Exactly. Women's BB is a fairly recent sport -- the first Ms Olympia was in 1980. Here's a link to pictures of some of the Ms Olympias by date -- you can see the huge difference in size from 1980 to more recently.
http://www.bodybuildbid.com/articles/msolympia/msolympgal.html
In the mid 90s the size, muscularity & ripped-ness of the girls started getting pretty freaky and I think it was primarily a "turn off" and the shows weren't drawing crowds. At the end of the day, the promoter is trying to make some money.
Fitness competition helped. Then in 2000-2001 you started seeing a new category called "Figure". Now there number of figure competitors in a show usually outweighs the total of all other competitors men + women. But still the criteria for women's competition has been "squishy" at best. Even in figure it wasn't clear what they were looking for. Lots of girls I've seen have been told they were "too lean", "too muscular", etc. Well you're either prepped for contest or you're going to the beach. Which is it?? Based on what I saw yesterday, Its still lean, but heading toward the beach. You used to see the FBBs w/ quad & glute striations. I didnt' see that once last nite. Yaxeni was still big & beefy but she looked sort of bloated. Fanny Barios is another big girl -- she looked a like a serious case of roid gut. I don't mean like she's stupidly abusing like oh,. say Greg Kovacs, but she's is just a big woman and is built that way. But it just really didn't look good. Those big women sort of dont' have any place to go w/ the competition then. Definitely a phase is ending. Frankly I would've liked to see Valentina Chepiga this year because she carries the weight well & had gone down a little smaller the last time she competed.
Anyway .. its all about the money --- freaky women make it big in the "I'm a rich powerful guy but I need someone to beat me down & treat me like a submissive for a few hours a week" business, but it doesn't draw crowds anymore. So back to the T&A look I guess. Not sure where its gonna go next.
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