The Female Physique Webzine/Gallery
FIGURE OR "MODEL SEARCH"?
AN EMAIL RESPONSE
I recently received an Email response to my editorials on figure and fitness from a frustrated figure competitor. She complained that fitness, as now structured, is simply too difficult for non-gymnasts and that the standards of figure appeared to be so non-existent that competitors have no way of knowing in advance what the judges in any particular contest are looking for. But, she went on to stay, she hoped figure would continue because women like her - fit and defined but not as muscular as the bigger fitness women or bodybuilders, and lacking gymnnastics skills - had no place else to compete. Below is my Email reply. BD |
Hi...regarding your Email on the subject of figure, I preferred the situation a few years ago when promoters held a "model search" and were frankly and honestly looking for beautiful models rather than trying to hold "athletic" contests sanctioned by a sports federation. The problem with "figure" is that it is presented as some kind of sports competition, which it is not.
To
be a sport or athletic event there has to be some kind of extreme or ideal
against which performance can be measured. Bodybuilding is a sport
because it about going to extremes and so there is some objective basis of
at asserting that one competitor is "better" than another.
Fitness is not a sport as such but can be seen as a way of choosing "acceptable
bodybuilders" (acceptable to people who like female muscle but are put
off by the level of development of elite bodybuilders - women like Monica
Brant, Timea and the rest. All of them could be competitive bodybuilders
if they wanted to be, have physiques that look like those of bodybuilders
to the non bodybuilding public and are attractive enough to sell products
for the fitness industry.
Figure started out as "fitness without the performance" but if women compete in figure who are as muscular as the top fitness competitors they are told they are too muscular. My question is what physique federations are doing sanctioning events in which having a developed physique disqualifies you from winning titles. In this situation, there can never be an clear-cut standards. Instead, figure judging is likely to go the way of physique judging in fitness. After a few women become known for winning figure competitions the judges will begin using them as a basis for comparison - as they tend to do nowadays with the established fitness champions. If you have a look and physique that resembles somebody who has become a champion, the judges will decide you deserve to be a champion as well. Or they won't, depending on who is judging. There are no guarantees.
I would prefer to see "figure" return to being a "model search" designed to find women who don't have much muscle but make good models Ð and "fitness" rules be adjusted so that the judges are looking for smaller and very attractive muscular women with the performance round having minimal impact on the outcome and no tumbling or extreme gymnastics permitted. The real drawback to all this, it seems to me, is all the women who could bring beauty and sex appeal to bodybuilding being sidetracked into fitness Ð where few have any future at all. This is another example of the "law of unintended consequences." The federations were concerned about not having enough attractive women in bodybuilding so they created fitness (and now figure) - thereby making sure there would be even FEWER attractive women in bodybuilding!
A beauty contest looks for a particular type - the long, lean look for potential fashion models, the beach bunny for Hawaiian Tropic, the "respectable" beauty for Miss America. It is type that matters, not a complicated set of rules and guidelines. Beauty contests are more about what nature gave you than anything you've been able to achieve by years of hard and consistent effort. Elite athletes - including bodybuilders - have incredible genetic gifts but work extremely hard for years to realize their genetic potential. But what achievement is realized in a contest sanctioned by a physique federation where the competitors are told not to get too muscular? Especially an event in which being as muscular as a fitness competitor is considered too extreme. Might as well use celebrity judges the way many beauty contests do. Forget about all the "rules" designed to make the competition seem as if it is a legtimate athletic event.
Better to just call figure what it is - a beauty contest or model search - and judge it accordingly. But then the question remains as to why sports federations are giving a beauty contest equal footing with actual athletic competitions.
Bill Dobbins