For as long as I can remember, I've been
fascinated by the idea of
strong, athletic women. This site's mission is to share free
information and images I have on this subject.
Part of this site shows my work and promotes
my services as a photographer. I welcome everyone to enter the TomNine Photography Portal.
I try to update it with a few new sample photos and a YouTube video
clip every Friday when I
have the time.
The biggest part of the site are my links,
which I think are about
as comprehensive and up-to-date as you will find anywhere. If you know
of any other links that should be included, please let me know. While I
don't update this page very
often, I try to add new links every weekend when I have the chance.
I
am on MySpace, feel free to drop by my page
and
say hello.
E-mail me at tomnine@gmail.com.
If you still have my Earthlink address in your book, please delete it.
Some
random thoughts:
21 March 2008
Holly
Nicholson is an extremely cool lady, I don't know why there isn't more
buzz about her online. A bodybuilder, firefighter, and grandmother. I worked with her at the recent Arnold Classic,
where she won her class at the amateur show. She mentioned that she
would appear in one of those "Bud Light Dude" ads, and sure enough here
it is. (It's toward the end, wait for it.)
The
multipurpose "dude" exclaimations serve well here. There is
understandable objection to seeing one's buddy marry anyone he just met
in Vegas, let alone a buff bodybuilder. (Holly makes a beautiful
bride.) And I'm sure she can also generate some impressive
wedding night noises, and no glass required to hear them. 28
December 2007
I can't say I have a real passion for
photography on its own. I mean, it doesn't occur to me to go around
taking pictures of flowers and clouds and old door ways. My interest is
in capturing what I find appealing about muscular women and
communicating that to viewers. I have been grudgingly working on my
photography to better achieve that goal, collecting better gear and
improving my skills every year.
I am just your basic
Guy
With Camera and wouldn't promote myself as any sort of
expert. But I see on the bodybuilding forums a lot of interest in
camera gear and maybe I can offer some insight. A typical question goes
like "I want to take photos like I see in the magazines but only want
to spend $1000. What should I buy?"
Hey, $1000 is a
lot of money and you can have fun and learn a lot on that sort
of budget. There are plenty of online resources to help you decide what
to buy. But unless you can afford to spend more, don't fool yourself
about getting the type of quality you see from the pros.
Before
getting a DSLR last year I went
through two Sony point and shoot cameras; the fabled Mavica
CD1000 and the F828.
I finally moved up to the Sony
A100 DSLR late in 2006 and invested in a few good lenses.
The
two images below are the same model, Amy Sibcy,
shot on the same
railroad tracks in Pittsburgh, one year apart at the Masters Nationals.
The 2006 picture was
taken with the F828, the 2007 with the A100 and the top-of-the-line Sony
70-200 2.8 SSM lens. There are a lot of other variables but
the 2007 photo is a lot closer to what I wanted all along, and what I
could never accomplish with the F828. I think I paid around $800 for
the F828 and about $3000 for the A100 and that lens. It it
worth the difference?
2006
2007
I
think I took a lot of good photos with the point and shoot cameras,
and I know I am still taking a lot of crap pictures with the DSLR. But
now the limitations are my own skill and vision, not the camera's
sensor size or processor speed. Added 3 December 2007:
Just
a quick shout out to the hardworking folks at Tidewater Ultimate
Female Fighting.
I finally got off my ass a few weeks ago to attend a live event and had
a great time. A reporter and photographer from the local paper attended
that night and their
article finally came out. I hope Gary and the girls can
develop a business model that fans will support while keeping
everything fun.
This
morning as I was eating my breakfast, this site received its three
millionth visitor. (Since I was doing a little odometer peeking to
document the event, there is a good chance that three millionth
visitor was me, but that is beside the point.) Just 15 months since
hitting the two million mark, this site is averaging a pretty
consistent 2000 visitors a day. I know only idiots care about these
kind of stats, but it does help redeem this little hobby of mine.
My YouTube channel
has over 1200 subscribers, I have no idea if that is a lot or not. Over
on MySpace,
I've scrounged up over 650 friends, which is 650 friends more
than I have in real life.
It's true, I rock!
