Thus, in the face of the negative reactions that female bodybuilders often contend with, muscle worship may affirm their identity as sensual and feminine.
For some women, muscle worship is not about financial reward at all, but about a mutual and sexual appreciation of their physique and individual empowerment.
For example, Nathalie Gassell articulates her sexual desire to be worshipped and submitted to for her own pleasure:
But back to my muscles, to that capacity to dominate and enslave a body for my pleasure and yours, to that seizure, the consumption of another’s flesh, willing, sacrificed on the altar of my thirst.
I gently caress his slender body and then, when he asks for it, I become brutal. His delicacy is striking and beautiful beneath my hands. His body lays belly down, and I lay on top without any fighting; a motionless test of strength – where our bulks come face to face with their differences in thickness, in muscle tone, in power – suffices to make my body, concretely in its own flesh, the guiding element of our encounter. Our minds are impregnated with these differences. He is consenting. If my body were not the stronger, I could not be pleased. I could not get any carnal pleasure.
(cited in Frueh et al. 2000: 118–19)
Thus on the one hand, the ‘deviant’ female body is being fetishized and eroticized by men, whilst on the other, the female bodybuilder is actively seeking individual pleasure.
Other female bodybuilders have also expressed their desire to revel with admir-ers in their own muscular glory. This is captured by a male muscle worshipper when discussing a previous relationship:
Having her muscles ‘worshipped’ was how she warmed up for sex. It sometimes involved her doing her kung fu moves in varying states of undress while I watched and told her how sexy she looked and how turned on I was getting, and then move onto me touching her. Or we would skip the first bit and get straight to the kissing, stroking and oiling. But as I say, this was all a prelude to the sexual act, not the be all and end all itself.
(‘6ft1Swell’)
An American female bodybuilder2 who participates in muscle worship sessions
with partners/potential partners purely for enjoyment believes that ‘for the female
80 The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding
bodybuilder, it can most certainly be an empowering and equally sexual experience’. She expands upon this in the following quote:
Even aside [from] the sexual high, other thrills are just knowing how turned on your body is making somebody else, having your body and your muscles appreciated for what they are, being the one who is in control and has the power over the other person.
Thus for my sessions, most of them have been incredibly sexual, both as an intense form of foreplay before more happened, and also where the worship has been the sex, or taken the place of actual sex… it’s often times a more intense sexual experience than the actual sex itself.
In this way the eroticism of the muscle worship becomes more important than sexual intercourse itself, thus challenging the supremacy of the phallus and cre-
ating new pleasures of the flesh (see Chapter 8). Empowerment is found both
through the power to sexually excite and in the physical knowledge that she is in control:
I had always been physically larger and stronger than the guys I had dated.
Therefore it was empowering in the literal sense in just knowing that if I wanted to, I could literally pick this guy up and throw him around, or I could have my way with him and he wouldn’t be able to resist. It is also empowering on the mental sense in that knowing how aroused these guys got over female muscle, I could make them do what I wanted simply by withholding from them what they really craved.
(Erin, bodybuilder of seven years)
Although the female body remains an erotic, sexual symbol subject to the male
gaze,3 as Richardson (2008: 297) points out, ‘muscle worship [also] challenges
conventional heteroerotics and demonstrates the potential for alternative sexual pleasure outside the reductive idea of not only penetrative sexuality but also traditional gender-based power dynamics’.
The muscle worshippers
Despite these female bodybuilders’ openness in sharing their views, there is still much secrecy about what goes on behind closed doors. Many female bodybuilders seemed hesitant or unwilling to discuss these issues. As one muscular woman stated: ‘I don’t know how many women are honest about it – I don’t believe that people are willing to talk about it’. At this point it appeared that my research had come to an abrupt end.
I had found a wall of silence or even of outright threat. It appears that even more than steroids, muscle worship sessions are shrouded in mystery and ‘taboo’. The following diary extract not only demonstrates the controversy and delicacy of this issue, but also highlights the problematic nature of investigating forbidden territory:
The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding 81
I received an email a couple of days ago from a famous female bodybuilder demanding that I stop my investigation. It was brash and harsh, and most of all shook me to the core. Questions kept whirling round my head: had I been totally naive to think that female bodybuilders would wish to talk about muscle worship from their perspective? Had I handled the situation insensitively? Who was I writing for? Myself? My readers? On behalf of the female bodybuilders? What right did I have to go poking my nose into people’s business in the name of academia? And yet, should I be censured by threats?
I re-evaluated my research and turned for more information to those who appreciate female muscle – the worshippers themselves. As demonstrated in Chapter 5,
for a female to build muscle is to transgress the gender norms of society, risking exclusion, censure and a lack of appeal to heterosexual males. However, there are a minority of males who do appreciate and are sexually attracted to muscular women. Little is known about these males, and whilst I call for more research to be conducted into this area, this work provides an introductory insight into the subculture of muscle worship.
