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Because this is either a sport with clear goals (muscle size & symmetry) or it's a beauty pageant
How people look can't possibly be a sport, it's a pageant by definition, where participants make a spectacle of themselves by lining up with others and have judges decide who is the winner in non-quantifiable fashion.
There are fbbs who are very masculine in their posing (and also appearance in some cases) and they still have success, so femininity isn't an issue. I guess elegance and presentation is what's getting addressed, and it's natural that women want to amp up their femininity.
I agree about a Classic division, but I know people would complain about there being another one. I think the worry of competitors being too dry and big could be solved with a weight cap.
Regarding Georgia Daniel's (and others') case...I wrote this on another thread: there's already a "Classic Fbb" division in Russia, but haven't seen it lately. Perhaps it didn't have any success? I'd love a division like that one: Bikini / Fitness competitors posing like fbbs.
Schmoes have no connection to reality that's a given.
I will be waiting for a schmoe organized and paid FBB competition that doesn't care about hairy women's chest, male pattern baldness, square jaws, deep male voices, bloated abdomen, 5o clock shadows and bonus points for inflamed injection sites and bulging bikini bottoms.
Let's see how many competitors this circus will attract, how many tickets you can sell and what the prize money will be. Since the facade of FBB femininity is bad let's do away with that.
I will be waiting for the experiment. I will even buy a ticket.
Sounds great
Ive come across many FBBs who have no interest in competing. That is to say they have no desire to "beat other ladies" at something as inane as building muscles. The concept of being ranked against another lady who's spent a whole year prepping and then being deemed "better" than her doesn't interest them and feels a bit shitty.
When you step back and consider that mindset you do start thinking that bodybuilding contests are kind of ridiculous. Maybe the focus should be more on expos or stage shows where FBBs can strut their stuff but there are no judges? To give it some sort of audience interaction they could have a clap-o-meter to see which FBB got the biggest cheer or have an award for best routine.... nothing overly serious though. The focus is ladies showcasing their physiques and never needing to get bogged down in how masculine or aesthetically pleasing they might look. If someone like Caroline Wang wants to bounce on stage for 90 secs in the spotlight than she's more than welcome.
I guarantee if they stopped awarding the most ripped, leanest, dryest competitors that would solve some of the problems of womens bodybuilding currently. It's not how big they get it's the extreme conditioning that's required to win now. If you went back 25 years ago the women looked healthier. They looked big and lean but not ridiculously ripped. Not only does it look unhealthy but it literally is unhealthy.
This is the most important reply so far. The level FBBs have to push themselves to if they wish to be competitive is dangerous.
I do think femininity should come into it. For the above mentioned health reasons, but also to distinguish it more.
Late to the thread. But I think the competitors should decide their own judging criteria in some way.
Late to the thread. But I think the competitors should decide their own judging criteria in some way.
Exactly. What do the women who compete as bodybuilders think? Do they want to be judged on size, symmetry, shape and definition alone? Or should there be an element of femininity?
lowering the requirements for conditioning would help that immensely, though that was supposed to have happened and have little effect.
I mean it's hard to tell bodybuilders to scale it back because bodybuilding is suppose to be about pushing to the limit. Remember how physique division started out. Back during the early days you would see the contest winners and immediately think "wow they must have had some weak competition if that level of physique is what earns a 1st place." But in actuality they was what they were looking for.
Then we got the infamous 2011 NPC Jr. USA contest where Lindsey Cope placed 11th. When you compare her to the woman who placed 1st in her class it's looks like a sham. Like the contest was fixed. Now women twice the size of Lindsey are winning regularly.
In bb how does anyone say: "Get big, but not too big." "Get ripped, but not too ripped." "Push yourself to your limit, but scale it back a bit." That's why judging will always be an issue. Different people have different interpretations of what they see as a competitor taking it too far within the limits of the rulebook.
I mean it's hard to tell bodybuilders to scale it back because bodybuilding is suppose to be about pushing to the limit.
Only if you consider it a sport - after all, no one complains that speed runners are running too fast. And here we are engaging again in the usual "Sport or Pageant?" question.
Then we got the infamous 2011 NPC Jr. USA contest where Lindsey Cope placed 11th. When you compare her to the woman who placed 1st in her class it's looks like a sham. Like the contest was fixed. Now women twice the size of Lindsey are winning regularly.
Don't remind me of that XD. Today LC would struggle to place among top 3 in Figure with the build she brought onstage that one time.
To twinPete93:
It would be total discrimination for those to adhere to certain female stereotypes just to win a competition that has to do with muscularity.
I have a certain love for dictionaries. In this case I went to look up 'stereo' and found that it does not refer to any duality of extremes but to "hardness" or "solidity".
Everywhere where you have any standards, you discriminate against something. The only exception to this is a dreamworld where nothing has qualities and everything is measured only in amounts. More muscle, more size, more power. More veins, more hair, more acne. Everyone with more than half a brain discriminates constantly. To think is to discriminate. To think clearly is to discriminate totally.
Femininity as a thing, an idea or a concept or even a metaphysical perfection does exist and objecting to its "hardness" or "solidity" would be like objecting to the "hardness" or "solidity" of a number or a mathematical operator.
I think I agree with a part of your idea that there could technically and theoretically be competitions based purely on quantity and no quality. I just object to all the clichés you added to it.
