[Jayne Greye]

My wife and I have finally completed a non fiction about Female Muscle and their admirers entitled Iron Beauties.  It will be available on both smashwords by day’s end https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1045392  and Amazon soon  Here is the description:

Increasingly women have thrown off society’s expectations and are building intense muscularity. Are these women pioneers who have determined that they desire not only equality of opportunity, but physical equality? Or is their motivation to lift and develop their body just another aspect of the existing patriarchal construct where they are conforming to a subset of men’s physical desires?

Iron Beauties explores the motivations that drive women to build these powerful physiques and how they are viewed by society. It also delves into a growing group of men who revere strong, muscular women and seek their companionship or even domination. These men largely hide their feelings from their friends and fear humiliation and shame but are nevertheless drawn to muscular maidens. Is their expression of a different kind of beauty for women deviant or the dawning of a new era of appreciation of athletic, muscular women?

Here is part of the introduction:
She wraps herself in strength, carries herself with confidence, and works hard, strengthening her arms for the task at hand.
   -Proverbs 31:16-17
Women have been struggling to attain equality for centuries. Forced to comply with patriarchal views on womanhood and beauty, they have faced a host of issues. Lower wages outside the household, restrictions on occupations, more work in the domestic sphere, lack of educational, voting, and reproductive rights, and the lion’s share of responsibility for childcare are just a few of the hurdles women have faced. On average, women today in the United States still only earn 82 cents on the dollar compared to men. In an ‘apples to apples’ sense, where two workers may have nearly identical jobs, a woman would make only 91 cents to her male counterpart’s dollar. Thus, women are still 35 percent more likely than men to be in poverty, with single mothers facing the highest risk. A woman’s worth has historically been more related to the appeal of her body than the power of her brain.

The Victorian era ushered in new expectations where the frail, weak look was fashionable. Women were to be placed on a pedestal and admired while whalebone corsets would literally mold their bodies into shape. “Along with producing an ideal female body shape, corsets also produced lasting health problems for many women, specifically structural weakening in the spine and uterine problems. Ultimately the corset became a self-fulfilling prophecy; it moulded the ideal female body type, and also created a weaker female. As females were already regarded as the weaker sex, the corset simply magnified this “natural” assumption of female fragility.”  Lead, ammonia, and mercury-laden makeup completed the look men wanted and diminished women further.

The most recent century has produced a dizzying array of styles for the feminine form. The twenties brought in rail-thin, almost manly, lack of shape; afterward figures progressively became fuller and bustier. The late 1960s ushered in the era of the physically unattainable body that still remains fashionable today. The idealized beauty and body type of an American woman features large breasts, a big butt, firm legs, and tight tummies. 1972 brought the landmark legislations on Title IX of the Education Act and paved the way for parity in athletics. This was a sea change for women, allowing them to begin to break down the walls of the “frailty myth,” that they were “physically incompetent.” Throughout all of these stages in history, standards of beauty were based on drawings or paintings envisioned in men’s fantasies.

 Even a woman’s mouth has been a measure of beauty. Ancient Greeks believed perfect proportions were ideal while Victorians believed tiny rosebud lips were most attractive and today women are getting collagen treatments to produce sensuous lips. Chasing the ‘ideal beauty’ has been a game umpired by the men and played by women with changing rules. Now, airbrushed photography and photoshop have made the standards even more ridiculous. Given the seemingly unwinnable contest, perhaps it’s not surprising that some women seem to want to quit the game and start their own.

But some haven’t given up so easily. Women building physical strength and muscle can be seen as the ultimate rejection of the male patriarchy. Occasionally, in the Victorian era and since, there have been women who built their bodies and were celebrated for developing ‘unwomanly strength’ such as Charmion and Vulcana. Proudly displaying their biceps alongside feats of strength before wowed audiences, these pioneers were popular, but were seen as unicorns. Today, such women seem to be plastered across social media, showing off their hard-earned fit physiques, six-pack abs, and separation between muscles. These women are proving, with their expanding Inst@gram followings, that the supremely fit woman is growing in popularity. These noticeably muscular women receive varying responses from the public. Many men either belittle their muscles or fetishize them — maybe even both as most men attempt to hide their appreciation of the truly muscular woman — and while some women express appreciation for their sisters in muscle, many others appear either jealous of strong women or defensive about their own lack of fitness.

Are these women pioneers who have determined that they desire not only equality of opportunity, but physical equality? Or is their motivation to lift and develop their body just another aspect of the existing patriarchal construct where they are conforming to a subset of men’s physical desires?

