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While many focus on the physical differences of say, Cory Everson, and Iris Kyle, many don’t realize the changing pressures uniquely placed on female bodybuilders in the IFBB. In this episode, Dr. Conor Heffernan returns to recount the history of this division and juxtapose it to the male bodybuilding division.
The women’s bodybuilding division has arguably changed more than any other division in physique sport. It’s gone through periods of existence, non-existence, change, challenge, popularity, obscurity, and reemergence. While many focus on the physical differences of say, Cory Everson, and Iris Kyle, m…
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While many focus on the physical differences of say, Cory Everson, and Iris Kyle, many don’t realize the changing pressures uniquely placed on female bodybuilders in the IFBB. In this episode, Dr. Conor Heffernan returns to recount the history of this division and juxtapose it to the male bodybuilding division.
- Female Strongwoman in The Age of Physical Culture
- Raising The Bar in The 1930s
- Fitness and Feminism in The 1970s
- Modern Turns
- Wrapping Up
Echoing several of our other history pieces on this website, the history of female strength athletes can largely be traced to the late nineteenth century. Some scholars, like Jan Todd, have looked further back to the early and mid 1800s when individuals like Donald Walker and Deo Lewis promoted some form of lifting for women.(2) For the purposes of...
As female physical culture and strength training slowly, very slowly, began to more from light weight work and calisthenics to heavy lifting, two remarkable women came to the fore of public attention during the 1930s. They were Ivy Russell and Pudgy Stockton. Sadly Ivy’s name has tended to be overshadowed in the history of women’s lifting owing to ...
From 1945 to the late 1960s female lifting, while still paling in comparison to male lifting, was becoming more permissible. Although subject to the idea that women should use lighter weights than men or fears that weightlifting would make women ‘more masculine’, there was a slow but steady progression of women entering gymnasiums in Europe and Nor...
From powerlifting and bodybuilding, female Olympic weightlifting was the next logical step for female weightlifters. Unlike powerlifting or bodybuilding however, it took several more years for weightlifting competitions to emerge. Officially sanctioned contests for women dated to the early 1980s when Karyn Marshall and Judy Glenney were among the l...
Women’s weightlifting and physique building has, with the exception of CrossFit, been a secondary concern for much of the twentieth century. Where men’s powerlifting or weightlifting exploits were relatively unproblematic, interested women were forced to wait years, or far more commonly decades, before they could join their male counterparts in ent...
Breakdown of the Categories. I have written elsewhere that the gradual development of the size and muscularity of women bodybuilders in the 1980s and 1990s eventually evolved into fitness and figure — and subsequently physique and bikini.
- Vkim
Mar 12, 2013 · By: Bill Dobbins. The Body Photographer. Women's Bodybuilding Origins. Charles Gaines, author of Pumping Iron, has pointed out that female bodybuilding, based on the idea of women developing their muscles for primarily aesthetic purposes, is a new archetype. But the idea of women possessing big, strong muscles isn’t new.
Hear the full version for yourself by watching this week’s episode of Fit Rockstar over at the wingsofstrength.net. Episodes drop every Saturday at 12 noon Eastern time. Irene Anderson, who is considered the most successful women bodybuilders, shares her story on "The Fit Rockstar" podcast.
