"Women and Steroids"

"Nobody knew or could agree on what women wanted or needed to be. Not even women themselves…. Up close and dressed in anything feminine, female bodybuilders started looking like something God had made suffering from a divine hangover and caught in delusional terrors beyond human imagination."The use (or, more appropriately, ‘abuse’) of steroids is prevalent throughout the entire sports world, nowhere is it more controversial than in female bodybuilding. In a sport where the main goal is to build large and massive muscularity, a large number of competitive bodybuilders, both male and female, have resorted to using anabolic steroids to augment their competitive edge.Indeed, recent detraction away from female bodybuilding and increased attention to women’s fitness competition perhaps signifies the end of the ‘amazon’ female physique that has reigned for the past two decades. Perhaps the primary cause of the inevitable demise is the leadership of the bodybuilding industry’s notions regarding muscularity and feminism. Judges, officials and media in the bodybuilding industry increasingly discourage extreme muscularity in women because it is seen as unfeminine. While on the contrary, men and extreme muscularity are seen as compatible. Therefore, the lines are now drawn between fitness competitions and hardcore professional female bodybuilding.Steroid use amongst female bodybuilders (fbbs) has had several trickle-down effects on women and weight lifting.They equate weight lifting with the extreme muscle mass of the professional fbbs they see in many of the muscle magazines. They hear the taunts of their boyfriends or husbands claiming these fbbs look like men and are undesirable. Does this sound like an invitation for the average woman to weight train? Not all women are aware that these fbbs acquire their massive physiques with the aid of male hormone drugs. Gaining appreciable muscle mass and dropping bodyfat at the same time is not optimal.


Sofia Ramirez
Kin 3381