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Steel Sisters: Bodybuilding Women
With somewhat late, Women came into the sport of bodybuilding. Understandable, as bodybuilding is essentially a male-dominated sport. But not to be put down, bodybuilding women athletes have emerged above the mediocre stamp that has been placed on them ever since the first bodybuilding women’s competition took place.
Lisa Lyon, Pioneer in Female Bodybuilding
The first of the bodybuilding women, Lisa Lyon was a pioneer, a media star, and a spokesperson for woman bodybuilding. Born in 1953 in California , USA , Ms. Lyon was a graduate of UCLA and a student of kendo, a Japanese martial art. Then a bodybuilding aficionado, Ms. Lyon was encouraged to join the bodybuilding women’s competition by none other than premier bodybuilding promoter, Arnold Schwarzenegger who saw potential in Lyon ’s small, dancer’s physique. As it turned out, Schwarzenegger was right in betting on Lyon ’s bodybuilding talents as she won first place in the first bodybuilding women’s championship.
Rachel McLish, Champion of First Miss Olympia Bodybuilding Women’s Competition
Rachel McLish, the champion of the first Miss Olympia bodybuilding women’s competition sponsored by the International Federation of Bodybuilders, substituted Lyon . Considered the symbol that all bodybuilding for women wanted to look like, Rachel McLish combined aesthetic and muscles in woman bodybuilding. More than just an icon, these Texan-born bodybuilding women helped describe the sport of bodybuilding.
Bev Francis, Australian Shot-putter-turned-Bodybuilder
Next to Rachel McLish is the Australian shot-putter-turned-bodybuilder, Bev Francis, with whom she incidentally co-starred in the movie, Pumping Iron II: The Women. If McLish was the feminine embodiment of bodybuilding women, Francis presented the muscular extreme. Her unbelievable appearance and overwhelming muscular bulk sparked both awe and shock in the bodybuilding women’s world, which eventually led to the question: “How much is too much?” Those bodybuilding women have been concerned ever since Francis first hit the spotlight in 1986 as a finalist at the Ms. Olympia competition with this question.
In 1991, the overly muscular Francis was demoted as runner up to the more aesthetes Lenda Murray who won the Ms. Olympia title. Ms. Murray went on to win eight more Ms. Olympia titles to her name, the last of which was in 2003 where she was also acclaimed as the most successful and most popular among the bodybuilding women.
Other bodybuilding women comprise Juliette Bergman known as the Dutch Superwoman who won the 2001 Ms. Olympia competition and Mandy Blank who was an IFBB fitness professional competitor. Ms. Blank is one of the new breed of slender bodybuilding women whose goals are more geared into shaping the muscular body into aesthetic forms than beefing it up to become eventually grotesque. Other bodybuilding women of Blank’s caliber are Monica Brant, named 1998 Fitness Miss Olympia and Canadian Sharon Bruneau who went through all the extreme changes from being a model, to hardcore female bodybuilder, and at last to fitness competitor.
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