What Women Bodybuilders Can Learn From Paris Hilton

(Paris Hilton on the Ellen DeGeneres Show)

Female bodybuilders have the most to gain from this method as they represent a sport where their success is based on what people see when they look at them. Some bodybuilders gain money from this process -- all wish to earn money from it. Where female bodybuilders can gain is by creating advanced buzz for who they are. Now what do I mean? I'm stating that -- and this is a theory as it's not common practice by far -- a female bodybuilder can actually impact what the judge or judges in a bodybuilding contest think of their "look" by becoming so popular that by the time they reach a contest, the judges would believe that the most well-known of the contestants should be the winner.

My evidence that this approach can work is based on the recent decisions of food-and-supplements-seller GNC and the International Federation of BodyBuilding (IFBB) to reduce the support of female bodybuilders and limit the "amount" of muscle they can build. The charges have been that people don't like "overly muscular" women. But this claim is countered by the huge number of websites featuring female bodybuilders and fitness models. My cursory count is that there are about 400 websites and thousands of photos online. Indeed, a look at Yahoo! Groups reveals several groups about women bodybuilders that serve over 10,000 members, each. These are some of the largest groups in the Yahoo! system.

While some may argue that the Yahoo! example points to the "oversexualization" of the sport of female bodybuilding, one can offer the counter-example of Women's Tennis star Anna Kornikova, who's profile increased substantially when sports talent agency Octagon marketed her sex appeal, with everything from a website with her most "interesting" photos to calendars and clothes. And then there are the websites that feature any number of near-X rated photos of the tennis stat. With Anna's celebrity, It definitely wasn't the tennis. Just as with Paris Hilton's celebrity, which had nothing to do with any industrial skill she might have. ...click for the full article