I’d like to think that one day it’ll become more acceptable to being attracted to muscular women. After all, I do sense a somewhat significant backlash against the “skinny is beautiful” aesthetic that we’ve all grown accustomed to seeing.
I’m also willing to bet the recent debate about healthcare will also spur some further dialogue about the health of our country and what it means to be healthy. Is starving yourself in order to achieve that rail thin look good for your body? The answer, of course, is a resounding NO.
Maybe someday we’ll actually see more muscular women in everyday society once we get past the irrational concept that women can’t lift weights in the gym like guys do. Face it: You all know what I’m talking about. Which demographic almost always dominates the weight room at your gym? Men. This isn’t even up for debate.
So, once we see more ladies pump iron in the weight room, perhaps this will lead more and more straight guys (and non-straight guys, to be fair) to openly admit that a women with muscle isn’t gross, but beautiful. Is it so strange to finally admit something that was once “taboo” the moment it becomes mainstream? I would hope not.
But seeing muscular women walk down the streets in droves is far from a reality and probably will never become commonplace (though one does hope and pray!) in my lifetime. Nevertheless, let’s delve into ten common misconceptions about having a female muscle fetish that we should clear up in anticipation of a complete social paradigm shift in how we define “sexy.”
1. Straight men who are attracted to muscular women are secretly gay.
There’s this belief out there that straight men who love a female with brawn is somehow living a lie. He’s not really straight, but instead a fabulously gay man ready to burst out of the closet with two chiseled female bodybuilders sitting on his shoulders.
If my understanding of sexuality is correct, gay men are attracted to OTHER MEN, not women. I’m heterosexual and have no desire to be intimate with a guy. I do, however, have many fantasies about being intimate with women like Gayle Moher, Tazzie Colomb, Ericca Kern and Angela Salvagno. I’m attracted to these women (and scores of others) because they’re beautiful women; regardless if their beauty is or is not commonly accepted among the general population.
That’s correct. They’re WOMEN who are BEAUTIFUL by standards that happen to be outside of the norm. My personal standards for female beauty are my own. I’m not saying you should agree with me, but you should accept this fixation of mine and move on with your life.
Sound good?
Great!
2. Having a female muscle fetish also means you’re into BDSM.
BDSM, for those of you who don’t know what this means, is an acronym for Bondage, Discipline (it could also be Domination) and Sadomasochism. In short, this means chains, whips, being tied up, tying up someone else, spanking, role playing, domination, submission, safe words, leather outfits, consensual pain, pleasure though pain, pleasure through risqué social relationships, pleasure through power, pleasure through the lack of power, paddles, rope, orgasm control, dungeons, anal plugs, kinky toys, blindfolds and a whole host of other elements.
You get the idea, right? Think “50 Shades of Grey,” if you’ve ever heard of that before.
Hell, at this point who hasn’t?
While many female bodybuilders often engage in BDSM activities outside of their bodybuilding careers (being a professional bodybuilder, unfortunately, isn’t a very lucrative business), there is no direct link between being having a female muscle fetish and being into the D/s subculture.
Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not judging those who are into that sort of thing. In fact, I believe that whatever you’re into is your own business and no one else’s. What happens between consenting adults in the privacy of their own homes is not for us to judge. So…I am not saying all of this because I want to distance myself from DBSM culture.
Rather, you can be attracted to an FBB and not want her to tie you up, spank you with a paddle and call you dirty names while she makes you do her bidding. Your lust for her can be very “vanilla,” just as if you had a crush on the girl next door.
Except this girl happens to have steel thighs, bulging biceps, wide pecs and rock hard abs!
But this all brings me to my next point…
3. A guy with a female muscle fetish wants a female bodybuilder to physically dominate him.
Nor is this a true statement. Speaking from my personal life, all my fantasies about being with a beautiful female bodybuilder has nothing to do with her physically dominating me.
I would love nothing more than to make love to a woman like Lisa Cross. She doesn’t have to wrestle me, sit on me, grapple me, pick me up, or pin me to the ground till I beg her to let me breathe. A simple evening with her involving candle light, a bottle of wine, fresh fruit and silky white bed sheets will suffice.
Seriously. That would be awesome.
While many guys who love female muscle are also into D/s role playing, I want to make a point that not every guy fantasizes about the same thing. Just as most regular people have a diverse range of sexual fantasies, so do guys who love ladies with muscles. We’re no different, no freakier than you are. We’re just into a different sort of woman.
4. A guy with a female muscle fetish isn’t attracted to “normal” looking women.
On the contrary, I find women of all types to be beautiful. When I was in high school, I had the biggest celebrity crush on Monica Bellucci, whom I thought was literally the most beautiful woman in the world.
Upon further review, there is little evidence to suggest that my assessment at the time was wrong. Even as a middle aged woman, Ms. Bellucci remains a supremely gorgeous creature. My high school-self had every rational reason to be enamored by this Italian Goddess.
Like most young men, I see beautiful women everywhere I look and frequently fantasize about being with them (guys think about sex every, what is it…seven seconds?). One young lady I particularly like at the moment is the polar opposite of a female bodybuilder: She’s small, petite and possesses absolutely no upper body strength. Kim Chizevsky could snap her like a twig if she wanted to. But I nevertheless find her supremely beautiful.
She has narrow hips, skinny legs, pale white skin and flat breasts. She’s half Asian but looks very much like she could be full. She’s smart, funny and shares a lot of the same interests as me. I’m very much in love with her, but unfortunately she doesn’t quite share the same mutual feelings (my confession of my love for her and her subsequent “friend-zoning” of me could make for a whole other blog post). Regardless, I think she’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met.
All this is to say that I’m also attracted to “normal” looking women. It’s not like guys who love muscular women find their less muscled counterparts to be repulsive. We don’t expect every woman to look like Lauren Powers or Lora Ottenad, so it’s unreasonable to assume if you don’t look like them, we don’t care. It’s not like that at all.
