I found the following article and had to post it. I don't know when this article was written, but I can tell it is pre-2009 (NPC figure now only has a two-piece round).
While I'm not sure I agree with everything here, it sure did make me think. And thinking is always a good thing.
WOMEN'S PHYSIQUE IN THE NPC/IFBB:
DISASTER IN THE MAKING
By Bill Dobbins
It isn't bodybuilding that's in trouble...
it's fitness and figure!
NOTE: The following editorial does not imply any lack of support for the
NPC or the IFBB, which are by far the preeminent federations in bodybuilding
and fitness. However, both organizations tend to suffer from a lack of critical dialogue
and discussion where procedures and policies are concerned. Hopefully, this
kind of input can stimulate consideration of new ideas and lead to improvements
that benefit the competitors, the audience and the federations themselves.
The NPC and IFBB have always had very ambivalent feelings about women's physique contests. Since 1980, we have seen numerous examples of politically-motivated, gender-biased rules and officiating of female bodybuilding competitions in both federations. In virtually any sport nowadays, there is an attempt to give equal treatment to both male and female athletes. This is the age of Title IX in 1972 which, among other things, required that schools give as much support to women's athletics as to sports for men. If you examine sports that incude competition for men and for women you will find only a few gender-based differences in the rules. For example, women golfers play shorter courses than men do in order to preserve the concept of "par." Traditionally, a women's tennis match consists of 3 sets instead of 5 because their games tend to last longer (although in the age of Serena Williams this may soon change). Women wear tops in sports where men don't due to social convention, which has nothing whatsoever to do with performance.
But the federations have never been confortable with allowing women to be genuine bodybuilders - that is, to develop their muscles as much as possible consistent with the traditional, recognized aesthetic standards of the sport. While women's bodybuilding has continued to grow and evolve over the years, the unfairness and unjustice of contest judging has often been outrageous. Careers, hopes and dreams have been demolished. The development of the sport itself has been slowed. Potential champions have become discouraged and quit the sport and many excellent prospects have decided not to train for competition in the first place. This has not been helped by increasing antipathy to female muscle on the part of many physique magazines, but most would not have adopted this policy in the first place - certainly not to this degree - without the obvious negative attitude of the federations to encourage them.
As a simple example of how women bodybuilders are viewed, long ago an IFBB official simply deleted the front and rear lats spreads from the list of compulsory poses because "women don't have lats" ( in her words) and because it was a pose she personally didn't like. After some 20 years the IFBB has not restored these poses because, in the words of one judge, "we don't need them."
Women's bodybuilding reached a crisis in 1999 when a set of "guidelines" was issued by the IFBB and adopted by the NPC which stated without equivocation that what was seen as "excessive" muscle development would not be tolerated by the judges. This policy seems to have been an attempt to curry favor with the International Olympic Committee, who is was believed (absurdly, it turned out) was not accepting bodybuilding for men as an Olympic sport because they disapproved of the muscle development of the women.
As part of this overall lack of support for female muscle, the NPC - followed later by the IFBB - created a kind of competition called "fitness." To be fair, this was not intended as much as an attack on female bodybuilding as it was an attempt to follow the lead of Wally Boyco's "Ms. Fitness" contest and Lou Zwicks "Fitness America." Initially, the NPC described fitness as a physique contest for women less extreme than the bodybuilders with a performance round added on. Unfortunately, this rapidly developed into a gymnastics contest in which physique has played a decreasing part. Unless you had a lifetime of gymnastics training, there was little chance of winning a major fitness contest. And the result was that, with some notable exceptions, the winners tended not to be the most promotable in the line-up, not the women you would normally see on the covers of magazines or in great demand by advertisers and sponsors.
The more emphasis you put on factors like athletic performance or routines, the less likely you are to get champions with the best bodies and overall appearnace in the line-up.
Of course, there were constant complaints from the women - and the fans - about the emphasis on gymnastics in NPC and subsequently IFBB contests. These are, after all, physique federations. There are already gymnastics contests and federations out there - and their competitors are a lot better. In addition, gymnastics on a hard floor can be dangerous. But the NPC did not respond to this pressure by changing the rules of fitness so that other kinds of performance besides gymnastics could receive high scores - or to put less emphasis in general on the performance round. Instead, they decided to being sanctioning "figure" contests.
Figure events consist of a group of women doing quarter turns on stage wearing two-piece suits and one-piece suits. That's it. That's all of it. The NPC has only included figure for a couple of years and the IFBB began pro figure only in 2003, but it is already clear that the competition is nothing but a beauty contest. That is not to say there aren't wonderful looking women in the events and that most of them are not in great shape. But it was clear from the beginning that this was essentially a "model search" and that the women in the shows would look quite different than fitness competitors. This was shown to be true in the 2003 Figure International where Monica Brant - looking probably the best she ever has - couldn't win the show. First place went to Jenny Lynn, who has tall proportions, a long waist and long legs. A wonderful looking "fitness model." And the winner at the Night of Champions fitness event a few months later confirmed what pro fitness was all about when Jenny finished second to Davana Medina, another woman with the same kind of tall, "fitness model" proportions.
