Iran’s Women Bodybuilders

Like so much else, women are banned from bodybuilding in Iran, so it has been forced underground. Women bodybuilders have plenty of stories to tell, and the controversy around bodybuilding continues to generate debate. Some women’s stories are bitter and painful, about legal obstacles they face, but also about discrimination from male bodybuilders, who often show little or no solidarity with their fellow athletes.

“Right from the start I had to deal with a lot of problems,” says Mahsheed, who became interested in bodybuilding in the early 2000s and has had to put up with a lot to pursue her passion. “In 2003, female bodybuilding had just started. Before that you couldn't even talk about it. We exercised in underground spaces and in strict secrecy.”

“It took a long time before they consented to let us exercise in the club,” Mahsheed says. “Of course we had no trainer or coach. You had to do it all by yourself. Men with half-baked qualifications turned their basements into exercise spaces for women and, like all ventures without legal oversight, a lot of bad things happened, from physical and sexual violence to insults, ridicule and corruption.”

The club Mahsheed went to let women bodybuilders use the facilities only when male clients did not want to use them: “Between six to eight in the morning or between noon and two pm in the summer heat,” she says.

Azadeh has been a bodybuilder for two years. She stresses that she does not want a “six pack;” she is only doing it to get into shape and get her body “bikini-ready”. She says it is rare to find a good and experienced female trainer.  “Women trainers receive their [accreditation] papers after a short period of study, so I prefer to work with male trainers. Unfortunately, many of them haphazardly prescribe supplements that lead to serious symptoms in women, such as weird deformations of the muscles and cardiovascular, alimentary and kidney problems.”

 

A Kind of Addiction

Despite the risks, Azadeh continues to be a bodybuilder. “It’s a kind of addiction,” she explains. “When you see your progress in the mirror you are encouraged to go on and improve on difficult exercises. It’s also a way of testing your willpower.”

“Bodybuilding has become popular among Iranian women wanting to get fit or ‘bikini-ready,’” says Navid Moravej, a male international bodybuilding coach with 12 years of experience in training women. “There are fewer than a hundred professional female bodybuilders in Iran.”

According to Moravej, models that appear on the covers of fashion magazines or advertisements for merchandise such as Victoria's Secret underwear are “bikini” models. They shape their bodies through exercise but their exercise routine is not particularly heavy or intense and they do not use performance-enhancing drugs. Women bodybuilding for fitness, however, must exercise very regularly.

 

Permanent and Unwelcome Changes

“Women bodybuilders take male hormones,” says Moravej. “The hormones lead to permanent physical changes, including the enlargement of the jaw, the nose and the wrists, swelling of the fingers or even deformation of the vagina. These changes can never be reversed, even if the woman stops taking the hormones.”

Considering the dominant cultural norms in Iran, says Moravej, Iranian female bodybuilders are forced to make a choice between a normal family life and bodybuilding.

“Woman bodybuilders want male trainers,” he says, confirming Mahsheed’s comments. “But unfortunately, from what I have heard, many have to deal with uninvited sexual advances from their male trainers.”

“Female bodybuilders cannot take part in domestic or even international competitions because they require competitors to wear bikinis, which would get them into trouble,” Moravej says. “So even if a woman decides to work hard at bodybuilding, it is a completely personal choice and really has no significance outside of that.”

In an interview with IranWire, Ehsan Farahani, an expert and senior coach at International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness (IFFBB) also confirmed that women bodybuilders seek out male coaches. “Most of the domestic champion bodybuilders train somewhere between 50 to 100 women.”

Farahani says there is also a serious problem with bogus trainers. In Iran, he says, “you can pay around 60 thousand tomans [$20] and get a worthless certification as a trainer. You don’t even have to take a course. You just send the money and receive your certification by mail at your home.”

In April, an organization called Persia Groups invited American world champion bodybuilder Ronnie Coleman to lead a group of seminars and workshops for bodybuilders in Iran, and was under the impression that both male and female bodybuilders would be taking part. Despite apparently obtaining permission from Iran’s Sports Ministry, shortly after Coleman arrived in Tehran — and spurred on by several controversial moves initiated by Persia Groups and Ronnie Coleman — he was told the workshops could not go ahead.

 

Sexual and Financial Exploitation

“Some trainers take advantage of women bodybuilders,” says Ehsan Farahani, “from sexual assault to financial exploitation. And there is no legal remedy because it’s illegal for a woman to hire a male trainer. The law does not protect her. In the past few years, perhaps 20 or 30 women have contacted me by phone or email and have told me about abuses they have suffered.”

Farahani emphasizes that it is easier to embark on other fitness programs in Iran — bodybuilding is probably among the most challenging and difficult for women. He says there at least six different kinds of fitness regimes women can pursue, and that bodybuilding is just one of them.

He refers to the women who started bodybuilding in the mid-1990s as a “wasted generation.” They took steroids and enhancement drugs and now have no chance to compete or progress in the sport.  For them, the only places to go are the underground clubs, dominated by exploitative men. 

 

Related articles:

Women Athletes: National Uniform, Hostile Treatment

Trials of an Iranian Female Swimmer

The Failure of Six Pack Diplomacy

 

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