Having a female muscle fetish isn’t a one-track deal. It’s just one tool in the tool shed, so to speak. Of course women like Megan Fox and Kate Upton also catch our eye. But ladies like Deidre Pagnanelli and Monica Brant do as well. That’s all there is to it.
5. Having a female muscle fetish is a “condition” that’s unhealthy.
This is a misconception that especially gets me angry. I don’t know how common this belief is, but I do know that a small percentage of folks out there might think this.
Clinically speaking, the proper term is sthenolagnia, which means “sexual arousal from displaying strength or muscles.” This isn’t a condition. It’s just a kink. Of course, any interest that goes too far can be unhealthy. When a fetish becomes an obsession, you can be prone to adopting some very unhealthy behaviors.
Wasting money you can’t afford to spend to satisfy your kink. Alienating your friends and family. Breaking the law. Endangering your physical being and psyche. All of these things can be associated with a fetish gone too far.
But this definitely is not normal for people with a harmless and unusual fetish.
To be fair, I should say that the word “fetish” can be misleading. In some definitions, the word “fetish” implies that someone needs that particular object in order to get sexually aroused and cannot get aroused otherwise. In other words, if feet are your thing, nothing will turn you on except for feet and feet only.
This definition might be a bit extreme, but like I mentioned before, being attracted to muscular women doesn’t mean I can’t be attracted to non-muscular women. There are lots of non-FBBs who strike my fancy.
So there is nothing unhealthy about having a female muscle fetish. It doesn’t affect my personal or professional life. My relationships with my friends and family aren’t strained because of it. My relationship with women also isn’t suddenly off-the-wall because of this particular fandom. I’m perfectly normal. And many other guys who share my kink are as well.
6. A female muscle fetish is caused by unresolved childhood trauma.
Can my love for female bodybuilders be explained because of some unresolved childhood trauma? Was Mommy overbearing, despotic and cruel? Was Daddy weak, complacent and effeminate? Could this be the cause of my lust for strong women?
I’m no psychologist, but I’m guessing there’s absolutely no link between liking female muscle and having a troubled childhood. But it does seem rather tempting to make a Freudian connection between having a strong mother and gravitating toward strong women as an adult.
I’m willing to bet there’s some truth that someone who was spanked as a child (by mom, perhaps) might develop a fetish for being spanked as a grownup. But I have absolutely no empirical evidence to back me up.
Alas, I can only speak from personal experience that my attraction to female muscle is completely independent from my upbringing.
Then again, it’s hard to self-analyze, isn’t it?
Maybe I should see a shrink after all…
7. A female muscle fetish is temporary and will eventually go away.
Sticking with this theme of a female muscle fetish being a “condition,” is it like the common cold and it will eventually go away with plenty of bed rest, cough drops and chicken soup?
I highly doubt it. This is not some sort of temporary fad that I’ll get into and eventually move on from as if it were a trend diet. The South Beach Diet, Atkin’s Diet and the recently chic Paleo Diet may come and go, but I don’t think the love for female muscle will ever go away.
If you browse chat forums that discuss muscle worship, wrestling sessions and the love for FBBs, many of these folks talk about loving female muscle for many years, sometimes dating back to childhood. It’s like a light going off: Everyone who loves muscular women can remember the exact moment they first discovered this love. Whether it was pursuing through a fitness magazine, catching a glimpse of a female bodybuilder on television or seeing a strong female character in a comic book, everyone with a female muscle fetish can share their personal testimony of “how it all started.”
This is why I very much doubt the belief that this kink will simply run its course after a new fetish is magically “discovered.”
8. Guys who are attracted to female bodybuilders are attracted to ALL female bodybuilders.
There are lots of FBBs whom I find attractive. Katka Kyptova, Victoria Dominguez, Tina Lockwood (who retired from bodybuilding a while back), Colette Guimond, Amber DeLuca and scores of others are some of the most beautiful women I’ve ever laid eyes on.
However, this doesn’t mean I find every female bodybuilder attractive.
I hate to say it and sound sexist, but there are some FBBs who do indeed look “gross.” Whether it’s because of veins sticking out of their skin, “masculine” faces caused by an imbalance of hormones, or some other reason, there are some FBBs in this world that don’t even come close to turning me on. While I wholeheartedly reject the notion that female bodybuilders are disgusting because women shouldn’t have muscles, unfortunately (and it hurts me to say this) this is somewhat true for a select few.
Whew. There you go. I said it. Not every muscular woman looks sexy and beautiful. I hope I don’t offend anybody out there!
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the old saying goes. Generally speaking, we all have our standards for what we find aesthetically pleasing in a human being. Some folks fit in those categories, and others simply do not. We should try our best not to be judgmental about these sorts of things, but that doesn’t change the fact that some women (and men!) are naturally more beautiful than others.
I have nothing against FBBs whom I don’t find pleasant to look at. They have every right to sculpt their bodies into whatever shape they want. I just don’t need to find it attractive, necessarily.
To each his own, eh?
9. A female muscle fetish is misogynist because we’re objectifying a muscular woman.
I’m no feminist scholar, but I’m sure some folks out there might object to us guys with the hots for strong ladies because we’re treating them like sex objects instead of human beings.
This is one misconception that might, unfortunately, have a certain degree of truth. I suppose it’s not a stretch to say that a guy who likes the muscles on a woman is similar to a guy who likes a woman with fake breasts, artificially tanned skin and excessive Botox treatments. We like what we see instead of who she is as a person.
If we lust after a woman because of her looks, does this make us sexist? This is a whole other discussion that I’m not too keen on getting into right now. But here is what I can say with a certain degree of certainty: Guys who like muscular women probably aren’t typically going to be the sexist, misogynist pigs you see on Mad Men.
I say this because I think the hatred of female bodybuilders is more fueled by sexism than the love for female bodybuilders. While objectification under any circumstances is unacceptable, I’m willing to bet if there is a group of straight men out there who is less likely to be against a woman demonstrating her independence and bodily freedom, it would be guys with a female muscle fetish.