Meanwhile, fitness in the NPC - particularly at the local level - is dying. At the NPC California in 2003 there were a respectable number of female bodybuilders, a stage full of figure competitors, and TWO women entered in fitness. In all of California, only two women decided to enter the state fitness champion. Why? Simple - it's too hard! It doesn't matter how good your physique works, how much time and effort you've spend defining and shaping your physique and dieting for definition, if you can't flip across the stage like a water bug you have no chance to win - certainly not at the higher levels.
THE GNC CANCELS FEMALE BODYBUILDING
So women are being driven away from fitness and sooner or later we'll see the effects of this at the national and international level. But many of the women in physique competition are confused by figure and think it is an alternative it is not. Figure is full of former fitness competitors who think the event is just fitness without the performance. There are even female bodybuilders who have tried to make this transition. But figure is a beauty contest and even physiques muscular enough for fitness (much less bodybuilding) are not what are going to win this kind of competition. But the existence of figure is accelerating the bleeding of talent away from fitness so unless something is done this kind of contest is going to be in serious trouble.
Ironically, due mostly to the negative pressure from the federation, many of these fitness women should be thinking about moving to bodybuilding and don't realize it. Now that there are weight divisions in pro bodybuilding - and more contests having 3 classes rather than 2 - a lot of fitness women would be competitive as IFBB lightweight bodybuilding competitors with very little effort. Can you imagine a lightweight class where Cathy Priest is joined by Timea Majorova and Monica Brant, among others? The world is full of smaller, musculiar fitness women who could do very well in bodybuilding (where no gymnastics is required) but who have no chance of making it in figure.
In the meantime, there are some steps the federations can take, such as:
1. Stop discouraging women from being bodybuilders. Keeping using 3 weight classes to attract the smaller competitors and think about adding a 4th class sometime in the future.
2. Adjust the rules of fitness. Stop making it a gymnastics contest. Turn the competition into one in which physique and overall appearance are the most important elements and retain performance more for the entertainment of the ticket buyers. (But this doesn't mean every single fitness competitor needs to do a full routine. Enough is enough.)
3. Simplify fitness and figure. Why do we need two rounds? Bring the women out in bikinis for physique comparisons. What is gained by covering up the midsections of in-shape athletes? It covers up the body and it takes too long. And the "cat suit" round in IFBB fitness, where women do mandatories wearing black suits that cover the whole body, is a supreme waste of time. Require the mandatories be a part of individual routines and that's enough.
4. Why all these classes for figure? What exactly are the judges looking for that require 4 different divisions? The main reason for this seems to be that so that it's so easy to qualify for figure, women don't realize it is extremely difficult (since it is almost all about genetics, which is nothing you change) that too many women are entering these contests and there's no room for them on stage. Good for the NPC which collects fees, good for the promoter who collects fees, bad for the audience that has to sit through all of this.
Unfortunately, the federations frequently take the idea "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" to the extreme. They tend not to fix things even after its obvious that they are broke. In the NPC, this seems to be just a matter of it being - more or less - an organization of promoters and until the people putting up the money for contests decide a change is needed no change happens. But too many promoters are short-sighted. As long as there are butts in the seats they are happy. But is it really in the best intersts of the NPC to be an organization that sanctions men's bodybuilding and women's beauty contests? In the age of Title IX, does this set the federation apart so that its fewed as some kind of anti-female organization?
Ironically, as the response to the 2002 Ms. Olympia showed, interest in female bodybuilding seems to be on the upswing, while there is some doubt as to how many competitors will be willing to compete in fitness in the future and there is no guarantee that there is a long-term paying audience for figure.
How long with those "butts be in the seats" as ticket buyers get more and more bored by paying money to see a lot of reasonably attractive figure women doing endless quarter turns, class after class especially if fitness as it is now organized continues to die out? Nothing lasts forever. To survive you have to adapt. Bodybuilding for women already has a devoted fan base. You don't want to lose that audience. There are a lot of women who want to compete in fitness but are not gymnasts. You need to give them a chance. And since figure competition is just a somewhat specialized beauty contest, how much money can we expect audiences are really willing to pay for tickets? Promoters and the federations should hesitate to bet too heavily on the long term success of this kind of event After all, anyone can promote and stage a beauty contest. If the federatons stray too far from physique events, they are vulnerable to running into stiff competition.
It should never be forgotten that these federations are The National PHYSIQUE Committee and the International Federation of BODYBUILDERS. They have a world-wide standing. There is already an audience for the contests sanctioned by the federations and there are women athletes who want to compete. They should be careful not to kill the goose.
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