Robert's Universe

Gettin' Freaky!

Just a few years ago they were heralded as the Ladies of the ’2000s: strong, powerful, sleek, and sexy-looking women. Today, many of them are muscle-bound to such an extreme extent that they are viewed with mild disbelief and a strange curiosity. The question in most people’s minds is: Why would a woman want to do that to her body?

A decade has passed since women first became part of the sport of bodybuilding. Their involvement was natural, coming on the heels of the ’70s, when women were integrating themselves into a variety of previously male domains. It was further fueled by America’s fanaticism for fitness in the early ’80s.

The sport began as a new forum for appreciation of the female form. Unlike beauty contests, where the winners are determined primarily by genetics, a bodybuilding contest could be won by hard work, dedication, and intelligent training. The concept appealed to the feminist mindset of the day. It gave women more options and control over how their bodies looked. From the spectator side, it afforded the opportunity to see a new type of hard-body beauty–as well as another exclude to watch bikini-clad women–and the sport of women’s bodybuilding drew crowds and media attention.

In the gyms, posters of Lisa Lyon straining against a sweat-soaked T-shirt with dumbbell in hand went up almost overnight. Then along came Rachel McLeish, and with her particular brand of flex appeal she changed a fledgling sport into a social phenomenon that sent millions of women to the gym, and thousands of women in search of fame and fortune in the sport of women’s bodybuilding. Jane Fonda stepped onto the pumping-iron bandwagon, and even Madonna began flexing her biceps on stage.

Like any activity with a potential for publicity, bodybuilding attracted its share of beautiful women looking for a break into modeling, movies, or whatever. It provided a new competitive arena for gymnasts, swimmers, and other female athletes who found themselves already past their prime at age 19. It answered the prayers of women who, given a better-than-average mix of male hormone at birth, had lived their lives embarrassed by their natural muscularity and husky builds.

But somewhere between then and now, something went wrong. Terribly wrong.

Today, when you switch your cable sports channel to a women’s bodybuilding competition, some in the lineup look like they belong at a Barnum and Bailey circus. An 18-inch bicep is not uncommon, nor is a back that flares Cobra-like to more than 50 inches on the tape measure. Soft, feminine body fat and breasts are practically non-existent on these women, who overshadow the few who still sport some curves and peaks. These hulkish women look like men wearing bikini tops.

Even some of the women who popularized the sport have trouble accepting what it has become. “It’s a perversion of the female gender,” says McLish, who retired from competition five years ago. “It’s sad for me to watch these women trying so hard to be sexy, posing with these gyrating movements, overdone fingernails, too much makeup, and silly bows in their hair. They’re overcompensating for what they’ve done to their bodies.”

THE CULPRIT

What turned this sport that began with such good intentions into the strange spectacle it is today? The same menace that’s casting a dark shadow over many sports: anabolic steroids.

These drugs mimic the effect of male hormones, and while their use can go relatively undetected in some males, the effects upon women are often quite obvious from the onset: bulging muscles, deep voices, beards, loss of scalp hair, loss of breast tissue, enlargement of the clitoris, acne on the face and torso, and coarse, thick hair on the chest, back, and shoulders. Some of these effects, such as excessive hair growth and deepening of the voice, are irreversible.

The drugs used for muscle building are basically the same hormonal therapy a transsexual would undertake to change her secondary sexual characteristics to those of a male.

I have personally known women bodybuilding competitors who have had to tape their steroid-enlarged clitoris down to keep the bulge from showing during competition. I know several who wear wigs because steroids have caused their hairline to drastically recede. Other friends have developed deep bass voices.

The effects of steroids are unpredictable. One woman might increase her size by 10 pounds of muscle in two months; another might experience only a subtle change. One woman’s voice may lower drastically while another’s stays the same.

In the early part of the decade when women bodybuilders first began experimenting with steroids, very little was known about their side effects. Sure, some U.S. Olympic coaches were knowledgeable in the area, but women bodybuilders weren’t being coached by Olympic trainers–they were taking their cues from male bodybuilders, many of whom use steroids.

Bodybuilding is a subculture that as a sport has never been accepted into the mainstream. If you want to learn about bodybuilding, you don’t ask your high school coach. You go to the gym in town that has the biggest guys.