Personally, I think it’s awesome there are women out there who could care less about what society says and choose to pursue bodybuilding regardless. I’m all for someone striving to be the best they can be at what they do. The beauty about bodybuilding is that it’s a sport where, ultimately, you’re competing against yourself more so than against other people.
Think of it this way: Us guys who like strong ladies do so because we like the way they look. Fine. But there’s a hidden layer underneath this. We also like their will, tenacity and dedication to looking the way they do. Lots of guys are scared and intimated by a woman who’s not afraid to break stereotypes.
Guys like me aren’t.
10. A female muscle fetish is rare.
My last point is another point that might be partly true. It’s very hard to say how many guys are actually attracted to muscular women. It is fair to say that the number of guys who are open about their attraction to muscular women is rare. I’ll give you that.
But how many guys (like myself) keep their love for strong lassies a secret? As we all know, it’s a taboo to openly admit this, so this could explain why we think it’s so rare. But is it actually more prevalent but kept underground because of the stigma attached to it?
Anything that’s considered “weird” ceases to become weird once it becomes more popular. I could list a million things that fit into this category. But as much as I love female muscle, I’d be very hesitant to openly admit this fetish in casual conversation with my friends. Complete strangers on the Internet? No problem! My best friends? Uh, no.
So is a female muscle fetish rare? Maybe, maybe not. I’m in no position to say either yay or nay.
But maybe it isn’t. Maybe there are a lot of men out there who wouldn’t hesitate to confess that a woman with muscles is way more sexy than a woman with a bony body if it weren’t so “strange.” Maybe the more we see muscular woman in public, the more willing guys would be to whisper to their buddies, “Hey, she’s pretty hot. And strong, too!”
Maybe, and bear with me here, if more guys admitted to liking a girl with a little bulk, more women would abandon ridiculous fad diets and do more bench presses. Starve yourself to get skinny? Screw that! Go to the gym instead and LIFT to your heart’s delight! If we want to see more women in the weight room, all we simply need to do is encourage them. Hmmmmm…
Is strong the new skinny? We can only hope so.
Or, at least, I can only hope so.
The Adventures of Ryan Takahashi 
I share exactly the same opinions about female muscle fetish! I’m not gay, BDSM is not for me, I know deep inside that I will always love female bodybuilders but I can be attracted by non-musclar women as well…
But as far as I am concerned, I am attracted to ALL Female Bodybuilders! Of course, beautiful features are a big plus but as long as muscles are there, I am instantly captivated.
Same here; muscles, toned women get me going. I am attracted to women without muscles as well. If anything, I totally hate BDDM; not my thing. My fantasizes involve making love to someone like Renita Harris, Rowena, or Dorothy Trojanowicz. I don’t want to be beat up, picked up, or choked til I pass out.
I enjoyed this blog and you actually hit the nail in the head in covering points. I am extremely attracted to female bodybuilders. I wasn’t abused as a child, I didn’t fall on my head, and I’m definitely not a gay male. I have been attracted to female bodybuilders since high school and it happened simply by picking up a muscle magazine. For the first time, I laid eyes on Renita Harris and Monca Brant, then realized I like how they look. I began purchasing muscle magazines mainly for the women. Sure I enjoyed reading about contest, but it was the pictorials I enjoyed. In the mid 90s, Flex magazine had a section called Power & Sizzle. This section featured pages of a particular female bodybuilder during her off season. Flex magazine continued to feed my kink by having swimsuit issues and lingerie issues. If anything, I enjoyed muscle magazines’ swimsuit issues compared to Sports Illustrated. I kept it a secret from people because I didn’t want people to think I was weird or gay; especially as a HS teen. The only person that knew was my brother. I think women with muscles are sexy, beautiful, gorgeous, and I respect what they do. I workout often so I know how rigorous it can be. For a woman to put in full time work in the gym and do its NATURALLY, I have the utmost respect for her. Female bodybuilders like Lenda Murray, Sharon Bruneau are great because they didn’t need drugs to gain that competitor edge. In today’s culture, it’s shocking that majority of women are taking steroids to get bigger. I like female bodybuilders like anyone but I agree that some aren’t always catching my eye. Women that abuse steroids to look masculine and take away there feminist, I don’t like too much. It’s like people who are overweight and get surgery to lose weight; if you need a drug that is dangerous with aide effects to get that edge, in my opinion, I don’t like it; and like you said, to each his own. I’ve been attracted to muscular women for over a decade and am attracted to women who do not workout. As long as you stay in shape, that’s my tale. Angela Basssett, Venus Williams, Halle Berry, Dominique Dawes; just to name a few. However, some are athletic and to me, that’s what I like. A female bodybuilder like Renne Toney doesn’t tickle my fancy. If anything, i will sound like the average Joe when I see someone like her. To conclude my reply, I just wanted to say this blog was a great read. Each point was well thought of And seemed as though you wete reading my mind. I can say today, I have no problem telling people I am attracted to muscular women. Usually I will tell a person not maybe a female bodybuilder because they may think of Renne Toney or Peggy Schoolcraft. Fitness competitors like Lisa Lowe, retired, Carrie Simmons, lightweight bodybuilders such as Monca Isles, Debbie Kruck, Rowena Scibelli, Fionna Millines, and many more. Natural middle weight and lightweights bodybuilders, I lust and crave. Heavyweight such as Dayana Cadeau, Mistress Treasure, Dorothy Trojanowicz, Mavi Goiai, or Heather Armburst. Sad to say some may be on steroids but I like the way they look. Hopefully I didn’t contradict myself . Great blog, keep up the great work. Know that their are more of us out there.
I read the article and really enjoyed it. My first contact with women bodybuilders was when I saw a picture of pioneer bodybuilder Evelyn Smith in one of our british newsoapers. I was completely mesmerised and spent hours looking at her. I was in my early teens. By todays standards she wasn’t heavily muscled but was still very impressive. I believe she contracted polio early in her life and was on steroids to aid her recovery and worked out in a gym to gain strength. She appeared at muscle beach and was a friend of Pudgy stockton. She was reputed to be very strong and became a professional wrestler. I actually saw a picture of her in a wrestling magasine wrestling a woman called Maxine Gates. It is difficult to find out much more about her, even on the internet. I did find one very short reference to her regarding her career as a professional wrestler and a remark that she wasn’t very popular back stage.
