Forum
>
General / Nonfiction
>
Thread
Log in |
Register
Great topic.
I was a young man, and bought it first time I saw it - Spring '86. I had a huge collection. I got rid of it when I started having to move house multiple times, and got tired of lugging it all around. I loved them at the time, but I'm glad there's the internet now.
Just a few more thoughts. Another great magazine was "Female Bodybuilding". I didn't think it was as good as WPW, but it was still fantastic. The first issue of "Female Bodybuilding" that I ever saw was the January 1990 issue with the gorgeous Marjo Selin gracing the cover. The cover is memorable for two reasons. First of all, like I said, Marjo was gorgeous. She had a "softer" look, but was still very fit, feminine, and strong. She looks amazing. The second reason that the cover is memorable is that the color pink dominates. Marjo is in a pink outfit, and the cover itself is mostly pink. I remember when I first saw the issue the pink caught my eye right away. Then I saw Marjo. Finally, in big white letters I saw the name BODYBUILDING. I was like, "whoa, what is this?!" I had discovered another magazine dedicated to female bodybuilding. I nervously bought the issue!!!
Going back to WPW, I had bought the magazine off and on throughout the 90's and into the 2000's. Lots of memorable covers, back pages, and articles. A very memorable one for me was the December 1999 issue with the beautiful, strong, and very muscular Pavla Brantalova on the cover. I believe it was the first time I had ever seen Pavla. I was in love. She was a 22-year-old bodybuilder who also wrestled men. I don't remember the exact time when I first started to discover mixed wrestling, but I distinctly remember that this cover of Pavla helped to intensify my fantasy and desire to wrestle powerful female bodybuilders. It also led to me blowing a hell of a lot of money on 900-number female muscle fantasy phone lines, especially at Lori Victoria Braun's FemaleMuscle.com!! At the time I was 27 and Pavla was 22. Just looking at her at the time I was pretty sure she would have beaten me. She was amazing!!!
I had found a couple of newsagencies that stocked WPW, and Female Bodybuilding magazine near me. I remeber buying the issue with Pavla from the store I didn't usually go to and the girl at the counter was amazed and excited by the magazine, to the point she ran down and grabbed the remaining copy.
Cool story!! I wonder if the girl at the counter had ever seen a female bodybuilder before that moment? I don't remember the exact moment that I saw a female bodybuilder for the first time, but I'm sure I was mesmerized, perplexed, fascinated, dumbfounded, and excited all at the same time. To see a woman with some serious muscle is an incredible sight to behold. I wonder if that girl at the counter decided to become a bodybuilder after having seen that magazine?! We can only hope!! 👍💪
Ahhh, the memories! I would like to share a couple predecessors first, however.
I was a junior in high school in May 1980 when Sports Illustrated printed an article about female bodybuilding that confirmed what I already knew-- I was in my teens, but women with muscles and who were physically stronger than typical men were very exciting to me! I began flipping through mags at bookstores at the mall soon thereafter looking for any and all stories about females exercising because inevitably they'd be accompanied by photos of these new athletes, bathing suits and all until I discovered an ad for a magazine that was more my speed--
I went through the trouble of renting a mailbox at a nearby auxiliary post office (couldn't risk bumping into mom at our main post office, after all) and got a money order at my bank- I didn't have a checking account yet and sent away for a subscription to a little publication called "Lady Athlete." All of this was done because I was shy about my musclegirl, powerful female athlete admiration and wasn't sure I could keep this a secret from my family with monthly deliveries getting stuffed in the family mailbox!
"Lady Athlete" had stories and photos about female bodybuilders, weightlifters and powerlifters, arm wrestlers and I was a VERY happy subscriber. Staff members from this publication stepped out and created another, more substantial magazine called "Women's Physique Publication" WPP for short. Unlike Lady Athlete WPP was much more focused on the female bodybuilding movement which was rapidly growing in popularity in America and worldwide.
