Who Was Bev Francis??

In class today, Dr. Spencer mentioned Bev Francis, a female bodybuilder. I had never heard of her, and I wanted to know more. She wasn’t hard to find online, since she was one of the first prominent female bodybuilders. Francis made her debut in 1983 at the Caesar’s World Cup, an event created specially for the film “Pumping Iron II: The Women.” The film focuses primarily on bodybuilders Bev Francis and Rachel McLish as they prepare for the competition. What I found very interesting was the fact that, while Francis was very skilled, she didn’t place very well, finishing 8th in that particular competition. Of her many competitions, Francis never finished in 1st place. However, she finished in 2nd place and 3rd place several times in the Ms. Olympia competition.
Bev FrancisMany people have theories about why Francis was never awarded first place in these bodybuilding competitions, and I think that Guy Trebay explained it best in his article “The Body Politic: Weighing In on the Modern Amazon,” featured in the March 28, 2000 issue of the New York Times. Trebay writes:

“She was generally considered one of the most muscularly developed women anyone had ever seen, and—using the objective measures of body mass and definition—one of the best. But Bev Francis, whose career would extend over most of the next decade, never won a major bodybuilding contest, not that Ohio one, not ever. Even in the eyes of those accustomed to the weirder forms of hypertrophy, she was considered "unfeminine," daunting, freakish, ‘too much like a man.’ Her very presence threatened people with gender illegibility.”

Basically, Tebay is saying that people, both men and women, were intimidated by Bev Francis and uncomfortable with her non-conformance to typical gender roles. People felt that she was too “masculine,” even for a bodybuilder. Even though she was considered the best by many, she never won a competition due to the judges’ discomfort with her appearance. I feel that the typical standard of “femininity” was applied, even to female bodybuilders, and Francis did not meet this standard. In her time, female bodybuilders looked like Rachel McLish, lean and muscular, but still “feminine.” I feel that by breaking the rules and challenging how society defined femininity, Bev Francis provided future female bodybuilders with opportunities they may not have otherwise had.

Introduction

Hi! My name is Dani, and I am a senior in the Event Planning major here at BGSU. I am taking this class as one of my option electives, and it seems like it is going to be one of the more interesting options available. I really liked Dr. Spencer’s History and Philosophy of Sport class last spring, and I am hoping that this class will be enjoyable as well.

I hope this class will provide me with a good base of knowledge in the area of sports and gender. I think that this is an important topic to study, because sport is a common way that people relate to each other. There are many sports that break international boundaries, racial boundaries, language boundaries and some gender boundaries. For example, more and more baseball players are coming from places like Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Men and women can compete in a lot of the same sports, but they don’t often compete directly, especially in contact sports like football, soccer, or rugby. I am excited to take a more in-depth look into these topics throughout the semester. I think that studying sport and gender is a great way to understand how people interact with each other, which can increase our overall understanding of humanity.

I have never really played organized sports, but I love to play volleyball and badminton recreationally, even though I am not very good at either. When I was in elementary school, I enrolled in a summer volleyball camp at the local high school. One evening, after the very first class, my little brother and I were playing with an old set of golf clubs in the backyard. We were just hitting golf balls around, seeing who could hit the farthest, or who could hit the gnarly pine tree with the most accuracy. We weren’t paying very close attention to the distance between us, and as my brother lined up a shot and took a giant swing, he smacked me in the eye with the club. I was rushed to the hospital, got several stitches, and was unable to return to volleyball camp for the rest of the summer. After that experience, I gave up all hope of ever becoming a professional athlete.