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The root of this problem is that judges do not enforce the class guidelines. It's as simple as that.
Bodybuilding = PEDs. There would be no sport without them.
After more than 50 years of ever increasing drug use, natural athletes are subbar to every comparison. We are so accustomed to the enhanced look that natty competitions look like a parody. The IFBB has nothing else to do than go with the flow. Athletes love PEDs, people who follow the sport, buy tickets and products love the enhanced athletes, sponsors love them, trophies go only to them.
The juice that feeds this industry is illegal and that is the real tragedy.
Also made plain as day, the past Figure Division Olympians are half the size of to today's bikini girls.
Or to put it another way, current Figure athletes are twice the size of the early 2000 Figure girls.
I attended a NPC Worldwide Qualifier near London last April and the overall winner, a lady from Sweden, was reportedly weighing a bonkers 178 lbs on stage (She's about 5'10'' tall). That's 90s Kim Chivesky-level of contest stage weight. This is where we are now, and as someone above said it well, this is the natural evolution of the sports. Like the Men's 202 class became the 212 class a decade ago, like records in athletics get still shattered with new track, shoes and other gear advancements.
She won because she displayed the best package, TBH. The small audience present there, including myself, appreciated it because she obviously put the hard work on her physique, PED notwithstanding. The judges as well and you can be certain they would also be willing to award accordingly. And it doesn't seem to scare women getting into it, as the huge Figure lineups in the past few weeks show. The class has certainly became some kind of gold standard in the compromise of muscle mass and (Appatent) preserved femininity. I still wonder if, in the light of the current Mike Sommerfeld controversy, the IFBB will set some rules regarding height and weight ratios similar to Men's Classic Physique.
N.B: sorry for the slight OT !
Figure, Physique, FBB is a money black hole. They make no money for the promoter, no sponsor cares for them. They scare the mainstream away and are borderline bad publicity. Competitors are huge and many virilized by any standard.
Arnold International, the second biggest show of the year, has dropped these divisions all together. Officials in the IFBB they would like to erase the divisions if they could. They tried introducing new light divisions like figure, and the girls became FBB big. They brought Physique after killing FBB and they ended with more FBBs competing there and the real FBBs came back from the dead to compete again.
They brought bikini, same effect, brought wellness, same effect. Now its Sport Model for another round of deja vu.
A weird phenomenon, you cannot beat PEDs. They are always present, more prolific and the people who care about the sport love them. So in essence getting rid of them would would drive away the athletes and the people who follow and love BB.
I've been to a few of these shows several years ago and, yes, the pickings are pretty slim in terms of finding a girl that comes close to someone who we typically see on this site.
I have often found this curious as there are many ostensibly natural female athletes out there that equal or exceed the musculature of these competitors in other sports like track & field or tennis or powerlifting or cheerleading or even cross-fit (assuming that is natural, which may be a foolish assumption). These sorts of girls are all over this site. So, I am not sure why women who specifically try and do physique sports tend to look worse than athletic girls.
I will say that the women at these shows often look older and perhaps got into the sport later in life and did not have an athletic, which means getting leaner and building muscle is even harder to do.
For those interested, these are respectively the overall winners of the Wellness, Bikini and Figure classes at the last 2025 OCB Yorton Cup, a decades-running natural competition:
Wellness winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRvH-4vArv8
Bikini winner (!!!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--MsF9jpAYE
Figure winner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ0KIdlRP78
Agreed with the original poster that if one ever questions "natty or not" - taking a little time viewing OCB or drug tested competitions versus non-tested it should become obvious thru simple visual inspection even to the casual onlooker if the girl is getting chemical help.
Also made plain as day, the past Figure Division Olympians are half the size of to today's bikini girls. As already mentioned: this is the proliferation and widespread use of drugs. Not arguing against it, but with the constant flood of guys asking if anyone thinks their favorite girl is using - if after a year's worth of training, she has a better physique than these natty women who have been at it for a decade, this shouldn't be a question in your mind. If in your fantasy you want to lie to yourself and say "well it's great genetics" - you keep going on about your way and delude yourself. But you do not need to be a medical doctor or have a PhD in the life sciences to see what is going on here.
If there is ANY doubt in your mind. Go with your instincts - she ain't natty my friends.