As hegemonic masculinity and hypermasculinity consist of traits such as dominance, power, strength, independence and muscularity, perhaps it is unsurprising that males who have been attracted to deviant muscular female bodies have been depicted in a negative light. Stereotypical muscle worshippers have been portrayed in documentaries such as Louis Theroux’s ‘Weird Weekends’ as weedy, nerdy, pathetic, ‘living with their mothers at 40 and saving every penny for sessions’, repressed homosexuals, lacking in social skills and having something mentally defective about them. So far, no comprehensive study has taken place which interrogates this common knowledge. These ‘mad monks’ (as one male worshipper jested in his description of the reverence and secrecy of this subculture) are hidden from view and mocked by hegemonic society. Indeed, ‘coming out’ or confessing to being sexually attracted to muscular women is taboo.
Furthermore, as the muscular body has been coded ‘male’ (and therefore the muscular female is coded male), there is an assumption that in order to be attracted to muscular women, one must be homosexual. This is demonstrated in Slave’s scenario: ‘When I told him [his brother] the truth he laughed. But not at me, at himself.
He’d found my stash of magazines when we were young, and he’d assumed I was gay!’ Very few muscle worshippers are open about their fetish, however, due to stigma and concern about how people might react. For example, Douglas said that he can’t tell his friends or family in case they ‘rip it out of him’. In Slave’s case, however, he found his brother very supportive: ‘He had no problem with it at all. He too has a fetish, for fat girls with huge tits. We decided we were both totally normal in our abnormalities!’ From a young age, many of the female-muscle fans believed that there was something inherently ‘wrong’ with them, that they needed to be cured of this unique and lonely obsession. The internet, however, has made life much easier, bringing ‘like-minded’ people together. Blogs and chat rooms have pr
ovided a kind of sanctuary for these men; a space where they can share their appreciation of
82 The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding
female bodybuilders and exchange photos, thoughts and experiences. This subculture can create comradeship and shelter in a society which doesn’t understand and condemns their desires. As one male worshipper articulates:
Having kept my love for female muscle secret since the start, the internet gave me the push I needed to finally speak about it. Knowing that there are not just a few, but thousands of people out there who have a similar passion is kind of empowering.
Who are these people?
It is extremely difficult to establish how many muscle worshippers there are.
One of the largest worldwide forums has almost 20,000 members, although there must be far more who do not subscribe or actively participate. A UK blog such as Femalemuscleslave can receive up to 200 visits from the UK per day. In Kaye’s (2005) book, ‘Mary’ claims that there is no single type of muscle worshipper – that they are of all ages (20–80 years old), ethnicities, classes and appearances. Despite
great methodological issues,4 my research in the UK found that the majority of
muscle worshippers were middle-class, university-educated, and aged in their late 20s–late 40s. The majority were heterosexual and were active gym members. That several weight trained is perhaps surprising and contradicts with other scholarly works, such as Chare (2012: 207) and Richardson (2008: 296). These academic commentators claim that ‘schmoes’ may deliberately ‘cultivate flabbiness or lank-iness, perfecting a feeble physique incapable of lifting heavy weights… [in order to] better contrast their bodies with the images of the powerful figures of female bodybuilding’. However, according to interviewee ‘6ft1Swell’:
I’m not surprised you have found that many of us in the sample do train, as I think this is connected. Wisdom among the brethren (the more mature ones anyway) is that training yourself is the best way to arouse your partner’s interest in training, or at least getting into the gym for some kind of physical activity.
These demographics clearly offer a counter-presentation of the stereotype of muscle worshippers as weak and economically dependent.
A common thread between the muscle worshippers is that their attraction to muscular women developed in their teens:
My interest in FBBs began with seeing muscle magazines in my teens, I had an immediate fascination with women like Lenda Murray and Kim Chizevsky.
By my late teens and early 20s my access to the internet was daily and so I was able to access a lot more online, and my interest increased as a result.
(Kiyone)
I was young when I first saw a slot on news where a bodybuilder appeared, a male, then I started like watching athletes… When I was a teenager I started
The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding 83
buying bodybuilding magazines, but as time went on female bodybuilders became less common in the magazines, but the magazine WPW was available in some places.
(Aiden)
I’m not sure how it all got started exactly but like many I grew up with American comic books with some strong sexy female superhero characters… Way back maybe late 70s, early 80s, there was a bookshop in London’s Charing Cross Road, near where the Cass Arts shop is now, which had what I now realise to have been early editions of the Women’s Physique Publication and possibly Women’s Physique World Mag… Well, feeling self-conscious about doing so, I used to quickly try to browse them, but I was too embarrassed I think to actually take one to the counter to buy, the guy at the counter was usually always talking to another staff member and I kept thinking that they would say something like ‘you don’t like this stuff do you?’
(Patrick)
Whilst muscle worshippers often stated that they did find ‘normal’ women attractive in terms of personality, all distinctly expressed their preference for a muscular physique and not the ‘glamour norm of thin with large breasts’ (Aiden), thus subverting the hegemonic norms of desire. For the fans, muscle symbolizes power, strength, independence and vitality, and creates a visceral effect which is difficult to capture in words. The women take on superheroesque qualities. As Kiyone explains:
To me muscle represents power, strength and confidence, aside from how much I like the look. There’s a primal aspect to it I find very appealing. It is hard sometimes to verbalize what I like about muscle though.