My preference is for the more heavily muscled women like Tina Zampa and Rosemary Jennings.In several programmes on tv about women body builders it was stated that women cannot develop a sgnificant amount of muscle without resorting to steroid use. Several very well known bodybuilding experts stated this. It is due to a lack of testosterone in a femail. However, it still takes a lot of tremendous hard work in the gym for a woman to develop a very muscular body and I have tremendous admiration for them.
If anyone can supply me with information about Evelyn Smith it would be very much appreciated
L S
Thank you Ryan, for a very well crafted opinion of female muscle fetish. I share many of your same views. Strong is definitely the new sexy! Keep up the great work–I am going to be watching you and following you. Also, great work on your erotica stories.
Yours truly,
Amber DeLuca
Oh my God, are you actually THE Amber DeLuca? If so, I’m a big fan of yours and think you’re incredibly sexy and beautiful. Thanks for following my blog. I’m very honored!
It’s great to see you (Amber) taking an interest in the psychology of your fans. I recall being excited as a pre-kindergarten toddler, by a photo in a Life Magazine article my mother was sharing with me. The article was about the opening of the elevated freeways in San Francisco; the photo showed a ballet dancer doing a split leap on one of the as-yet unopened ramps, so that her a rms and legs mimicked the parallel roadways above and below. I was fascinated by the woman’s ability to do something that I already recognized as physically difficult. Don’t let anyone tell you pre-pubescent boys don’t have sexual impulses. At that age, I had no idea my impulses where sexual, but I still remember the strength of those feelings.
:Later, when I was reading on my own (maybe around age 8 or 9), I came across a photo in the weekend magazine section of the Toronto Telegram (a newspaper that ceased publication long ago). It was captioned “She’s trying to prove that women are stronger than men”–a typically stupid journalistic quip. What she was doing was lifting a barbell, as if she’d been caught in the middle of the Olympic lift called a snatch. She was dressed like a weightlifter with the high lace-up boots, and had one leg thrust back with the other bent at the knee. But she was tilted back at the waist and her posture was more as though she was doing an incline press without the incline bench. That picture just inflamed my imagination. What WAS she trying to prove? How had she managed to get someone to photograph her doing that? How had she trained to become strong enough to do that? How did she survive the disapproval she must have brought on herself for norm-breaking? Bear in mind this was in the late 1940s or early 1950s, almost 20 years before women were even allowed to run marathons!
Then there was Vicky Unus, again via Life Magazine, and circus performers who had cameos in the European movies I favored as a high-school student. Once in a while the Ed Sullivan show would get me all hot and bothered, for instance when Lily Yokoi, the amazing trick bicyclist, appeared, and when Joan Rhodes did her strong-woman act.
Through all of this, my strong but superficial visual arousal was accompanied by a deep fascination with how these exceptional women could have battled not only the resistance every athlete’s body puts up against being trained, but the negative expectations and judgments of the larger society. Who wants to grow up to be a circus freak? That’s how muscular women were regarded, in my younger days. And yet it was clear that most of them wanted to be seen as feminine and attractive, which of course, to me, they were!
I guess one way of summing this up is that I’ve always been a feminist. The stronger the woman, the more she appeals to me.
What a great post Ryan! As an aspiring FBB, it’s so nice to hear someone talking so sensibly about my own favorite fetish! 🙂
I wonder if “fetish” is the right word? Especially if you are also attracted to “normals”. By the way, if you come “out” to your friends and family as I have, you may well find that (while they might raise an eye brow momentarily) they will be more accepting than you have assumed.
i think it fits, currently, into the “fetish” category. As stated it’s far less common than the generic lusting of the “boobs” “butt” or “legs” men/persons. Hopefully this will change. As per my personal experience i’ve met with derision from a friend or two; “That’s messed-up!”, or more annoyingly “Women aren’t supposed to look like that!” a friend decried with the disapproval i would save for finding a person perusing child-porn. Really. Another and my own Father just shaking their heads “I don’t get it. But oh-well.” So in my case in personal life i’m afraid i’m still in my own personal-closet, as it were. Much more open than in my pre-Net days when i felt alone in this fancy. But still not too out in the open. With a bit of shame for that fact alone.
Like everyone above, I am intensely attracted to feminine muscle, but even though I love the muscle, not every female bodybuilder looks sexy to me. However, all things being equal, any women would look better with bulging calves and visible abs than the same woman without them.
hey ryan just would like to say thank you on your views of female bodybuilders and the misconceptions a great blog and would love to see more of your story about woman’s bodybuilding. I been a fan since I was 11 yrs old am now 37 and still a fan of the sport am a fan of bodybuilding period and it takes a lot to do what they do and to do it for so many years my hat is off to the men and women of the sport!!! I don’t think that women’s bodybuilding will ever die there is too much rich history as I see it to just be let go. pioneer’s like kay baxter and bev francis and Carla dunlap and so many women I can go on and on. I agree with you on most of if not all of the blog and just would like to keep in touch with you if you have a facebook page please let me know I would like to share your thoughts and talk about our love for the women and how things are going for them from the past to present and future. so take care and please let keep in touch.
I agree wholeheartedly. I might add that society first has to resolve this obesity epidemic, and associated behavior complex before we start seeing fit and toned women on a regular basis.