That’s exactly where women went, and the men were more than happy to heap attention on them. That attention, not to mention the abundance of good-looking guys, provided added incentive to keep women at the sport. From the men, the women learned what to eat–a diet, perfected over 30 years, that lowers body fat to a minimum. They learned the men’s training techniques. They also began to use steroids. And as they gained muscle, their efforts were applauded by the men they trained with. They became the center of attention in the world of bodybuilding.

In the meantime, the competitive aspects of the sport were growing almost too fast for any organization to control. It was not uncommon for over 100 women to enter a small show.

At first, only a few women used steroids, but a few were enough to set change in motion. The women who trained naturally were forced to train and diet fanatically in an attempt to gain the extreme muscular size and excessively low body fat that the women on drugs were displaying.

The sport’s main governing bodies–the National Physique Committee (NPC) and the Amateur Athletic Union–saw this trend early on and attempted to dissuade the “drug-look,” as it was being called. The NPC, for instance, advised its judges to give lower scores to competitors with excessive muscularity.

But the bottom line is that bodybuilding is a sport of muscle, and by mid-decade, the women with the biggest and hardest muscles began to win. It came down to this: If you wanted to be competitive, you had to use steroids.

By 1985, over-developed muscle on women bodybuilders was no longer a rarity. Most competitions are based on weight classes, and body weights had increased so greatly that by 1986, a third division had to be added to accommodate the growing number of women in the heavyweight class of 125 pounds and over.

The bodybuilding organizations began drug testing in 1986. This drove some women at the elite end to use growth hormone, a substance that cannot be detected by drug tests currently in use. Aside from death, the worst side effect from growth hormone is a condition known as acromegaly, where the bones of the skull, hands, and feet actually grow. The result is an ape-like protrusion of the forehead and mumps-like swelling of the jaws, in addition to perversely large hands and feet.

A WORLD OF ITS OWN

Why would any woman go to such extremes? Bodybuilding is a world that’s easy to get caught up in. For many bodybuilders, their lives center around the gym. Their houses are littered with dog-eared copies of bodybuiding magazines. They know every name in the sport. They know all the latest training techniques. They take pride in belonging to this world of muscle, and receive all the support they need–so much support that outsiders gawking in disbelief don’t faze them.

“Somewhere along the line, women bodybuilders got off the track and their only motivation came from competition,” says McLish, who still trains with weights but adamantly refuses to be involved in the competitive aspects of the sport she pioneered. “It’s difficult to keep perspective when you’re training in the gym so intensely. All the attention is directed inward. When you focus in that close, you lose the whole picture. That’s what happened–we put too much emphasis on details, and lost the fact that we were women first.”

Concentration and dedication are certainly assets to a competitor in a sport. Elite athletes are extremists; they need to be to get that world record or gold medal.

But what price glory? It’s a sad fact that many women bodybuilders have taken drugs in exchange for a $25 trophy and fleeting fame in the muscle magazines. It’s a tradeoff that more and more women are deciding not to opt for. In the 1986 NPC Women’s Nationals, more than 50 entered the heavyweight division. Three years later, only 18 did. But will steroids ever be completely eliminated from the sport? I don’t think so.

“The fact is that drugs make people stronger, faster, and bigger,” says Cathy Palyo, a professional woman bodybuilder. “The side effects won’t scare athletes away. Surveys have asked athletes whether they would use a drug that guaranteed them a world record, but would kill them within a year. Seventy-five percent of the athletes is warped. I’m an athlete, I’ll vouch for it. You simply cannot clean up drug use in sports. It’s impossible.”

I don’t believe that women’s bodybuilding can ever turn itself around and begin to reward the small physique with first place. The standard has been set, and while it does not appeal to the general public, I believe it will always appeal to those deeply involved in the sport. There will always be fans who love muscle for the sake of muscle and others who love to see the unusual and odd.

While acknowledging the hardcore element of the sport, most competitors I know still wish drugs had never become part of it. If they knew then what they know now, they would have had no trouble just saying no.

Aside from the direct victims of steroids are the indirect ones: the women who have been scared away from the gym by the belief that a weight-training regimen will make their bodies unattractively muscular. These women are avoiding an activity that can impart beautiful, feminine, shapely muscle. It gives women control of their shape, size, and proportions. It builds flat and firm abdominals, round, fat-free rear ends, and attractive and very feminine bodies, like those of the women who started the sport.

If one thing can be learned from what has happened in the sport of women’s bodybuilding, it’s that big muscles are not natural to women. They won’t come easy or by accident, even to a woman who trains with a serious, aggressive routine.