Traditionally, eroticism has been critiqued by feminists as often being about masculine dominance and power over the female. In the words of Bologh (1990: 204), it becomes ‘a patriarchal arrangement in which the stronger party accepts and expects the devotion of the weaker’. However, muscle worshippers often wish to be overpowered by the female bodybuilder. They are in awe of these muscular goddesses and wish to celebrate their muscles, their strength and power – thus transgressing traditional gender roles. As the woman becomes hard, tough, unbending and powerful, the man becomes weak, passive and subservient.
The popular fantasy of the muscular dominatrix puts her in control; the worshippers are reduced to slaves and must submit under her powerful influence. Whilst this is a pervasive argument, it is worth noting Chare’s argument that despite
‘gender bending/gender trouble’ (see Butler 1999), there still exists an ‘exultation’
of hardness or muscularity and strength. The male muscle worshipper desires the women to be hard, with low body fat, vascular and in competition state. The soft-ness and fluidity associated with feminine traits are pronounced as weak, whereas traditional masculine traits of hardness and strength are heralded as superior.
84 The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding
Female bodybuilders as sexual commodities
Media portrayals of sessions, such as ‘Muscle Worship – Hidden Lives’ and
‘Highway Amazon’, show women travelling to different hotels/motels to perform for individual muscle fans, with suitcases full of props to fulfil males’ fantasies.
In this light, muscle worship may be viewed as simply a sexual fetish service performed in exchange for money. The women’s muscular bodies are their commodity. However, the pleasure some women take from this and the forms of control mentioned above question this simple interpretation. Do the women become the passive, fetishized commodities so representative of patriarchal capitalist society, or can intimate relationships be forged on complementary needs?
For some female bodybuilders, the situation appears relatively clear-cut: My view [is that] guys who actually hire female bodybuilders for a worship session are viewing them as a sexual commodity. They have a female muscle fetish, they get highly aroused by female muscle, thus they hire female muscle in order to experience a sexual thrill.
(Barbara, bodybuilder of seven years)
Another female bodybuilder who participates in sessions only for mutual enjoyment, and does not take payment, voices her frustration at being viewed simply as a sex object for men’s pleasure:
I suppose my biggest annoyance with most guys who want sessions is that they are only thinking with their ‘guy part’ and thus think I am an object who is here solely to allow them to live out their fantasy. Wrong! I’m a real person who is due courtesy and consideration as any other person.
(Erin, bodybuilder of seven years)
However, the writings below by one male muscle worshipper demonstrate the complexity and difficulty involved in coming to a conclusion on this debate: I had seen photos of all of them, and I was attracted by their size, as well as the good amount of muscle definition all of them had. I would say the physique was the only real factor that came into my decision. That and I had seen on one forum I frequent, that people who had done sessions with them had nothing but good things to say. I was given some of choice in what I wanted in the sessions, whether I wanted mainly muscle worship, wrestling, nudity (all my sessions offered nudity) etc. One of the Americans offered anything except sexual intercourse, the other offered everythin
g but I decided to stop short of asking for intercourse. The British one offered everything except intercourse until our last two sessions where she started to offer that too. But the main aspect of all these sessions for me was muscle worship and to some extent a being-dominated aspect… I enjoyed the sessions with both Americans a lot, they were both very nice and friendly. One was very intimate, with the other you could sense a little reserve. The British one and I have a very good
The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding 85
rapport and level of intimacy in our sessions and she always seems like she enjoys it as much as I do .
(Kiyone)
Whilst there is a suggestion here of choice and ‘purchase’ of the women purely on the basis of their looks and recommendations by other worshippers, the women appear to be in control of their actions and decide in advance how far they want to go. Indeed, some women appear to engage in mutual enjoyment of these sessions – not only for the purposes of financial stability, but also to reconfirm a sense of positive self, sexual potency and indeed even friendship. Furthermore, we cannot ignore the pleasures of the flesh and the feeling of empowerment that some female bodybuilders spoke of experiencing during their sessions. It is with these complex thoughts and contradictions in mind that I turn with some hope to
‘sex-radical’ feminist perspectives to help shed light on this matter. Some ‘sex-radical’ feminists (see Colosi 2010: 13) believe that within patriarchal society, women participating in sex work (including pornography and prostitution) are both agents and victims, and thus form ‘sites of ingenious resistance and cultural subversion’ (Chapkis 1997: 29). Consequently, ‘sex work’ can be viewed as a complex site (Frank 2003) in the struggle for empowerment. As Lockford (2004: 100) points out, researchers must discern ‘the nuances of consent within actual situated experiences’ and in order to do this, ‘the voices of those involved need to be listened to’. In addition, she requests an abandonment of hierarchies of sexual value which privilege heterosexual monogamous coupling, and calls for a ‘sex-positive’ view that respects everyone’s unique sexual preferences.
Strong and Hard Women Page 14