveness of women, and the golden era of female bodybuilding was still ahead.
Equal rights in bodybuilding
The year 1978 was marked by an important event: bodybuilding standards were applied to women. Now they were judged by the quality of muscle development and the ability to pose, and not just by the degree of attractiveness.
Just two years later, women were included in the list of participants who can receive the title of “Miss Olympia”, which is a complete analogue of the male nomination “Mr. Olympia”.
After this event, many women involved in this sport had a desire to win the most important title. Competition began to increase, the prize pool increased, and advertisers learned to make money on athletes, offering them to advertise their products.
A very rapid development of the industry in this vein attracted many women who began to look for ways to improve their workouts and physique. The result was an almost total craze for steroids.
Steroids contributed to faster muscle development, recovery took much less time, and athletic performance improved much faster. All this led to the fact that from the discipline that was supposed to contribute to improving health, this sport often led to irreversible and negative changes in the female body.
Below are photos of female bodybuilders from the late 20th century.
Here is a woman performing in bodybuilding competitions.
This photo captures the athlete Natalia Kuznetsova.
And here is a photo of an athlete out of competition.
It is easy to see that, unlike the athletes who only laid the foundations of this sport, coarsening of the appearance is noticeable here, there is a clear masculinity. The female body is now much more like a male. People who first see these photos may even think that women's faces were combined with a male body in a photo editor.
But in fact, such a physique is the result of taking large doses of steroid drugs, diets and intense training. Muscle mass increases, body fat decreases and in some cases is only 5%. The result of such a regime almost always becomes amenorrhea, that is, the absence of menstruation. The body physically changes in order to do the hard work.
Bodybuilding in our country
In Russia, a female bodybuilder is perceived with caution, since this sport is not widely used among the masses. Much better have taken root in such areas as body fitness, bikini fitness, a physicist, etc. These sports allow you to develop beautiful and proportional muscles without gaining too much muscle.
Russian women bodybuilders, like Western ones, use steroid drugs, Clenbuterol and growth hormone to achieve the necessary results, so their appearance also has signs of obvious masculinization. At the same time, most athletes deny the use of any kind of doping, so that society will better perceive them.