In
a development I could not have anticipated one year ago, some of my
material is being used by Women's
Physique World. They recently released a DVD
of material
I shot for them. Unfortunately, my emergence as a "WPW photographer"
comes after the print magazine has probably seen its last issue, and
long after WPW has squandered its top brand status. I don't know if the
association has done anything for my status, but freelancing for them a
little makes me feel good as a way to pay Bill and his staff back for
all the years when they were the best source around for the information
and images I craved. Added
9 June 2007:
Chicks with Swords!
If
you are like me, old enough to remember the first time you got cable,
bought a VCR, or went online, I bet your interest in muscular women
helped you adopt that technology a little earlier than you would
otherwise.
And, if you are like me, I bet you were
searching for information about female bodybuilders, wrestlers,
whatever, the first day you were on the Internet.
The
sword-wielding warrior woman is a major figure in our world. For some
fans, Xena and her peers are the primary focus of interest. To me, she
is just something to look at until something better comes along.
Still,
what the heck are the folks at ask.com thinking with their new
commercial?
It's
cool to see a national ad featuring so many
Amazonian ladies and a normal enough admirer, but is ask.com really
promoting its search engine as the best way to satisfy your fetish
needs?
The images from the ad come from BabesWithBlades.com,
a pretty cool site on its own. Added 30 May 2007:
Two
quick, and very different, sightings.
When
I log off from MySpace, they are nice enough to show a little
advertisement. One that caught my eye involves a pretty girl enjoying a
webcam chat, then breaking into a few quick flexes:
There
is no audio, but it isn't hard to read her lips. First she says "no,"
with a hint of disgust to an unknown request. Then a much more emphatic
"No!" Then, a somewhat
resigned "okay," before busting her moves, followed by laughter.
I'd
like to see the true.com market research that indicated this would be
an appealing ad. I also wonder if they are somehow targeting that ad at
a demographic who might be into it.
(Added
November 1 2007: I just noticed the entire
clip on YouTube. The series also includes girls
identified as fitnflexxy and gymbabe.)
The second
sighting takes us to the world of high art. I recently looked through a
Slate.com
slideshow of paintings by Edward Hopper,
based on a new exhibit of his work. While I find Hopper's work very
powerful, nothing set off my femuscle radar. In fact, the people
in his art are very detached and no more central than the furniture.
So
I was a bit surprised to see Lingster
mention an article
about this same exhibit.
The Time critic wrote this: "And the women--what to make of his notion
of eroticism, all those
strapping females who manage to look both carnal and remote? A 'hard
muscular girl' is how someone described the typical Hopper woman,
'sturdy of leg and breast, bulging in her clothes.' True enough."
I
looked back through a slide show and gave the few women a good look.
Decide for yourself, here is a tight crop of the women in Second Story
Sunlight:
Added
22 April 2007:
What's with the haters out there?
I
end up deleting at least half the comments made about my YouTube clips.
A few posts are overly enthusiastic in expressing the commenter's ardor
for the subject. Most argue that muscles on a girl are just plain gross
and the person in the video is as appealing as Vera de
Milo.
Sure, some of the girls I work
with are very large and lean, and it would be naive to ignore their
androgynous qualities. But many other models are very much girly-girls
who I assume anyone would find feminine and sexy. The haters don't seem
to differentiate, and any signs of muscular definition might as well be
a beard and penis.
The
site seems to be for Houston-area car enthusiasts. While a few early
posts seem positive toward Melissa, by the third page a clear consensus
emerges: she is a man.
I don't want to read
too much into this sort of thing, but if one of the most beautiful,
feminine ladies on the scene gets that sort of response it does not
bode well for efforts to bring female bodybuilding into
mainstream acceptance.
I am also posting this on my MySpace
blog, feel free to comment there. Added
18 March 2007:
More about R. Crumb. To promote an
upcoming exhibit, Robert and Aline gave an interview
with the SF Chronicle. Aline says, "The thing that bugs me sometimes is when
people think that my self-image is affected by the way Robert draws
these big Amazon-type women." A few of Crumb's drawings accompany the
article, including a very
striking image of Tina Lockwood.
Added 15 July 2006:
Slate's
Brief
History of the Bikini
article is slightly more interesting than most of their fashion
offerings. The first slide features an early example of art showing
women
in bikini-like outfits, but they also provide proof of ancient muscle
girl art. These mosaics adorned a wealthy
Roman's villa in Sicily, dating from around 300 AD. More
photos can be found
here and here
and here.