Great article, really made me feel a lot more at ease knowing that so many people felt this way. Honestly, despite how I eventually found groups of people who felt the same way about fit women, I still felt really alienated considering I’ve been into such a fetish for quite a long time. I recently turned 18 and have been prowling the forums and free previews of women since I got my own computer. I think I was about 5 or 6 when my dad was going through this whole bodybuilding phase and he began to leave fitness magazines everywhere. I forgot who this one bodybuilder was since I was so young, but the rest of my life I was captivated by the thought of women having muscle. I always felt like a freak though, since as I grew up and my friends began to talk about girls and all that puberty stuff, I was always scared to death of revealing my own dark secret. Luckily, as your article mentioned, such stigmas have not held true. I’m still attracted to “normal” women, feel uncomfortable by the whole bondage and trash talking stuff, and have not let such a fetish interfere with my life, as I am entering a good university on a pretty good scholarship. Plus, I have been pretty open about my fetish with both my friends and current girlfriend which makes me feel more at ease (though I only tell them about the “toned” and athletic look, I think they’d freak if they knew of my love for Shanon Courtney or Katka). Keep up the great posts, they really do help (and entertain).
women are becoming the superior sex in everything especially in the gym i worship them in the very near future they will rule the world men will be the new bitches
I am not gay but have always wanted to marry a muscle woman.
I figure I was born liking muscular women. In second grade I wanted to arm wrestling girls and I always wanted them to be strong. I knew nothing about being sexually attracted to anything at that age, but I knew I liked girls that were stronger compared to average girls. That feeling has never left.
Great article – thanks Ryan. I’m in my mid forties now and remember seeing a bodybuilding woman called Caroline Cheshire, in the TV times when I was 11. I’ve been into muscular women ever since, and am happily married, with kids, to a non-muscular woman who I love and am still attracted to. I have never fancied another guy. Maybe one day it won’t be so underground to have muscular women as part of the range that “normal” men are “allowed” to like the look of.
I ran across you article and it made feel good because I know there are others like me that find woman like aleesha young and alina popa attractive I have fbb fetish and I admit it started that faithful day when entered my uncle’s weightroom at the aged of 10 and saw that pick of the great corey everson .
Somehow simplicity gets the nod when it comes to muscular female attraction. The simple fact that in nature strength and good health rules is lost on the real reasons why some of us are attracted to female muscles. To me it’s a simple law of nature by which the strong seem attractive to the opposite sex and also the other way around… Sound simple? In nature simplicity rules…
a reply to my own comments because I am interested in what others think about natural attraction
I think female muscle woman are Great I like the way they look they seem to have more confidence in themselves and they take good care of themselves also Amber Deluca is my Favorite
Nice article!
Thank you, Ryan!
I’ve been following your blog since almost the beginning ( google brought it up thanks to search terns I often use) and really enjoy it.
Just as an FYI , Julie Bourassa posted this article from her Facebook account ( she called it ” a very interesting article ” 🙂 ) and there was an interesting dialogue below it in the responses . Keep up the good work.
Thanks for letting me know. WordPress tells me that Facebook is a huge way that my articles are being shared, but I have no way of knowing how and through whom. I appreciate the heads up.
Thank you for a well written and informative blog. I find female bodybuilders and muscular women to be extremely attractive. With all the misconceptions surrounding certain fetishes its nice to see some one with the guts to address them.
Nice article. I remember seeing the film Pumping Iron II and being amazed. My friends think I’m weird but I don’t really care. The bodybuilding /power lifting lifestyle appeals to me. I admire the women that have the tenacity to stick with it. In my opinion they are very very attractive.
Oh these beasts on ‘roids are gross!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dude, you should never even had posted that comment.
I agree this is a pretty disrespectful comment. However, even though this is my blog, I’m not going to delete it. I believe in free speech and our ability to freely express our opinions, no matter what it might be. The only comments I delete are Spam messages that somehow seep through the filters.
Great article. I was pretty open to my friends and family early on about finding athletic and muscular women attractive and it made life easier for me personally. Had a poster of Rachel McLish in my room in high-school. By the way, surprisingly maybe…my buddies thought she was hot too! Over the years, Friends have purposely set me up with athletic and even muscular girls because they knew my likes and dislikes. With the way society is accepting muscles on women, especially 6-pack abs!!! within a decade I think it will be normal and accepted for men to be into buff chicks…Like I said, I openly admit it to friends and family, and I get no backlash comments what so ever, and i’m fit (5’11” 190 pounds) but by no means a bodybuilder.
I am 19 this month and just beginning to explore my many secretly held possiblities. This is a very rewarding blog that answers a lot of hidden question I only dare to ask.
I find female muscle can be attractive if the woman hasn’t overdone the steroids to the point where her looks pass beyond androgyny into masculinity. Also, I wish they didn’t always have to go so overboard on the tan. It’s almost impossible to find non-BDSM erotic images of muscular women with unmuscular men, which would make for an interesting visual contrast…
As a recent divorced female I find difficult to tell my story, but both genders have difficulty with capable females. So what is the answer. Is it really a secret to be held in private between two people of the opposite sex when she is capable and he is NOT? Or does the confusion continue and we just hope everything works out in our relationships. Being a capable female is not easy in a very incapable or tolerant society. It’s not just in America it’s everywhere. It’s almost as if a strong female and weak male is a subculture. IS IT?
awesome post, wish i could see more like this, ive come across some before, but not many as its such a ‘controversial’ topic.
i agree with all your points, no mummy issues, not into bdsm, only like muscles on a woman – though i do like a bit of domination/female wrestling or just seeing and feeling the power of a strong women (though i personally have a limit of the muscle bulk, sometimes it is too much, roided and veiny just isnt beautiful imo).
my question though is, are most muscular strong women, more masculine not just physically but also mentally than other women without muscle, and want someone in the opposite sex who is less masculine physically and mentally? or is it the same as most females, and a strong woman needs and EVEN stronger man, to bring the ‘inner feminimity’ out of her and make her feel protected?
its something that has really bugged me recently, as i am quite an empathic, creative and slim man (though im definitely no physically weak ha), and i feel i’d be more comfortable with a woman who is prepared to wear the trousers in a relationship, though it seems that this is rare, as women in general do always seem, one way or another NEED to be dominated by the male.
sorry if i went a bit too deep, personal!
I’m a female bodybuilder, to be honest I don’t mind my partner to be weaker than me. To me, personality over everything. I’m glad you like mascular women.
Denise Masino is insanely attractive. I would love to do dirty things to her, and her oversize clit.
Yes, yes, and yes. I agree.