WPP was a thicker, more substantial magazine whereas LA was more like pamphlets by comparison, but was printed in black and white. The lack of color was not a problem, however because as female bodybuilding grew, the array of new buff ladies as well as ones who had obvious staying power like Rachel McLish, Carla Dunlap, etc filled the pages- enhanced by extraordinary photography made it a sure winner.
WPP got a lot of this already poor college student's pocket money by offering photo sets and VHS tapes. WPP was the forerunner to the great "Women's Physique World" which at that point of my life I bought at a couple newsstands-- I had a "route" of them that I'd prowl, hoping for the latest news and photos.
SADLY this was also when my pornography habit grew since more often than not the latest WPW wasn't ready to come home with me, but magazines like Score and others like it found their places on the shelves with frightening regularity!
All of this was before magazines, like newspapers, went the way of dinosaurs and ultimately swallowed up by social media!
All of those accounts are really amazing and nice to read, thank you so much for sharing!
I remember the excitement of browsing through the newest bodybuilding mags at the grocery store, always beeing careful not to get "caught" while I leafed through them. Since mags focusing on fbbs didn't really exists in Germany, I was buying normal bodybuilding magazines and had to check if they even had a few pics of woman inside before buying! I must have been 15 or 16 at that time. I think I even got sweaty hands from being nervous while turning pages in the store, even more so when I found what I was looking for... the attraction was so strong.
Ok I remembered it a little differently but did a quick search and found the magazine. It was American Curves - HardBodz issue.
Wow, I'd love to remember that page 80.
I bought WPW at a newsstand religiously for about five years. I got various comments over the years, good and bad, but I remember buying this one and the clerk said "Wow, so you get her home and then what?" I nervously laughed and got out of there. I guess there were a bunch of ways I could have answered that in hindsight:)
at a store or newsstand and what was the clerk's or customers nearby reactions?
Well my very first issue I bought as a kid was the 87 one with Diana Dennis on the cover at a convenience store in NYC it definitely was like porn to me. The clerk's reaction was definitely very strange seeing a kid by this magazine. I was a kid and I couldn't subscribe to the magazine so what I would do is look around town and see when the next issue would arrive which was always about 2 to 3 months and I had to look in different magazine stores to find one in the NYC. Years later in one store downtown I ran into actually Heather Foster who was actually looking at a wpw magazine and I introduced myself and she's a very sweet lady and I think this is around the time that it was her first or second appearance in the Miss Olympia. A very cool moment.
I used to buy 3 magazines to get 1 WPW. I'd have 2 "normal" magazines, one on the top, the WPW in the middle, and the other on the bottom so that my purchase would be secret. I'd even bring them to the counter arranged so that the scan codes for all 3 were showing at once and the checker wouldn't have to scan one at a time. This always worked. This was in the late 80s.
WPW was only available at one newsstand downtown. I remember being downtown for a WWF event and seeing the new WPW. I didn't buy it because of the show, but the image on the back - Tonya Knight seated, from behind, flexing a bicep - made me obsessed. Tonya Knight was my teenage fantasy. When the show was over I lingered by the closed newsstand and briefly considered breaking in just to steal the magazine. I was a just a kid then. I felt like I couldn't wait. But I did the sensible thing and came down the next day.
WPW was only available at this one newsstand. I collected all the other muscle mags, too. I used to shoplift them. I had a few tricks. One was to grab a stack when I was at the grocery store, take them into the bathroom stall, and insert the one mag from the stack that I wanted into my sock, then pull my jeans over it. It worked every time. I also shoplifted the books, too. My trick was to go in with a specific normal book in mind that hadn't been released yet. I would go into the bookstacks, tuck the book into the back of my pants and pull my coat over it. Then I would go to the counter and ask if they had this unreleased book in stock. Of course, the answer was no, but this gave me the excuse of entering and leaving without buying anything.
At around 19 or so, I got a job at GNC. Every month, they would throw out their old mags and I would keep a copy of each. All GNC wanted was a small piece of the magazine cover to mail back to get credit for.
