Forum Saradas

News and Discussion => Gossip about female bodybuilders => Topic started by: bicepboy on October 25, 2022, 03:56:31 pm

Title: Washington Post Discovers Scandals in Female Bodybuilding
Post by: bicepboy on October 25, 2022, 03:56:31 pm
The mainstream news media has discovered female bodybuilding, and the news ain't good. Splashed prominently on the front page of the Washington Post's website, is a broad expose of the sport, including sexual exploitation and allegations of rigged contest outcomes (one competitor claiming a judge told her that her scores were because she didn't come to the judge's room the night before).

Whatever comes of it, I think this article may go down as the single biggest, most notable coverage of the sport in mainstream media, so it's worth the read for that alone. The expose is primarily an attempted takedown of the Manion family, which has always been pretty problematic in the sport. Apparently the younger Manion (J.M.) had a bunch of porno sites featuring bodybuilders (including Alluring Fitness and Fitness Divas which I've never heard of). Manion pressured women to do nude and explicit photoshoots. Saradas isn't mentioned.

The story goes on to quote competitors disparaging the bikini division, and to recount the descent of one judge into encounters with competitors trying to get high  placings. Apparently, the Manions weren't subtle even during the contests and would exert a lot of influence on the scores at contests. Almost everything in the story comes from the prior decades in the 2000s, much of it around 2010, naming and interviewing few women any of us would have even heard of. Only one or two prominent bodybuilders are mentioned.

Your link to the Washington Post story,  Female Bodybuilders Describe Widespread Sexual Exploitation -- https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/women-bodybuilding-ifbb-pro-porn/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f002 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/women-bodybuilding-ifbb-pro-porn/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f002)
Title: Re: Washington Post Discovers Scandals in Female Bodybuilding
Post by: bicepboy on October 25, 2022, 03:59:47 pm
As a companion piece, the Washington Post story links to a personal account by the lead reporter, who is the son of George Butler, the documentarian who did both Pumping Iron movies. That piece is about the son's journey to writing this expose on the sport his father loved, a journey which seems to have begun at his father's funeral.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/bodybuilding-then-and-now/?itid=lk_interstitial_enhanced-template (https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/bodybuilding-then-and-now/?itid=lk_interstitial_enhanced-template)