Imagine a male bodybuilder would be discriminated against in a similar way for not having a beard but instead wearing earrings or makeup on stage, which some judges then consider "not masculine enough" and rate him less.
It is possible to imagine almost anything. But nobody's imagination is actually a proof of anything or an argument for anything. I personally find earrings and makeup a bit questionable on a man and a beard is quite ambiguous. Some very effeminate nerds who live in their mom's basement sometimes have quite bushy beards.
There is no holy definition or a metaphysical essence of an ideal bodybuilding competition. If the organizers decided to require the contestants to appear on stage wearing a gigantic penis sheath or a butt plug then it's their call.
The organizers decide what is fair and what is not. They also consider what serves their purpose and what does not.
Your argument was that "I can imagine them requiring a very stupid thing, therefore this other thing they require is stupid" and I countered it with "they are free to require whatever stupid thing they want, therefore they are free to required every less stupid thing they choose to".
Both scenarios don't fit anymore into the 21. century, for good reasons.
What is true in the morning is not necessarily true in the evening. Rules of casual sex turned into philosophy of history.
What is there, in the passage of time, that produces changes in the rules of bodybuilding competitions? Or does time stop eventually and will there be a time when rules of bodybuilding contests have fully evolved?
To hellohotbeef:
Look, Ma! A straw man!
No. It is a perfectly valid form of argumentation called reductio ad absurdum. What someone was saying is that those things do not matter. Then Ovi33 made a valid point that those things do matter and that you do need to draw a line somewhere.
A straw man is when you attack something that was not really what the opponent said or intended. Knowing the names of a few fallacies does not make you smart. Knowing how to define and recognize them maybe.
Neither does knowing how to despise or ridicule someone make you smart. It is entirely possible to ridicule someone even when you are wrong and the other guy is right.
Finally, my own take on this:
A sport literally means entertainment. "Bodybuilding is a sport" means "bodybuilding is competitive entertainment". It is the opposite of serious. There is nothing noble or glorious in any sport by itself. Consider it a gladiator game without blood and you will get the idea.
A serious sport, given that such a thing exists, means "serious entertainment". When is entertainment serious? When there are rules everyone can understand. You do not need to like the rules. You do not need to agree with the rules. The rules need not be ideal. There is no ideal soccer or ice hockey either. The only thing required is that those people who sign up for it know what is expected of them. This is what makes or breaks bodybuilding as a "serious sport" aka "serious entertainment".
It is a pageant for the very reason that taking it to a logical extreme will often result in a financial failure. Besides, destroying your health with hormones is hardly an entertaining thing to watch and even less is there anything noble or admirable in it and it can hardly be considered an achievement. I really think the idea of an unlimited bodybuilding competition for women only amounts to porn of someone who does not know yet that, by the very nature of the thing, once it is on the table, there is no such thing as "enough porn".
This is a slippery slope. At what point do looks become more important than the muscles?
Screw it I say yes. Looks count.
Otherwise just throw men and women into a single category, and go purely by the quality of muscle. And put bags over everyone's heads.
I think the challenge to that is: how would femininity be defined? Like, don’t judges already look for a more “feminine” presentation in the bikini and figure categories, and to some extent physique?
I’m not sure how else to they could judge that to a greater extent, especially in the bodybuilding division.
This is a slippery slope. At what point do looks become more important than the muscles?
Screw it I say yes. Looks count.
Otherwise just throw men and women into a single category, and go purely by the quality of muscle. And put bags over everyone's heads.
i mean personally i wouldn't be against a topless womens competition if the chests were right lmao
I think the challenge to that is: how would femininity be defined? Like, don’t judges already look for a more “feminine” presentation in the bikini and figure categories, and to some extent physique?
I’m not sure how else to they could judge that to a greater extent, especially in the bodybuilding division.
I figure it would be subjective to the whim of whoever is in charge of organizing any particular event. I mean, any standard would be in word only as favoritism is never eliminated. I'd theorize that the winners are already pre-selected.
They just want to get paid to throw parties where their favorites are the stars and everyone else has to come to make it look like an actual competition. I think this goes for most contests.
Even in an ideal situation, beauty is abstract and impossible to measure.
You know Gatsby28 I need to think about this some more. Favoritism might actually be necessary.
i mean personally i wouldn't be against a topless womens competition if the chests were right lmao
That'd be cool, but it would not be enough for me. I watch porn, so I am kind of like a spoiled brat.
You know, revisiting the 2021 Ms Olympia, it is a bit silly to think femininity is the reason why a hulking Andrea Shaw took home the trophy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9lLj1pnoVw&t...
Yeah, except professional bodybuilding considers itself to be a sport. And considers its competitors to be athletes. Try a little word substitution here to see how this doesn't work. Because this is either a sport with clear goals (muscle size & symmetry) or it's a beauty pageant. Both genders should be equal in this distinction. If the women need to be pretty and feminine, then damn... I'm expecting a really good looking and masculine dude to win the mens. Not someone like bald-ass Phil Heath who's closer to the Michelin Man than a romance novel cover.
Why have a women's basketball division if there's nothing to separate it from the men's divisions? And if it's purely about muscles regardless of gender, then what chance does women's basketball have against men's? Men will always be more impressive, so there has to be something to distinguish between them and women.
Hence the need for femininity.