I’m not attracted to female body builder’s personally, but I stumbled across this page on a random research binge about human behavior and sexuality. It was definitely just what I wanted to find–well written, informative, and it cleared up the hateful misconceptions directed against female bodybuilders and the men that find them attractive. Very well done! As an ‘outsider’ to this interest it was seriously eye-opening. I don’t believe that people can control or change what they are into sexually, and I hope that we soon reach a day as a society where we can be all-inclusive of any behavior that doesn’t harm others and is between consenting adults, and nothing has to be swept under the rug!
Dr. L
I beg to differ with you Doctor since i’ve been into this for over 50 years, i was into this 15-20 years before female bodybuilders were even on the horizon. You say, “you don’t believe that people can control or change what they are into sexually”. If that is true why seek behaviour modification? If we can’t change our behavior then the whole Mental Health Industry is a joke. Ryan makes since
Wow it’s nice to finally NOT feel alone! I stumbled on this blog out of pure frustration. Thanks Ryan you give guys like us hope.
You’re welcome! Feel free to share my articles with anyone else you think has our same interests but have trouble articulating it.
I feel exactly the same as what you have written here. I do not like that it is considered a fetish that I must hide. The only thing that makes it a fetish is the small number of men that are willing to admit to it. And I agree with you, these numbers are much larger than what people would think.
Most of what we find attractive (curves, breasts, skin, lips) in women is based on our associating it with good health, which is a result of our evolutionary development. I feel that the display of a strong muscle tone on the female body is just an outgrowth of that attraction to health. The thing about this attraction, at least when I was growing up, it was not something that you feel that could ever be indulged since it was rare that you would ever come across a woman with muscle.
I ran across your marvelous article while searching for Tina Zampa’s date of birth. What a find!
I’ve been turned on by female muscle literally since before I went to kindergarten. I remember looking at pictures in Life magazine showing a ballet dancer doing a split leap (lateral, not front-to-back: a more difficult split which shows off the thigh muscles) to evoke the concrete arches of the then-new elevated freeways in San Francisco. I couldn’t take my eyes off that photo, although at the time I had no idea what “sexual attraction” meant. Later, in grade school, I had a secret crush on twin girls who were competitive swimmers.
Then there was a file photo that some numbskull journalist captioned “She’s trying to prove that women are stronger than men” in the magazine section of a weekend edition of the Toronto Telegram (which quit publication long ago). I just had to squirrel that section away where my mom wouldn’t find it, and go back to it over and over. {By that time I’d discovered masturbation!)
That photo is etched in my memory. It showed a woman dressed somewhat like a wrestler, in a tight one-piece suit with laced-up boots. She was lifting a barbell with what looked like an impressive amount of weight on it. Her stance was almost, but not quite, what someone would adopt in the “clean and jerk” Olympic lift: one leg was thrust back, the other in front of her bent at the knee. Her body was angled back at the waist, and she was holding the bar as if she were doing an incline bench press, but without the bench. Her arms were bent, as if she hadn’t finished pressing the weight. Her legs were large and muscular, and her arms–not so much, certainly not by today’s standards. But this was in the early 1950s!
That photo blew my mind on so many levels. First of all, the strain on so many body parts simultaneously, showing off her strength as well as her size. Second, the existence of the photo itself. It was obviously posed–who took it? Why was the photographer there? Where did it happen? Third, as you point out in your article, even today a woman who goes heavy in the gym gets a certain amount of resistance from behind and thus has to have a toughness of mind and sense of her own purpose to defy the stereotype of what women “ought to be”. Well, this photo was probably taken roughly 65 years ago. The stereotype was almost universal back then. Even Joe Weider claimed, in his pioneering bodybuilding publications, that women could not develop muscles like men. In his mind, that was an argument in FAVOR of women lifting!
So the woman in that photo had to be tough enough to defy the stereotype, resourceful enough to find places to train that wouldn’t throw her out, persistent enough to build her strength and endurance against the body’s typical unwillingness to change (every athlete goes through that!), and proud enough to arrange to be photographed doing her thing.
FBBs today are generally aware of the fact that there are millions of us guys (and probably lesbians too) who are turned on by their appearance, feats and character, and many of them use websites, webcams, sessions and role-playing to monetize that (since sponsorships are few and far between). And some of them are openly happy to be populating our fantasies. Rightly so! It is next to impossible for me to express my gratitude to every muscular woman I see for the zing she gives me at the instant I see her. As Randy Newman put it in “You Can Leave Your Hat On”, they give me reason to live.
So I wonder if that incredible pioneer female weightlifter (long before women were officially allowed to compete in Olympic weightlifting) had any idea of the sexual pleasure that her photo would bring to its audience. We can never repay what we owe to people like her, Abby “Pudgy” Stockton, La Toria and so many other ground-breaking, strong, brave, iconoclastic women.
I am a homosexual guy, I love muscularity in men, but I don’t like nor do I feel attracted to muscular women at all. No matter how muscular she is, she won’t be attractive to me.
Someone who states that if a heterosexual guy likes female bodybuilders is secretely gay is a statement that comes from people who certainly know little to nothing about male homosexuality and homosexuality in general.
Even if a woman is exaggeratedly muscular which gives her a very masculine look we can still see the female attributes in her so we won’t feel attracted to them. I guess this works the same way for heterosexual men who like female bodybuilders, they still can see the female attributes in them, perhaps some natural curves of the female body are enhanced by muscularity and that entices some heterosexual men.
For us, muscualrity in men enhances the masculine physical attributes of men so we naturally feel attracted to that body type. However, not all homosexual guys like big muscles; most like a rather athletic look or simply the average body type with a bodyweight proportional to their height.
Grumsomtt, thank you so much for your comment. Those trolls who say any man attracted to muscular women must be gay are ignorant in many ways. Most of them, being troglodytes, probably believe that homosexuality is a “lifestyle choice”. I know it isn’t, because I’m incurably heterosexual, just like you’re incurably homosexual. My hair is one color, someone else’s is different, and even if I dye my hair, that doesn’t change the fact that I was (as Lady Gaga sang) “Born That Way”.
