Posted: May 21, 2010 4:18 pm
Shading is a lot of how we determine what things' three-dimension shapes are. The more difference there is between the light spots and the dark spots, the easier the shape is to see, or the more it pops out and grabs your visual attention. (This is also why they say black clothing is "slimming"; it makes the shadows you cast on yourself less distinct.) So bodybuilders try to maximize the contrast to show off their contours/shapes. One way they do that is by putting shiny oil on their skin. (If you've seen Amistad, this is also what the slave-sellers were up to with the grease on the day of the sale, and it's presumably part of why ancient Greek nude athletic competitors covered themselves in olive oil on competition day.) Similarly, people who are especially light or dark can get more contrast by trying to change in the opposite direction, but darkening up is generally easier for a light person than lightening up is for a dark person. And stage & studio lights are bright, which generally increases contrast for darker people and decreases it for lighter people, giving lighter people more to work against and compensate for.pennypitstop wrote:Why the awful amounts of fake tan?
They use drugs, beyond any doubt. There's really not even any effort to deny it that I've ever seen from the people who get really involved in bodybuilding. It got so obvious years ago (at least in men's competitions) that they split the sport in half, with two separate kinds of competition: those with drug testing and those without. Those men who compete in the latter don't even bother showing up at the former because they know they wouldn't be allowed to enter the competition. Those who compete in the former don't bother showing up at the latter because they know they'd place dead last. They just treat it as two completely disconnected kinds of sports, not to be compared to each other any more than football and volleyball are. I've seen videos from the drug-tested ones, and the difference is big. Most of the guys in those are less built up than the women in the link at the beginning of this thread, and the women in them hardly have any bulges at all (except for the kind that isn't muscle).pennypitstop wrote:Like Gallstones I do wonder how the female body can actually look that way without some form of drug.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKy91A7yrxg