If history has told us anything, it is that the ups and downs of the female body are deeply rooted in gender norms and male preferences. More and more men seem to appreciate the bodies of strong, fit women, but only ‘within reason.’ Forced to look a certain way is connected to the wider problem of trying to control their bodies and their rights.

Despite this, more and more women are starting to shape their own interpretation of what is beautiful. Training, honing, building strong bodies to make themselves lithe and powerful, they flaunt their gains on social media, yet they still have a long road to go to receive acceptance or even fairness in the bodybuilding world. “The key to equality is for society to stop telling women what they should look like and allow people to live their lives as they choose.” Yet this equality won’t come easily as the social construct allows women to train, but instructs then not to train too hard and gain comparable strength. Colette Dowling, respected author and lecturer on psychosocial issues of American women doesn’t hesitate to say men are responsible for this pressure to conform. As men lose the justification for their special privileges, they try to use their physical superiority as justification to maintain their overall dominance in society.

She writes, “women have been excluded from so much in life because of the frailty myth… First, we believed we were weak. Then we began to suspect that we weren’t but kept getting told that we were. Then we began proving that we weren’t and were mocked as men because we were strong. Women have thrown themselves over hurdle after hurdle during the course of the past century, demonstrating extraordinary physical powers and skills, and still we’re being kept back for no reason other than we’re female.” Since Title IX women have made great gains.

Yet has the needle truly moved that much? Even in the sport of bodybuilding where the stated goal is to use physical resistance to strengthen and enlarge the muscles of the body, women are held back. The female bodybuilding category was removed from the IFBB contests in 2015 with the statement, “women were getting so muscular and so into the development of their muscles that it was not at all aspirational for other women.” The category was reinstated this year so perhaps, grudgingly, things truly are changing.

As women try to fight past gender norms, they may have a new ally advocating their right to increase their physical prowess beyond currently acceptable norms. Tens of thousands of men on the internet exult in and almost worship the muscular female body. Is this group of men who appreciate unusually muscular women significant enough to help women to push the envelope?

In the late 1800s, German psychologist Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term sthenolagnia to define a fetish which is based on ‘sexual arousal from a demonstration of extreme muscularity.’ The inclination is found among both males and females, but acceptance of the fetish both historically and in modern social circles is treated differently by each of the sexes. A closely related and sometimes overlapping fetish is cratolagnia, which is defined as the sexual arousal from the display of strength. Both of these terms are known as sexual paraphilias which means that the individuals experience intense sexual arousal to atypical things.

Both sthenolagnia and cratolagnia are not uncommon conditions for both sexes. While these fetishes are frequently accepted or even normalized for women who appreciate men, they are considered unacceptable and deviant when it is part of the personality of a male. The social construct blindly attaches uniform traits to these female muscle admirers. They are derided as “schmoes,” socially deficient pariahs fixated on female muscle to hide their own inadequacies. Further, there is a tendency for many people to assume that all female muscle admirers belong to that same subset.

There is a growing subset of men who are emerging from behind the shadows to demonstrate their appreciation of the muscular female body who don’t reflect this derogatory depiction at all. Some of these men write female muscle growth (FMG), a fantasy genre involving the abnormal muscular growth of a woman. Many of these stories upend the traditional perspective of the man as the partner in charge. These strong women employ role reversal, punishment for transgressions, and dominance in their relationships while growing exaggerated muscle which bends reality.

[Vince]

Hi,

I finally finished to read it, here’s my review on it.

Iron Beauties is a radical change for the book’s authors, who traditionally write female muscle fiction. The book is structured as a research project, but remains easy to read, which main topics the female building their bodies with muscles.

It gives readers a perspective on the female bodybuilder’s perception by men and women in our society. How are they seen by everyday people? The media? Their own sports organizations? Overall, it provides an extensive overview of the ecosystem around Female Bodybuilding and its place within gender equality. It also investigates the relationship and impact of the bodybuilding industry and societal norms on the female bodybuilders themselves.

Many insights are given for FBB lovers, on how the women that they fancy are thinking and live, with insider’s information and direct opinions by women in the sport, from your neighbor’s (very buff) mom to the competitors themselves.

It also gives ideas for men looking to date a female bodybuilder, what they should consider to be able to handle daily life with such women.

Appendixes contains all the interviews of female muscle worshippers and the female bodybuilder themselves. It offers enlightening views on both sides, insights on how female bodybuilders are living their lifestyle, seeing the admiration or repulsion of the men, which is rare to read in any publication anywhere.

Fun book to read

[Author]

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