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I've been noticing an alarming increase in uploads of overweight, out-of-shape women with little to no visible muscle. Also uploads of very off season, overweight powerlifters.
I'm sorry, but I don't come to a website called "Girls With Muscle" hoping to find "plus size", "body positive", overweight, soft, and/or flabby women. That's the polar opposite of what I'm attracted to, and I suspect it's the same for most users. Frankly, I don't care if they're a power lifter and can bench press three locomotive engines. If they've got a flabby protruding gut, a muffin-top, or shapeless drumsticks so I can't tell where their glutes end and their thighs begin, I don't want to see that.
I realize there are members into "strength", but this website is a visual medium, and you can't see strength under inches of subcutaneous fat. The website isn't called "Female Feats Of Strength".
Even if there isn't ripped muscle definition, I should at least be able to tell that she has the shape of a woman with muscle.
I don't expect this website to cater only to my tastes. Not by a long shot. But there are accepted norms for any given standard, and that's really gone out the window with some uploads. Increasingly so, to the tipping point where I've finally felt the need to express these concerns.
Earlier today, I saw an upload that has since been deleted, thankfully. Unfortunately, another image of the same girl was uploaded sometime after, and as of writing this post, it's still up.
Link on GWM: https://www.girlswithmuscle.com/2093490/
Attachment for when it's deleted:
Compare that next to this "soft" picture of Stacey Lynn Boetto:
I can still see from the shape of her body that she works out and has developed muscles. Her hips are shaped by her glutes and hip flexors. Her thighs show size and some definition. Her abs aren't visible, but I can tell she has them, and there's that visible line down the center. I can see development in her calves, lats, and delts. And unlike the other, Stacey is drop dead gorgeous.
Eye of the beholder only goes so far. Just as there are standards for quality of image resolution, clarity, and composition, there too must be standards for physical (and facial) aesthetics.
I'm unaware of these sentiments being explicitly put to writing as standards for the site. In the past, it didn't seem necessary.
Perhaps the site staff could include some agreed upon consensus as part of the uploading etiquette moving forward.
Thanks for the attachment. I did actually delete that--thumbnail seemd ok but on closer look the "tricep" is just a trick of the light. You can tell from the rest that there's not going on here.
There's two kinds I would say. There's the strong-fat girls that some guys really like. Depending on what it is I'll delete but its gotta be good. Relaxed ones don't past muster for me.
I think there's room for very lightly muscled girls but it's really gotta be a nice shape, or an actual flex in my eyes. Like grabbing hold of a railing and tensing is literally just the normal human response. Almost any arm can look like that.
I actually really like the strong-looking but not ripped powerlifter build. While there is a limit to the bodyfat % past which they probably don't belong on the site, I definitely don't mind some of this or even stretching the boundaries a bit to balance out the absolutely shredded women, of which there are plenty.
Here's another. No visible muscle whatsoever.
https://www.girlswithmuscle.com/2094012/
The same woman can be seen as having some muscle in other pics, but I don't think the pic above deserves to be on here.
Here she has visible muscle. Not my cup of tea at all. But while I don't like bodies like hers, she at least has visible muscle in this other pic and hence is marginally appropriate for the site. Personally, I think she's too obese for the site, but it's not my decision to make.
I've never seen a biceps and a deltoid line up so smoothly - especially not on trained arms. And although I can't tell 100% if it's the bodyfat or a morph...I'd say it's the second one.
I actually really like the strong-looking but not ripped powerlifter build. While there is a limit to the bodyfat % past which they probably don't belong on the site, I definitely don't mind some of this or even stretching the boundaries a bit to balance out the absolutely shredded women, of which there are plenty.
I agree with you! And while I agree that there should be some kind of limit, I think it’s a bit silly to look at a thick powerlifter or strongwoman competitor and be like “she has no muscle and is fat lol”
Go figure. Immediately after I posted about her, another image of her was uploaded. Again, no visible muscle. https://www.girlswithmuscle.com/2094146/
I agree the first of those probably doesn't belong.
It's still there. You didn't delete it.
Chainer:
is it just me or does it seem photoshopped around her bicep? The window frame seems to be bending and it just seems anatomically a bit off.
Her bicep absolutely looks abnormal close to where it joins her delt, but it's just her excessive arm fat. The window frame is fine and there aren't any telltale artifacts of a "morph". I say that not only as a 30+ year "morpher", but as the person that cited her as an example of what I consider to be marginal.
I noticed her bicep abnormality when choosing the pic. I looked closely at it and compared it against several others. I'd have mentioned it was a "morph" in the other post, but it's not. It just looks weird because of her arm fat.
I think it’s a bit silly to look at a thick powerlifter or strongwoman competitor and be like “she has no muscle and is fat lol”
It's fine to have different taste or disagree, but don't strawman what I said. I acknowledged that she has muscle. I mean technically speaking, even the most emaciated anorexic has at least some muscle, visible or not. In this context, having or not having muscle exclusively means visible muscle, and the first image (and third image) of the second example have no visible muscle. And yes, she IS fat. By a lot.