You have lifestyle choices and so do I. Each of us could be monogamous or promiscuous. But your partner(s) would be male, and mine would be female. I don’t know why that’s so hard for so many people to understand!
Thanks for this post. I have had a growing preference for strong women (of all types) ever since I first developed sexual desires. In 20+ years it hasn’t gone away, but in fact has expanded and morphed from just liking athletic women to loving anything from that to women like Katka Kyptova. I don’t find these women to be masculine at all, but I think it enhances their feminine physiques in most cases. I am into heavy lifting and would love to have a woman who is as into it as I am, because frankly I could spend all my spare time working out. It’s nice to know tha I’m not alone in this, because I honestly know nobody who comes even remotely close to this kind of preference outside of the internet, so it’s difficult to be open about it. People have a tendency to over-simplify sexuality and I guess for those who fall outside of the norm it ends up being a huge pain. Especially since in many circles being attracted to muscular women is even more taboo than homosexual preferences. Human behavior as a whole and sexual behavior especially is far more complex than most people can understand and that partly stems from the reluctance of outliers to be open. I think we need to learn to be more open and willing to accept the criticism from those who don’t understand. These women are often ridiculed too, because they fit a different mold and people don’t understand, but does it stop them from being awesome? Hell no. By the way, I had no idea who Monica Bellucci was and now I am a huge fan.
Hello to all muscular women lovers from Spain,
I am glad I found people with the same fetish than mine, it is certainly a relief to see that I am not the only person to have these preferences. I have been hiding this feeling since I was 7 years old and now I’m 32!
However, my fetish is not just linked with muscular women who sometimes might end up being too masculine for my taste like Katka Kyptova. I like stronge women as long as they do not lose their feminity. That’s Wonder Woman charm for example-strong but at the same time sexy & femenine! My special fetish is that I have always been aroused by the fact that a girl/women could be stronger than me or than other men. Has any of you felt the same desire? Being excited just for the fact that a sexy woman could be stronger than you? And could eventually domitanate you or save you using their strenght? I always stared at Supergirl comics when I was I child. She was sexy, pretty and strong. I was/am attracted to her but I was always ashamed to admit that I like that…
Replies are highly appreciated
Pedro
I think you’re grossly inflating the amount of fucks people give about people attracted to muscular women. We really don’t care. Beyond a passing comment and a snicker, walking around with a buff chick is hardly going to draw any attention to you. Personally, muscled women do absolutely nothing for me. In fact, rather than find them merely “non-attractive”, I find them unattractive – which is to say that prolonged exposure to them tends to stir my stomach. But that’s a far cry from giving a shit about whether you or a million other closet buff chick lovers exist. Get over yourselves.
Wow! Henry I beg to differ with you. So why would buffed up chicks even do what they do if what you are saying is true? I’m sure we can agree buffed up chicks are few and far between but you are “sick to your stomach” at the thought of buffed up chicks? So what’s your point? I’ll go first. do they intimidate me? Yes! Why? I don’t know… why not? Call it an inferiority complex, little dick mindedness, I don’t know. I’m also not a believer in political correctness as a means to level the playing field. I know one thing, in the Gym the BS stops regardless of gender and or political correctness. Is that a problem for you? No, you’ve made up your mind, the big buff chicks made you sick to your stomach. I’m just trying to follow your train of thought brother.
Here’s a thought for the New Year, I’ve never noticed it through life but looking back I notice that I appreciate strength in others, whether it be a super hero/heroine or a girl who was genuinely taller and stronger at the same age as me, to be attractive. Right now this goes beyond physical strength, but mental endurance and skill (I currently have a secret crush on a woman who’s not physically imposing, but tall, she brags about physical stresses she endured, she even shows the scars). Even martial arts training has given me a respect for women who can fend off men twice my size (I’m over six feet and bench press over one hundred kilo with ease right now). I’ve always wondered: Why does modern society/fashion aim for skinner rather than the Olympian physical design, why does fashion try to force us towards being weaker in physical abilities as an entire race? (by race I mean every single human being regardless of creed or skin color)
How do you feel about female bodybuilders who evidently have developed extreme masculine features, such as a masculine face and facial hair, do you still find them attractive or do you have some sort of limit that makes you not find them attractive.
Also, how do you feel about them developing masculine voices and masculine mannerisms?
All that attractive too?
I suppose there is a limit for a heterosexual man as to when muscularity and all other associated changes are actually attractive in a female bodybuilder….
Yea.. these are your tastes, not actual rules. These Misconceptions could easily be true for someone else. Either way, I’d never judge someones character based on their fetishes because they usually exist in a logical vacuum. I know mine do.
Thanks for this. While I’ve always loved and admired strong women, I don’t like Female Body Builders, or overly muscular girls. In fact, that’s a turn off to me. I don’t know how I fit in to this fetish, or if it is indeed a fetish, or just what I like. I like women like Katie Couric, Kelly Ripa, Jenny McCarthy, Michelle Obama, some of the WWE girls, Ronda Roussey, etc, “normal” looking as far as muscularity, but attractive women that are strong as hell and don’t hide the fact that they are as strong as hell. That to me is incredibly attractive, and what I like in women. Strong, Athletic, fit. I have some friends that fit this type, and I tell them I like their apparent strength, love to arm wrestle with them, and love the feeling of their power. Fetish, or preference?
Thanks for writing this beautiful blog about some of these misconceptions about fetish for female muscle. But I truly am grateful to come across such a nice blog, that has pinpointed all my misconceptions about this topic. And looking at the replies I can see that I’m not the only one to think this way. To tell the truth my fetish or more exactly love for female bodybuilders started not long back, but I have always admired women who are not only strong in physique but in every possible way, mentally, emotionally, psychologically and so on. Thats why sometimes I would even dream of the day the Amazon warrior women from the folklore came true, so I could atleast woo one of them. I just am really thankful to you for writing this great blog, and please do write more of these kind of articles and blogs and consider me your ardent reader.
