Female Muscle NonFiction

[taoschild]

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?

[taoschild]

Here is the forward to the book by Jak Cratocles.  Would love to hear reviews from people who've read it if you have a chance 

Billy Joel once wrote “we all have a face that we hide away forever and we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.” This has never been more true than for men who admire and are inspired by muscular women. Female muscle admirers, especially in modern times, have had their masculinity questioned, their intellect impugned, and their social value maligned. Further, the sources of these assorted insults come from an almost overwhelming variety of sources: peers, family, self… sometimes even the women these men admire.
This view was particularly in my mind when Richard approached me about writing a narrative describing my own experiences with awakening to a fascination with female bodybuilding. Among my peers, I am fortunate enough to have found a group of people that is aware of my fetish and accepts it, even if they don’t all share it, but I can easily remember decades where my fascination with muscular women was held even closer to my vest than my social security number. I considered being open about my attraction to powerfully muscular women to be nearly as mortifying as being open about an alternative sexuality or gender assignment, and writing at length about my experience was the emotional equivalent of skinning out of my clothes and parading down the Las Vegas Strip in nothing but rainbow-colored paint.
Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity.
A little context may be in order, here. Amongst admirers of female muscle fantasies, I am a small name. Some of my work has become popular enough that people recognize it and are eager to express how much they like it, but almost no one recognizes me as the author at first glance, and my personal fame pales next to such giants in the industry as Richard Greye, David C. Matthews, and Roy Ellison; to have one of these titans ask for my input was both humbling and immensely satisfying.
As I wrote my contribution, Richard also asked me if I would assist in prereading and editing the book, something I’d done for him on several other books, most notably Stealing Muscle and Hard at Work, a pair of female muscle fiction anthologies written to support a variety of charitable causes, and Virtual Muscle, a novel focusing on a man’s discovery and exploration of his love for a muscular woman. Again, I was eager to assist.
Richard is a writer after my own heart; not satisfied to simply write off female bodybuilders or the men who admire them as aberrations, he dove into the history of how the sport has existed and evolved over time as well as how perceptions of muscular women and their admirers have shifted. He and his wife interviewed dozens of men and women, ranging across athletes, admirers, session aficionados and sessionettes, artists, and writers in order to develop the most comprehensive study of female bodybuilders and the people who admire them that I’ve ever seen. He has explored the demands of the sport and not shied away from describing the cost paid by both athletes and admirers, extending beyond the physical and financial demands of the sport and also exploring the mental and social demands the sport places both on competitors and on the largely anonymous group of men who support them.
He is also candid about his own experiences, making this book not simply a dry research tome, but a living text that shows the journey of the author as a part of the movement and not merely an observer. He has endeavored to demonstrate how his own fascination grew and how it has conflicted with the often-misguided messages his upbringing handed him. Perhaps most remarkably, while he offers a number of views, he refrains from giving a simple answer to questions that demand complex solutions.
I can’t promise you that this book will answer any questions you have; that is too ambitious a task. What it will do is show you the questions to ask and help you find your own answers. If you are an athlete, an admirer, or simply someone who seeks to understand this particular culture, this book will help you appreciate the struggles inherent in these lifestyles.
To revisit Billy Joel’s commentary: “You may never understand how the stranger is inspired” but “you’ll give in to your desire when the stranger comes along.”

[taoschild]

First review of the book is in: https://femuscleblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/15/iron-beauties-exploring-the-psycho-social-aspects-sounding-muscular-women-and-the-men-who-celebrate-them-by-richard-and-jayne-greye/

[87fg]

First review of the book is in: https://femuscleblog.wordpress.com/2020/10/15/iron-beauties-exploring-the-psycho-social-aspects-sounding-muscular-women-and-the-men-who-celebrate-them-by-richard-and-jayne-greye/

Thanks for putting the link up to  my blog 

[jhunter]

Thanks for sharing, will have to look into it.

[taoschild]

Here is a segment from 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 Insta**** 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.

[QBikk]

Hi taoschild,
I got it and I'm starting to read it. I'm so far in the Chapter about Sessions and how come they exist, what is their impact on female bodybuilding. I find the book so far very enlightening about this fetish I have and how these women are perceiving it.
I'll post a review when I'm done reading.

[taoschild]

Thank you Qbikk.  Let me know what you think of it when you've finished it.  Here is the rest of the prologue:
----

Other men draw these perfected women with an almost obscene amount of muscle or ‘morph pictures’ of celebrities or muscular women to impossible scale. A growing number of men discuss the most recent muscular beauties that they’ve seen in bodybuilding contests in internet chat rooms, YouTube comment sections, on Insta****, and message boards across the internet.

Why are more men becoming excited about muscular women and more women becoming serious about training their bodies and developing muscle, even to extents not considered mainstream? This book may not be able to answer these questions, but through interviews with men and women, it will examine the phenomena of the muscular female in varying facets.

I’d like to dedicate this book to the muscle worshippers that I’ve met online. Though I have not always been entirely flattering about our fetish and the people who share it, I have attempted to represent them accurately and they’ve helped me understand, explore, and ultimately embrace this part of myself. I’d also like to thank Jayne for conducting and editing the bulk of the interviews for this book. She also grew more excited about the project and by the end was co-writing the book with me which helped us portray a more nuanced view of the story.

We decided upon using a pseudonym for all the contributors because the anonymity seemed to increase both the veracity and the details. Some women, particularly those who conduct sessions, agreed to speak with us for background research only on the condition of complete anonymity with no quotes. These still helped to broaden our understanding of the industry as a whole. As we continued with the interviews a virtual tsunami of volunteers began contacting us about participating, which I credit to Jayne’s front end work. This influx also lends credibility to the idea that there are a lot more people with my tastes out there than has been advertised. It seemed to many as if speaking about the issue openly was like lifting a weight of doubt off their shoulders.

Though we weren’t able to include all of them, this book will offer snippets of interviews conducted with muscular women and their male admirers, with the bulk of the interviews in their entirety supplied in the appendices. In many ways the interviews are the most compelling part of the book offering a window into the minds of individuals who either build muscle or worship the muscle on women. They share their stories which are highly personal and relatable. These voices reaffirmed that men who worship women’s muscle are in all walks of life. Some interviews from people in countries less progressive demonstrate how the challenges they face with their fetish can be even more impactful. If, as you read a quote, you would like to read the full interview at that time, the e-book version has a link you may click to read the entire response before returning to the text. In the chapter examining the role of female muscle growth literature, both the author’s interviews and extended excerpts of their work will be available in the addendum and linked by author when mentioned.

[QBikk]

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