FBBUK: The Marsh Effect: Results?

The Story So Far...

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.

FBBUK: Rosanna Harte and Regional Love

This weekend, the 2012 British champion, Rosanna Harte, takes to the stage at the Arnold, representing her and my country at what may be the world's premier amateur female bodybuilding event.

Was I alerted to this fact by a report of the Sports Minister breaking off from his busy schedule to visit her in her gym and wish her well? Was Rosanna's preparation featured in any sports bulletins on the BBC, the reporter somewhat comically attempting to lift the same weights as her? Was there an article on her in the national press, detailing her career to date? Well,... no. None of these things happened. In fact none of these things ever happen to female bodybuilders. Not in this country, and probably not in yours.




But I did find out that Rosanna would be competing, and it was before the competitor lists became available. And it was from a national media source. Even if it was only as a small online 'calendar' piece on itv online, not an actual article, I was pleasantly surprised to find Rosanna there, not only because any coverage of UK female bodybuilders in the national press is good coverage, but also because the only story here is the fact that she has qualified and will compete. There's no 'celebrity-turned-bodybuilder' angle à la Jodie Marsh, nor any of the nonsense it takes for Rene Campbell to get into the national media (I'm a Bigorexic/Female Bodybuilding Champion Can't Find Love etc etc). So well done itv!



I do, however, suspect that the story was originally picked up by the local media, and consequently made it onto the national platform. I'm not saying that's the only way it could have happened, but I do think it's a likely scenario given the amount of female muscle I have discovered in regional media around the UK. And this local coverage tends, like the piece on Rosanna, to focus solely on the woman, her background and her achievements. There's no angle necessary.

In the national media 'She's a World Champion' is simply not enough, so they need to have 'She's a World Champion Who Can't Find a Man' (yeah, right) or something like that to spice it up a bit. The regional media, in contrast, have pages to fill and not nearly as much happening around them, so the fact that a local lady has made good, even in a sport as widely-derided as female bodybuilding is, in itself, automatically newsworthy.

In the last year, FMS has come across countless articles in the regional media celebrating local muscle heroines. Examples include an April 2012 article about Jen Ford winning Miss Toned Figure at NABBA Scotland in the West Lothian Courier. In September, the Hucknall Dispatch reported that local lass Caroline 'Cee' Oliver would had qualified for the IFBB World Championships. Also in September, the Yorkshire Post interviewed Batley girl Joanne Dudley and Anna Middleton from Bingley, both competitors in Natural Physique Association contests. Rachael Hayes' victory at the Drug Free Athletes Coalition World Championships was celebrated by the (Sheffield) Postcode Gazette in November.


Joanne Dudley

I could go on. Indeed I could also go back, back to 2010, when I first started investigating female muscle in local media, back to a report in This Is Kent about Broadstairs' Vicky Bradley winning the Figure class at the London qualifier for the British National Bodybuilding Federation's National Championships.

The point is, if you care to look closely at your local media, you might find a lot more female muscle than you will if you only pay attention to national press. And any female muscle fans with ambitions to write about the women in the sport could do worse than seek out local muscle women for interviews. There is, after all, quite a good chance that local media outlets would be up for actually publishing your work online or even in print. It's up to all of us to spread the regional love. Has think global, act local ever worked for minority movements before?!

Meanwhile, the best of British to Rosanna in her quest for professional status.




We'll be keeping an eye on events in Columbus, stay tuned for news of Rosanna there.

In the meantime, enjoy Rosanna's guest posing routine at the UKBFF Leeds last year


And, in tribute to Rosanna and all the other British female bodybuilders who represent us, this week on Female Muscle Slave, it's FBBUK. And however pant-wettingly exciting the thought that British female muscle icons Lisa Cross and Rene Campbell will both be competing in 2013 in world-class competitions, FBBUK Week will be waving the flag for some of the less well-known muscle women from these shores.

And we're sure Lisa and Rene, great Britons that they are, would approve.