Vishnu
I keep googling this fetish and keep wishing there was treatment for it, I would pay for it whatever it costs. I hope you tell your GFs about this fetish in advance, SO THAT THEY WOULD HAVE A CHANCE TO RUN BEFORE MARRYING YOU!!! I married a man who fell in love with me at the gym. At first everything seemed rather normal, but half a year ago I found out that he has this fetish, a folder with crazy body-builder monster women, most on steroids with nasty male face features, and even worse – some of them with big implants. Super disgusting. All of the reasons for bedroom problems suddenly became crystal clear. All this time I thought there is something wrong with me and tried all kinds of methods to make it better but now I know. I feel cheated, depressed and want to get away but I’m so entangled right now financially and emotionally and in all senses that I feel trapped and therefore depressed, and the worst part is that I cannot tell anyone about it. It is annoying how he appears so nice and normal to everyone and his family thinks high of him, but now I know why he was a loner most of his life. I feel so unhappy and I cry almost every night for getting into this and not seeing it sooner. No-one will ever compensate me for the years I’ve wasted with this man and all the love I’ve given and everything. Lesson learned the hard way. Next time I get married I will ask for a written agreement before marriage: if I find out you have some nasty nonsense fetish, you will pay me a friggin’ million dollars moral compensation. I used to enjoy fitness and gym and getting fit but now I just want to disappear because every time I go exercise I just see those shemale monsters and think how my husband is getting off on that whenever I’m not at home and how my marriage is over. I feel paranoid and I keep checking his search history and it hurts me so bad when I’m constantly proven right. I feel so lonely and helpless as I left my country and my friends and my family for this man and now I have no-one to support me or help me leave without completely collapsing.
This. This is exactly what I fear happening to me. I have been pretty much exclusively attracted to physically strong women for my entire life. I have wanted this to go away for a long time. My biggest fear is revealing this to a future girlfriend of mine, because I know that it would result in this response. It is so taboo to talk about something like this; no surprise that your man couldn’t open up to you about this until recently. You have indicated nothing about how he treats you as a human being.
My wife is a big, strong dominate woman. We play strip wrestling in our finished basement, the first one naked looses and has to do what the other says for the rest of the day. She is usually down to her thong panties when I lose (almost, but not quiet naked). I’m usually winded and weak (she works out and runs with girlfriends in our neighborhood and has much more stamina than I) when she picks me up and pulls me over to the couch as she sits down and turns me over her knee for a spanking. A few minutes into my humiliating predicament she looks up to see our retired neighbor Barbara, who’s around 70 and been single for about 20 years she also works out with my wife at the gym and runs in the neighborhood, looking in our slider as my wife left the blinds and door open for better air circulation. I can’t see her as I’m facing away from the door my wife waves her in. She’s no more than 10 feet from me before I know she’s even there. My wife tells her what we’ve been doing without missing a beat. She then asks her to grab the hand cream from the bathroom for her and brings it over as my wife flips me over and holds me down bent backwards across her lap as I try fighting her to get up. She then tells Barbara to put some cream in her hands and do what comes natural. After a minute or so my wife spreads my legs apart and tells her how much I like a prostate massage and Barbara slips a lubricated finger deep inside to my embarrassing lose of control as my wife bends down to bite and suck on my nipples. My wife then goes upstairs to shower telling us to have fun. Barbara then turns me over her knee for a second spanking before striping and putting me on my back on the floor and sitting on my face till she looses control which gets me excited again turns around and rides me as we both release again. Now I’m spanked and made love to by two women.
Thank You for this article,Ryan. I live muscular women because I find well-built woman sexy. I’m not into that BDSM stuff, I just think a woman with muscles is very sexy. Been attracted to female buillders ever since I been attracted to girls as a teen. I admire all the hard work they do to look how they look.
My boyfriend of 4 years has this fetish, when I first came across pictures of female body builders on his pc he laughed it off and claimed a friend put them there.
Over the years he have walked in on him looking at similar pictures, every time he gets angry and embarrassed and closes me out.
It had me concerned, not because that is what he likes to look at, but because he was ashamed of it.
It also have me worried that he didn’t find me attractive as I look nothing like a bodybuilder. Your article has opened my mind and given me something to think about. Thank you.
Hi Sam,
I’m glad I could be of service and clarify what your boyfriend is really interested in. It can be jarring at first, but it’s not such a big deal once you understand what liking female bodybuilders is all about.
Pretty much agree with all of the above. Not gay, not into BDSM, don’t want to be dominated, don’t believe I had child issues (that I know of?) I’m attracted to girl next door types to even the most massive in their day (Michelle Maroldo, Zuzana Korinkova).
Ever since a girl beat me in armwrestling in 4th grade did I start to remember an interest in muscular women. At first I really preferred the figure/fitness girls but have “expanded” my tastes in bodybuilding – thought physique is biggest preference at this point because of the decline of bodybuilding. There is also nothing more attractive than a bikini or figure girl being proud of her muscles and wanting to try figure/physique.
I hate this statement because, as a gay guy, I am not attracted to women regardless of their body type. I’m not offended by the statement but I’m offened by the fact that people love labelling everything as gay without making the slightest effort to understand what homosexuality really is and how it works.
Have you ever found gay guys who love female bodybuilding and are obsessed with female bodybuilders? It is very unlikely to find gay fans in female bodybuilding. I would dare say there are none; only heterosexual men with a fetish for female muscle.
Have you seen fans of male bodybuilding who are gay and gay bodybuilders? Of course, lots of them because it is our nature to feel attracted to the male form and we will search for ways to celebrate our male nature.
That’s what homosexuality is about: feeling attracted to the same sex. It doesn’t matter how muscular a woman can be; she is not a man and we can perceive that both physically and psychologically.
Gay guys don’t buy mags with muscle women; gay guys buy mags with muscle men. Likewise, gay guys don’t go to female bodybuilding shows; gay guys go to male bodybuilding shows.
If I liked female bodybuilders I would not be gay; I would be bisexual. Simple math.