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The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

believermag.com

311–320 of 358 posts

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#311
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're wrong. The reason that every athlete should train every part of their body is because it raises overall testosterone and promotes blood flow throughout the entire body, which speeds development and healing of the muscle groups that are predominantly used in whatever sport... e.g. I'm a sprinter, so I train my upper body as well because it helps my legs grow and heal faster.

Many competitive sports have requirements to be unbalanced for weight reasons. E.g. pro cyclists have to avoid any upper body activities like swimming since they'll put on upper body mass that hurts their performance; the opposite is pro climbers where training quads will lower the performance since they'll grow extra leg mass that arms will have to lift.

That’s true to a degree for cyclists but depends on which discipline and what their objectives are.

A time trialist or sprinter would be much less concerned about upper body weight than a pure climber.

Even when he was as shedding weight for the Tour, Wiggins was was still doing dead lifts (with a low weight) and other upper body exercises because having a strong core is very useful.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#312
post #263

Title: Duped by the “Frailty Myth:” USMC Gender Based Physical Fitness Standards Author: Major Misty J. Posey, United States Marine Corps Thesis: Female frailty is a myth; women Marines have the strength and ability to perform pull-ups and should be required to do so on the PFT in order to evaluate more accurately female upper-body strength, properly condition women for the likelihood of combat, and mitigate the nega…

That's a great article, and very relevant. Thanks for posting it!

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who is saying one bell pepper type is okay... This assumes that Sasha's only concern with food consumption is nutrition alone, where other aspects of discipline and adherence are likely to also be important. Asking for red, green and blue but specifically no brown M&Ms doesn't mean that you think brown M&Ms are fundamentally different in any way: there was another reason why Van Halen did that.

I don’t think this was one of those cases. The Italians I know have firmly held beliefs about what foods should be eaten when and why that don’t seem at all grounded in science. If the bodybuilding subculture has developed beliefs about food, they’re likely just as firmly held. The bell peppers in particular sound like believable pseudoscience. nightshades are poisonous and if one is looking to avoid bloating, perhap…

For sure, I have experienced the same thing - and yet, the Italian diet is revered globally and considered to contribute to longevity.

Something about their approach appears to be working.

It strikes me that creating pseudo-science rules might remind you and help you to also follow the really useful rules, through dedicated practice and having multiple fall-backs.

For example, the rule "Eat green bell peppers not red bell peppers" reminds you to always be consciously aware that bell peppers and then vegetables in general are an extremely important part of your nutrition. If you don't have superstitions about bell peppers, maybe you just aren't thinking about them often enough.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#314
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I dress for women. I undress for men." A good demonstration of this can be showcased pretty heavily in the difference between how women are dressed in women's magazines vs. in magazines targeting men - whatever their state of undress.

Many years ago, I read some article about some guy who was seeing two women and the two women found out about each other. Neither woman dumped him. Neither woman gave him an ultimatum of "It's me or her!" No, both of them began dressing completely differently and the brunet dyed her hair blonde and the blonde dyed her hair red. They both had this internal script that said "The way you win a man is with looks, by god!…

I mean, in competing for him instead of being willing to walk, they're basically validating his choice, and then putting him on a pedestal where they're making it clear to him they see him as higher value than other men they might find. I'd imagine it made him even more inclined to keep seeing both of them.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#315
post #283
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what they call unrealistic expectations acquired from media.

It is not, and in fact any man that actually uses their body (instead of filling it with shit) will have visible abs.

So you continue to assert, but you provide no source for your claim in the face of many sources that claim otherwise.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#316
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume that be the case. The politicians allow this nonsensical, pseudoscientific self-regulation instead of demanding that they switch to b.f.p. , because they know well that it would outlaw body builders, which they do not want, despite their being as unhealthy. The industry came up with this method, of course, to allow bodybuilders to continue, and only having to cull the the hyperthin. It's a nice unspoken…

Nah. Bodybuilders are fat by mbi. BMI is or was used also in context that where it literally harmed bodybuilders - by BMI they are fat. Politicians doing these decisions dont go too deep. BMI is widely know, easy to calculate metric everybody knows. And that is all there is to it.

But the politicians aren't banning overweight models, only underweight models.

I'm sure these same politicians have medical advisors, who advised them against using b.m.i. and also pointed out what I said here.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women having sexual preferences and predilections is not at all the same thing as men getting a ton of social pressure from all quarters to look and act a certain way. A very attractive female actress once said "I dress for women. I undress for men." For that and other reasons, I'm not convinced that male sexual preferences really drive the female tendency to try hard to look good and dress well, even though that's t…

Your experience, described this way, makes me wonder: to what extent are fashion and notions of sex appeal mostly unrealistic competitions, trapped in their own inertia, unhinged from actual human desire, just like those in the article.

I'm sure they are unhinged to some extent. But I've also come to realise over the years that a lot of it comes down to different priorities.

Ask a number of men what their dream women would be like, and odds are you'll get more descriptions of women we'll sleep with, than will want to stay with long term. Sometimes we'll even known this and still opt for the short term payoff, even if we "in theory" want the long term payoff, because impulse control is hard.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference from being obese to being fit has been night and day for me. Self confidence plays a role so it's a sort of self fulfilling prophecy, but there's no question others treat you differently.

Can you please elaborate a bit? What differences did you notice?

I was pretty attractive in high school. The most startling example of this I ever experienced was sitting at a table playing yugioh with only traditionally "nerdy" looking guys, and a girl came by and said "do you know how unattractive playing that game is?" and then she looked at me and said "except you, it's cute when you do it". It truly is a completely night and day experience in how you're treated, negative things about you become cute and quirky and you can do no wrong in many people's eyes.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#319
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is another response to this comment that is marked as dead within one minute of posting, and I'm trying to understand why. Here is the entire comment: > BB is more an art than a sport Well, the Mr. Olympias were some of the strongest men in history. Ronnie Coleman was doing leg press reps in the 2,300 pound range, and he admitted after retirement wishing that he had gone heavier. His dumbbell presses over 200 p…

To mark a comment as dead, only one user needs to flag it, I believe. All it takes is one user to disagree enough. I've had upvoted comments flagged because there was one user who disagreed enough with it and it was about controversial issues.

[dead] usually means the user themselves deleted it, I think. I flag spam comments routinely and it definitely takes more than one user flag to get a comment to the [flagged] state where text is hidden.

Re: The Feminine Physique: On Women's Bodybuilding

#320

So whats the TLDR of this?

Why all the downvotes? lol. I started reading but noticed I won't have the time to finish this booklet of an article bjt was still interested in the gist of it ... don't get the HN community sometimes. Anyway thanks for the answers i got
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