I always been curious about the no contest tan pictures rule, why is that?
I think it is to prevent the site being flooded by contest pics, and there's often copyright issues too for some pay sites.
I would suggest avoiding slideshows of pics posted as videos, with misleading thumbnails implying different moving content. "Showreels" are already discouraged.
^correct
Long before my mod time there used to be tons of stage uploads but as most know every girl gets a gallery of like 100 on those sites once the photogs publish them. There’s nothing “special” About them especially if they it two or three shows a year. By pure volume they would be the bulk of images over the years.
IMO the post show photos are the same where they’re standing around holding stuff and likely not flexing since they’re just hanging out.
fp909:
IMO the post show photos are the same where they’re standing around holding stuff
This just made me think of something...
Selfie pics.
Selfies are often rather low quality contributions. While they may flex, they're holding the camera which gets in the way. Another minute of planning and they could easily set their smartphones or cameras on a fixed surface and enable the burst-mode timer.
Stage uploads and selfies are both repetitive. While the stage tans can be ridiculous, at least stage pics are professional caliber photos.
Have the site staff ever considered discouraging selfies in the same way that stage tans are discouraged?
There’s one repeat offender around here that frequently posts selfie vids of herself on the elliptical with a nice boob view. I pretty much delete those as soon as I see.
There are a lot of selfies that are nearly identical and that’s why you can report too many of the same image if the woman has oodles of similar posts and there’s nothing significantly different about the new one
Something else also sometime occurs to me. The site has been going for many years now now and continues to expend. However there clearly isn't unlimited storage/expansion long term. That wont be sustainable, surely for a free to view site.
Longer term, possibly, either there is a cull of some images (eg with low or non scores?) or a tightening of the criteria for inclusion? Obviously Chainer et al will have a view on long term options, and I would be interested in hearing that.
One thing I can't understand is your ban on cropping pix. I spent decades in print publishing, primarily newspapers, and cropping photos was/is essential. The point is to draw the reader's attention to the focus of the picture by eliminating extraneous or distracting background. The results were more engaging and vibrant depictions of a person or event. Virtually every photo you've ever seen in a newspaper or magazine was cropped by an editor.
A site like GWM is in dire need of MORE cropping because nearly all of the contributions are from non-professional photographers, and many of them have little or no photographic skills. When looking at a picture of a well-built woman, I prefer to see her, not a tiny figure surrounded by an array of weights or blank walls and ceilings. Of course, some background is essential to provide context to the subject, but it shouldn't dominate the photo.
Incidentally, I posted a beautiful single rear biceps shot of Sarah Boes some time ago that was merged with an inferior uncropped photo a few days later (obviously because of your bias against cropping). The irony is I downloaded my picture directly from Sarah's Facebook page, so that was the version SHE preferred.
Incidentally, I posted a beautiful single rear biceps shot of Sarah Boes some time ago that was merged with an inferior uncropped photo
The first step is in understanding that GWM is not a newspaper. The "inferior uncropped" version is preferred because the user can view it themselves and crop it any way they'd like to for personal use. We prefer original (or as close to original as possible) copies.
I always been curious about the no contest tan pictures rule, why is that?
Just to reiterate because we sometimes get people who don't read the upload page that closely and are confused about this, those are in the discouraged categories, not the actually banned ones.
Generally we allow a few of the better contest pics/clips for each woman, and are more lenient with "classic" FFB's from years ago, who may not have much available outside of stuff taken at contests.
Also, we're generally less stringent about the "contest tan" part nowadays.
fp909:
I mostly remove ones that are “okay” at best. Like they’re half hugging someone holding a trophy and half their body is obscured and they aren’t flexing.
Nobody needs pics of girls holding their trophies and obscuring that hot trophy bod with their hands. They need to just post pics of the hot muscle babe trophies.
I mean, just look at that bronze skin, and her muscles are as hard as metal alloy!
Something else also sometime occurs to me. The site has been going for many years now now and continues to expend. However there clearly isn't unlimited storage/expansion long term. That wont be sustainable, surely for a free to view site.
Longer term, possibly, either there is a cull of some images (eg with low or non scores?) or a tightening of the criteria for inclusion? Obviously Chainer et al will have a view on long term options, and I would be interested in hearing that.
Storage keeps getting cheaper so that is not a big problem anymore. and in the early days of the site everything was more low res. I think these days most of the money comes from promoting her biceps.
I don't think storage space is going to be a problem in the foreseeable future.
Even if it were to be a problem, selectively culling old uploads would not be a sustainable solution to it. The site grows by ~400 uploads, roughly 1 GB, per day. Good luck finding that many old uploads per day to delete. (Sure, if I didn't want to do it manually I could run a script that deletes every image with, say <5 favorites, but if the growth of the site stays the same, this only delays the inevitable.)
