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Female bodybuilding began in the 1980s when women began to take part in bodybuilding competitions. There are several major difficulties that female bodybuilders have to deal with.
Judging standards
The standards of judging for women bodybuilders change almost every year. The ideal of what a female bodybuilder "should" seek to look like is constantly being re-defined and argued over. But this occurs mostly because many in the sport are unwilling to accept that bodybuilding is a sport in which both men and women compete, just as there are men and women who compete in tennis, golf, basketball, track and many other sports. Limiting what women bodybuliders can achieve on the basis of what is "feminine" to the general public is like rewarding slow runners in women's track if their hair, make-up and track suits are particularly attractive. Too often, the rule changes imposed on bodybuilding for women have been clear cases of gender discrimination.
Ideas about gender and beauty
Male bodybuilders are judged by a set of general criteria whose interpretations evolve over time as competitors achieve greater levels of development and set new standards. Female bodybuilders ought to be treated the same way, but because the idea of women developing their muscles for primarily aesthetic purposes is so new those in charge of the sport have frequently (but not always) tended to allow their views of "femininity" and other irrelevant factors to overly influence judging procedures. Female bodybuilders are often mocked and viewed negatively for not conforming to ideas of feminine beauty and gender roles. It is argued that the way female body builders are sometimes viewed and treated is sexist.
It is also not what bodybuilding is all about. Female bodybuilders should be allowed to develop to their maximum as do the men, with AESTHETIC CONSIDERATIONS determining when a competitor has gone "too far." The same is true for the men, since male bodybuilding is full of competitors with huge muscles and extreme definition who simply lack qualities like symmetry, proportion and shape and therefore do not receive high scores from the judges. To make an analogy, as opera is about the maximum aesthetic development of the human voice bodybuilding is about the maximum aesthetic devleopment of the human body. Opera singers can't simply have loud voices and bodybuilders can't simply have big muscles. In both cases, it is the combination of extreme development and aesthetic standards that defines excellence.
But as the aesthetic standards of opera are not those of popular music, the aesthetics of bodybuilding are not the same as those we use in viewing the normal human physique. The champion bodybuilding physique, whether for a male or female, may be considered beautiful by the general public and in some cases may not. But in bodybuilding competition it is the aesthetics of the sport itself that should govern the decision making process of the judges. Conventional beauty will often play a part in how the judges make decisions but this can't be the primary or most important part of the criteria.
Economics
The money needed to fund this sport is very limited for women. However, bodybuilding for men existed for more than 30 years before many competitors were able to make a living as professionals, and there are a lot of varied (and often quite dangerous) extreme sports in which competitors risk their health and sometimes their lives competing in events where only a few thousands dollars is available as prize money. And there are many sports today in which the athletes are highly rewarded that paid very little to participants in the quite recent past.
Female bodybuilders will make more money when there are sponsors and advertisers who feel that working with these women will help them to sell products and services. This will only happen when the physique competitors begin receiving better publicity and the public becomes more accepting of this new and revolutionary way that women can (but not should) look. Female bodybuilding has already influenced the development of female track stars and other athletes and made women with "hardbodies" and great abs highly fashionable. As time goes on, perhaps the public will become more aware of their contribution and learn to appreciate the aesthetics of the highly developed muscular female body.
Female muscle erotica
In the 1980s and 1990s, there were more economic opportunities for women physique competitors than there are now. This is primarily because the federations governing the sport of bodybuilding for women have subjected it to some very discriminatory policies - in part, it is believed, in the hopes that discouraging the women would make acceptance of bodybuilding for men by the International Olympic Committee more likely. Many female bodybuilders have turned to personal training or working in gyms, and quite a number have developed commercial websites. On the other hand, some female bodybuilders raise money by involvment with erotica which includes the female muscle growth, lift and carry, wrestling, domination, and muscle worship genres. A very few have become involved with explicitly pornographic photos and videos or make themselves available as "escorts." This should come as no surprise to those familiar with the sport, since it is known that at least some male bodybuilders have engaged in similar practices - such as "outcall wrestling" - for decades.
There is certainly an erotic market for beautiful female bodies, as any number of women who set out to be models, actresses and dancers but who ended up as strippers or prostitutes could attest to. However, the majority of women physique competitors, although they may pose for nude photos and display them on their websites, do not engage in any kind of erotic "sessions." And many who do decide to do some kind of erotic session limit themselves to private posing displays and "muscle worship" with no physical contact or sexual activity involved - again, as many male bodybuilders have done since the modern sport of bodybuilding came into existence some six decades ago.
Many female bodybuilders, fitness and figure competitors are happy to pose for artistic nude photographs and do not consider this kind of figure study to be specifically erotic, much less pornographic. But obviously those with a strong fetish for muscular women are likely to have a strong erotic reaction to this kind of photo even though that was not the intention of either the model or the photographer. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - and so often is erotica and eroticism.
Noted female bodybuilders, fitness, & figure competitors
See also