Michiko Nishiwaki, the Avenging Angel

A few people have wanted to hear about some great, sexy bodybuilders of the female sex, and I'm more than happy to oblige as I'm a real muscle omnivore. Especially with someone like Michiko Nishiwaki, who was sort of like Grace Jones, if Grace Jones was a great martial artist and athlete, and wasn't quite so terrifying. Michiko Nishiwaki was not the stereotype of the Asian woman, demure and petite. She was a champion lifter and bodybuilder.

You know, it's a funny thing about Steve Reeves: if anyone knows him at all, it's for his role as Hercules.

Yet, the amazing thing is, Reeves had a career of fifty films and he only played Hercules twice. It's the same thing with bodybuilder, powerlifting champion and martial artist Michiko Nishiwaki. In Hong Kong, she did over 40 movies all through the 1980s and 1990s, but the one movie everybody remembers her from is the Kung Fu cop film My Lucky Stars.

Everybody remembers that one scene where she takes her robe off and it's revealed she's built like a tank. They built to that reveal incredibly well, of course. All throughout the film she was in a kimono as a subservient, stereotypical, petite Asian woman, so when she throws her duds off it's a real shock. She must have the same tailor as Groundskeeper Willie and Ned Flanders.

I just know her from that one movie, so imagine my great surprise to discover that she has a filmography nearly a mile long. She always played the same kind of character: the bodybuilder assassin femme fatale. There were entire scripts were she was menacing and quiet and didn't deliver a single line of dialogue.

One crucial but interesting difference between male bodybuilders and female bodybuilders at the movies is that male bodybuilders are usually leading men and action heroes, whereas female bodybuilders usually are stuntwomen. The list of female bodybuilders in movies is almost entirely a list of stuntwomen: Spice Williams, Faith Minton, and yes, Michiko Nishiwaki: when she came to America, she did stunt work. She was Lucy Liu's stunt double for four movies, and Kelly Hu's for one. Come to think of it, the only female bodybuilder I can think of that didn't work as a stuntwoman was Rachel McLish.

(Rachel McLish is one of those people - like Dave Draper - that I sometimes wonder why they didn't make it as a movie star.)

1968 Mr. America Jim Haislop

When it comes to impressive mass and proportions, who could possibly top Jim Haislop? What a dramatic v-shape. With that narrow waist, he had a back so wide he could glide with it. His stomach was flat and hard, and he lacks the pregnant belly look of many modern bodybuilders.

You know what I miss about vintage bodybuilders? The fact that they have normal-looking thighs. Sure, they're massive and deeply cut, but his look normal, instead of an enlarged bag with cats keg like Ronnie Coleman's.

Here's my question: why didn't Jim Haislop become a big actor or something, like Steve Reeves did? He was certainly good looking enough. The answer is that he came around in the late sixties and so missed his window to be a bodybuilding movie star - by the late 1960s, the era of Dustin Hoffman, the muscle movie star was already passe, even more so for parody. There was a scene in "Beach Blanket Bingo" that had two men that were objects of fun: a leather jacket wearing, rebellious beatnik, and a bodybuilder. By the late sixties, these symbols of rebellion and virility were just objects of fun.

Periodically, our culture goes through phases of extreme redefinition of hipness, where cultures that were previously cool vanish. One major era of this was the early to mid 1990s, when Seattle grunge rock culture came in.

Here's something interesting: when was the last time you saw any Goths? It seems that a previously ubiquitous hipster subculture is starting to die out.

By the way, check out the old-school issue of muscular development. Obviously it was aimed at a different demographic than bodybuilding mags today, emphasizing great physical attractiveness. "A Greek God" indeed. What, he didn't want to be BIGGERSTRONGERLARGER?

And now a word from our sponsor...

Is it a requirement that all bodybuilding-themed commercials be either kitschy and dated-looking, or unbelievably weird?

In the second category, I offer up this vid. For those of us that are real connoisseurs of the handsome, crystal blue-eyed Dennis Newman, it's actually quite startling to see him here, because he actually does look like a superhero ought. That hadn't occurred to me before but it makes sense.

Though it is disappointing in one sense: that voice of his makes the Christian Bale Batman voice sound downright underplayed and subtle.



This gym commercial actually played in Staten Island theaters along with Star Wars. What I find interesting is that its' target audience is mainly male: its implicit message is that bodybuilding will help you get laid!

This is downright amazing, considering how these days both men and women go to the gym - though for different exercises and different purposes.



This next one isn't a commercial, but while we're on the subject of youtube vids, I put it up because it illustrates what I've always liked about Asian bodybuilding culture: the slowness, the quiet classical music and so on. I always hated the use of discordant speed metal in posing routines.

Flex, Pecs and Sex: Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel

"Muscles have really made a comeback in the movies." - Gene Siskel

Ah, if only it lasted!

Absolutely fascinating 1986 documentary that examined muscles at the movies.

Misleading Advertising in Cover Art

Oh my God!

Do I ever need to say that Gladiator, a novel by Phillip Wylie, a social critic, cynic and misanthrope best known for When Worlds Collide, had absolutely zilch in the way of sex in it? It was, incidentally, a mournful story about how a person with great strength couldn't fit into ordinary society, a story about the way our culture crushes superior people under its heel and mediocrity is the accepted norm. I could hear the tinkly and melancholic piano music from the "Incredible Hulk" in the background. There also was absolutely no sex either.

For those of us that are fans of that controversial pastime, man-on-man love, the cover to "Gay Love" was a...little strange.

For those that love muscles and science together...

Check it out, an anatomy chart.

For those that like this kind of thing, check out my science blog, Daughter of Hypatia. (Shameless plug!)

Incidentally, "triceps" and "biceps" refer to the entire muscle group, not to just one arm. The correct usage is "biceps muscle."

King of the Stone Age, Part 1

I haven't written any real muscle growth fiction since a few false starts in the summer of '08, busy as I am with grad school. But I wanted to try my hand at it again.

King of the Stone Age, Part 1 (The Muscle Growth History of the World)

(Note: you have to be registered with musclegrowth.org to see. Don't worry, it's free.)

Essentially, the story is about a girl that flees from her tribe to be rescued by a superhandsome giant cave stud. The basic theory is that in the ancient past, bisexuality was more the norm for men and women. The story has a degree of sexual omnivorousness for that reason: guy on guy, girl on girl, and guy-girl. There isn't any outright sex in the first part, but just wait.

One of the characters is what today we would call "gay," who wears women's clothing. This is a social role found in many societies, notably Native American (Hopi) who have the role of the berdache.