More information
about the villa is here.
Femuscle art of the ancients
The
various historic bikini wearers in the Slate article range along the
waif-athlete scale, but the first model cited to have an "athletic
figure" is Cheryl
Tiegs.
I remember being very taken by those Sports Illustrated swim suit
photos of Tiegs back in the day, but looking at them
now reminds
that we were just biding time until women with tight
abs and a little bulge in the biceps would become more common.
"Athletic figure"? Really?
Added
1 April 2006:
Over two million served!
It
took over 6 years to do it, but according
to to the gnomes of Sitementer.com
this site's two millionth visitor dropped by last night. Sure, I know
it is mostly the same 23 guys who look in every day in hopes of an
update. Google sends a lot of folks this way, who I am sure
immediately react "That is not the Heather Lee I was looking for, and
what sort of freak likes girls with muscles?"
This
is just a
little fan page and I have no interest in competing with the sites that
really drive a lot of traffic. But it never stops amazing me that
about 2000 folks a day peek in here.
Added
26 March 2006:
I look at a lot of online strongwoman
art and fiction, and much of the appeal is its quirky outsider nature.
One
of my recent searches led me to the art of Lewis
Smith.
One of his main themes is muscular women, and he left images of
wrestlers and circus performers on every surface he could find, from
the side
of his house to discarded
paper bags.
Notice the prices of those paper bag pieces! His affection for flexing
girls is obvious, though his primative understanding of anatomy led him
to often produce the upward-curving bicep by just bending
Olive Oyl-thin arms instead of depicting nicely
thickened bis
and tris.
Added
18 March:
There
is a terrific news
item
out of Florida about a 62-year-old bodybuilder who
helped nab a few 20-ish criminals on the run from the cops. Iris Davis
was featured in a 2002
article about the Southern States and some
photos from the 2002 Tampa Bay Classic. Here another
article and yet
another article about her recent adventures.
I'm looking at The
R. Crumb Handbook,
enjoying it mainly for another glimpse at one of my favorite
idiosyncratic geniuses. It is also great to see Crumb so open about his
love of strong women. His first sexual thoughts focus on Irish
McCalla,
star of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and a photo shows Irish cradle
carrying a guy. Robert writes, "I couldn't wait to go to bed at night
to fantasize about me and Sheena!" Drawings depicting his boyhood
feature Catholic school girls with impossibly powerful legs and asses,
barely concealed by those little skirts. "I dreamed of strong women. My
sexuality has been rather quirky ever since, in a state of arrested
development, and it makes me want to have my way with big, strong,
powerful women. I don't know why, I just do."
In
a photo
from the 1980s, Robert's wife Aline is giving him a piggyback ride and
flexing a respectable bicep, playing out a theme that became common in
Crumb's art. "I was weak! Aline is strong. She's a dynamo. That's why I
am married to her."
A recent Virgin
Mobile
ad campaign in the UK made an
attempt to thrust FBBs
into the mainstream.
This included some very interesting
videos designed for viral marketing appeal, so don't be surprised if a
coworker e-mails you one some day. (The superbuff.com site designed to
spread these videos was not up as of 18 March 2007, but at least one of
the clips
is up on YouTube.) Advertisers are looking for a way to
break through the clutter
of images and messages, I hope this campaign worked
for them. The
models are veteran English FBBs, Karen Spencer and Kimberly Anne Jones.
I
was thinking about viral advertising and athletic women, and was
reminded of the virtual
bartender
site. I see they have a new two-girl version, but I couldn't get them
to do anything particularly sporty except a rather annoying catfight.
But the original VB girl, Tammy
Plante,
is a fitness instructor with a tight body. She will flex, do a
cartwheel, fight like a Jedi, do some pushups, make some karate moves,
and probably some stuff that doesn't come to mind. The VB campaign
began last year when the beer.com staff sent out exactly 10
e-mails to friends. Five days later, the site had almost 8 million page
views. I have no idea if that success helped beer.com make any money.
I
know two more subservient
character sites worth a look. The virtual carwash
girls
look rather fit, and when asked to flex one of them grows huge animated
arms. Interesting that they would even bother to do that. They will
also armwrestle. The virtual
stripper isn't particularly athletic looking, but flexes with
surprising gusto.
