Autumn 2010: much-derided celebrity boob-job Jodie Marsh crawls out of the Z-list dustbin and announces she's taken up bodybuilding. Some pictures of her flexing appear in the national press.
October 2011: Jodie unleashes her new muscles onto the British media - national newspapers, daytime TV - you name it, she's on it. A documentary about her bodybuilding journey airs.
January 2012: First evidence that Jodie's transformation has inspired women to take up the sport appears and is documented by Female Muscle Slave.
June 2012: A second documentary, Brawn in the USA, is aired in Britain, following Jodie as she competes in, and wins, a show in California. More positive press for her and the sport.
So what can we say now, about a year after we first reported on what we call 'The Marsh Effect'? Has the influence of Jodie's inspirational story started to wane, or is it burning brighter than ever?
We've been keeping a close eye on all things Jodie for the last six months or so, and well, we don't want to get too carried away, but I think it's fair to say that we have more than enough evidence to state that not only is The Marsh Effect real, but also that it has already produced some amazing results. It doesn't seem possible given the fact that the first of her two documentaries for DMAX only aired around fifteen months ago, but a woman inspired to take up the sport by that first round of publicity for Jodie Marsh as a bodybuilder has stood on the stage at the NABBA Universe.
After watching Jodie Marsh Brawn in the USA a while back she inspired me to join the gym and get 'hench'!
(bodybuilding.com forum member)
I’m not aiming for a body-building competition anytime soon but I would like to lose weight, tone up and find those abs which I know are in there somewhere (*prods belly*) so I’ve bitten that damn bullet and joined the gym. I’ve been through every fad diet, lost and re-gained weight countless times but never stuck to anything for longer than two weeks. Unfortunately I don’t think I’m alone in this endless cycle of misery so I’m going to do something about it, once and for all. Believe it or not (and please hold the gasps of horror) I have taken my inspiration from Jodie Marsh.
(TV presenter's blog)
The workouts have been tough, I won’t lie. They have left me feeling like I’ve never done any proper exercise in my life. I’m throwing sand bags around and lifting 70kg… the kind of exercises I thought should be left to Jodie Marsh, but my body feels great and I can already see a difference.
(journalist and broadcaster's blog)
The above quotes are absolutely typical of the kind of thing that turns up in your inbox when you set a google alert for 'Jodie Marsh +' (I know, we spare no expense in our hunt for information!). I included the third as an example of how, though she's not always explicitly mentioned as an inspiration per se, she is by far the most name-checked female bodybuilder in this country by women who are writing about beginning to lift weights in the gym and adjusting their diets accordingly.
And it's not just in my inbox that evidence of The Marsh Effect has turned up. Swell is delighted to report the evidence of his own eyes and ears. I know someone inspired by Jodie Marsh to take up weight training and start mixing up protein shakes.
I'm not about to post pictures of her on this blog - well, not unless she sends me some, and I'm not about to ask her to do that because that would be weird - she's a friend, an ex-colleague and because of her Marsh-inspired fitness regime (and you'll just have to take my word for this) she's looking about 100 times better now than she was about six months ago, feeling about 200 times better and her self-esteem and confidence have gone through the roof.
Meanwhile, viewers of the Active Channel in the UK may have already come across another Marsh-inspired story of transformation. In October 2011, an overweight mother-of-three called Rachel Turner was watching the UK daytime show This Morning...
I saw Jodie Marsh, she was giving an interview about her bodybuilding. That was my eureka moment. That was it, I would become a competitive bodybuilder. Clearly not one to do things by half, Rachel not only took up the same sport as Jodie, she actually called Jodie's then-trainer, Tim Sharp.
The following January (2012), having only been training with Tim for a little over a month, she made the decision to compete in the NABBA South-East contest that April. Rachel not only made it onto that stage, she finished second in the Toned Figure class and consequently qualified for the NABBA Britain in June. She finished 3rd, thus qualifying for the NABBA Universe.
In November, almost exactly a year after beginning her training with Tim Sharp, Rachel Turner stood on the stage in Southport and made the top six. And ultimately, it was all because she had seen Jodie Marsh and her muscles on daytime TV. If you need a better illustration of what The Marsh Effect has achieved, I don't know where you will find it.
So, if we return to the question posed at the start, I believe it's impossible to deny that Jodie Marsh is the most influential female bodybuilder in the UK today. In fact, I think we can go further than that, because she's almost certainly the most influential ever. She's far from being the biggest, the most successful, or by any conventional criteria the best female bodybuilder Britain has produced, but in terms of promoting the sport and inspiring her fellow women, there's no arguing with the fact that it's Jodie who has got the results.
See more of Rachel here, and read her story on her website.
You can catch up with the previous posts relating to Jodie Marsh that you might have missed here.
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