Two tangentially related questions:
Yesterday, my uploads said I had 4 Direct + 2 Bonus. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what is meant by Bonus uploads, but I interpret that to mean I could do 6 direct uploads at once.
I selected 6 TikTok vids of Anna Mroczkowska and hit upload. The first 4 were uploaded, and I got an error message for the other two telling me I'd reached my upload limit.
What am I missing here?
Question 2...
Taking inspiration from two other forum topics, I saw a Mod review of HerBicepsCam praising a blocking feature. The premise being that the site had a ton of models who didn't have any muscle signing up and bulk posting on the site and marginalizing the actual muscle models. The Mod said the blocking feature allowed them to block the unmuscled models they didn't want to see so the muscle model content wouldn't be marginalized.
Several posts above, I expessed concerns about a similar dilemma of an increaing number of fat models with little to no visible muscle being uploaded to GWM. Much as the addition of a model blocking feature on HerBicepsCam improved the experience of the Mod, so too would the ability for me to block models I don't want to see here improve my experience on GWM.
A few other recent threads discussed banning certain models from the site for "immorality". Chainer already unequivocally said that wasn't going to happen. I refuse to engage with the politics on the subject and ask that others do the same to not turn this thread into another argument that will only derail the topic and result in the thread being locked.
Anyhow, the ability for users to block models they don't want to see, regardless of the user's reasons, would almost certainly improve the experience of using the site on an individual basis.
I realize that new feature requests mean more coding for Chainer. I think it would be a good feature that would improve overall user experience.
Also Chainer, if you did implement user bans of models, you could collect metrics that might be useful to you going forward.
We've had a slew of uploads recently of different varieties that have been removed (and sometimes later merged/restored) for kind of ticky-tack reasons, but wanted to reiterate some things so you don't get your uploads removed on the first go:
Please try to download social posts or stories as direct from source as you can. if this requires a 3rd party app, so be it (though something like TikTok allows downloads if the user enables that option. Chrome has excellent extensions to allow for direct downloads if you're on desktop). A screen shot will generally be of lower quality and merged. If it has phone UI on it and there's a better version it will be merged (anything like a slide number, the social handle, anything that's not part of the post itself).
If you're pulling a post that has any kind of borders please crop them. We just want the media itself, so if they post something that has blank space above, below, or to the sides, that can go. If it's one of those video posts where there are blurry borders to the left in right, that is acceptable, though if you can crop that out too, it is preferred.
An exception: if the instagram story or post downloads as a video because the post includes an animated gif, a screenshot or still frame is preferred. That way we aren't getting a video file for what amounts to a picture.
Please include a name when uploading. A name is preferred, but a social handle also works. If you're uploading a lot of the same person, start with one in your initial upload, or fix it soon after so there's a point of reference.
For video uploads, a reminder that there's a feature to select a representative frame for the post. If you don't it will select a random frame. one post I saw yesterday defaulted to a black frame which is unlikely to get any attention.
Please don't crop photos. There are already site rules about cropping out watermarks or credits, but generally don't crop photos. An exception would be if the pose or person is pretty good, or exceptional, and there's something else going on in the photo that makes it worse. One example of this was a video posted initially that included a minor, and was reposted with a crop to remove the minor without diluting the quality of the post. "No cropping" should ideally also include not removing excessive scenery (like if it is a mirror selfie and the subject is pretty small in comparison to the rest of the photo or they are a bit far away in general) or trimming part of the photo to make the subject more full frame. I'd rather trust this on users to do if they choose to save the image locally and keep the master file on here so the quality isn't diluted.
Please don't upload stills from videos and then be surprised if they are merged into the source video. Also, please don't upload a video AND stills from the video because (surprise) they will be merged.
A reminder that most contest tan photos might be scrubbed. An exception would be a video of their routine, perhaps, or an exceptional backstage photo. But mandatories should be uploaded to the forums (I know that thread is getting a little bloated and perhaps competitor-specific dump threads may work), and the slew of non-flex candids pre and post show too. Most of them are not remarkable or don't show anything "new".
If multiple photos have an almost identical pose they will be merged to the best version. For example, in pic A if she is doing a lat spread and her face is pointing to the right, and pic B she is doing a lat spread but her face is facing the lens, this will likely be merged to pic B if the postings and poses are identical. This happens fairly often if screenshots are taken of a video (or if she posted screenshots from a video she took)
Lastly (for now) please include a link for a post if appropriate. Use your better judgement on this. Is it something like a Herbiceps preview? Drop a link. A little too risque in general for an IG post but it got a pass, but maybe also was crossposted on OF? Drop a link. Shot by a paysite but still posted publicly to socials? Post a link. Think someone would be curious as the source? Post a link and prevent 50 comments about "who is she wowwwww".
May add to this list if I'm reminded of anything else, but this is a good start :) If you have any questions leave them below!