Holly crap I can relate! I "smuggled" WPW into the house as a teenager in my sock covered by my jeans. I would look at the mags and then put them behind another mag stack to hide what I had just looked at. I finally got up the courage to buy a muscle mag at a store - Flex with Arnold on the cover on a motorcycle with Kay Baxter in it. I think she was 38 years old at the time. I vividly remember looking at the check out clerk to see if he would give me a strange look. When I told my then wife about how I hid the magazine in my sock she kind of laughed about it.
So many of these stories resonate with me - thank you so much for sharing, folks :)
I used to buy it at Rite-Aid, and always also bought a few other magazines. It used to blend right in with wrestling magazines when paying at the counter. I do recall one day, an older guy behind the register doing a double-take at the cover featuring Christa Bauch in a yellow bikini.
I grew up in a small, extremely conservative rural town. Oddly enough, our local grocery store carried WPW. I was 13 and very aware of my unconventional attraction to muscle girls and would covertly browse through that month's issue any time i could make a trip to the market. Usually this consisted of nesting WPW inside an outer decoy magazine, like "People" or "Time" magazine. Normally I would just oogle the pictures, ignoring the written portions of the articles. One fateful day, the market visit yielded a new issue featuring the lovely Michele Ralabate. I was absolutely smitten. I even took the time to begin reading her write up, which was as arousing as her pictures. It described various feats of strength from her childhood into early adolesence, as well her describing her physique as a teen competitive gymnast. I don't think I had ever been so turned on. I left the store empty handed, but could not get her out of my head. Days later, I finally mustered up the courage to make the purchase. It was early in the day, shortly after the market opened. Only one checkout lane open with an elderly female cashier. I remember the look of shock and disgust as she picked up and scanned the magazine's bar code. Thankfully she withheld any commentary. I essentially ran out of the store, and returned home. I don't think I left my room for a few days lol.
The local magazine shop in the 90's. Bought a few issues there, and got maybe an arched eyebrow, but no comments. But when I started buying Denise Masino's Muscle Elegance, hoo boy.
I don't know anything about early female muscle mags, but when I was in 9th grade in the mid-1960s, a classmate told me his dad had magazines filled with photos of women who had "big muscles." He never brought a copy to school, though.
I discovered a femuscle mag at a local drugstore in the early '80s. It couldn't have been WPW, since its first issue didn't appear until 1984, but it had the same format: full-color cover and interior filled with b&w pix. (I don't believe it was a WPW-related title because I checked the WPW website, and none of the covers looked familiar. If anyone can help me with the name, I'd appreciate it.) Anyway, I'd buy the mag and one or two others, usually from a cute young cashier. She'd give me a shy smile and not say a word. When the drugstore stopped carrying the mag, I was SOL for months until a friend told me the local porn shop had a magazine featuring muscular women. I think it was the only non-nudie mag in the place.
At Christmas 1982, I gave the latest issue to my boss as a gag gift. She was an ex-nun in her mid-40s who was kinda pretty but a terrible biatch who disliked me. She was surprised and pleased when I gave her the gift-wrapped mag at the staff Christmas gathering, but she turned red and gasped when she opened it. She literally snarled at me as the other staffers guffawed. There were no long-term consequences since she already hated me, and I had a new job in another city a couple months later.
In my new town, I discovered WPW (which I thought was the old mag with a new name) at a mega-mart with umpteen checkout lanes. I found my own cure for potential embarrassment: choose the fattest, ugliest cashier and basically dare her to make a disparaging remark about the lady on the cover. It never happened.
The only weird occurrence came when I found the WPW issue with Hannie van Aken on the cover at a used-book store. The owner was at the register. He stared at the cover and then slowly paged through the issue. He finally handed it back to me and told me the price was a dollar. He didn't have any expression on his face and made no comments about my choice.
In the early 2000s, when I got high-speed internet, I finally ditched my collection of about three dozen magazines, much to my regret today. For the record, I was married to a wonderful, muscular woman, but I figured it was OK to look at and admire photos of other muscular ladies as long as I stayed totally faithful to her in real life.
Of course I remember that if I couldn't buy WPW magazine, I would look for other magazines like FLEX, Muscle AND Fitness, but there were few women in them.