Flex Appeal

A Pumped-Up Portfolio Of beautiful Bodybuilders

In his rippling, sinewy new novel Body, Harry Crews describes his protagonist, Sheree Dupont, as "a single shining muscle of a girl." He sees the women's bodybuilding community this way: "All around them, in the pool, in chaise longues, were...women without body fat, their skin diaphanous, their movements languid and deliberate, abdominal walls ridged with rows of muscle so sharply defined as to seem unreal, the mad imaginings of a mad artist." Crews obviously sees eye to eye with photographer Paul B. Goode, who since the early Eighties has focused on the exquisitely developed forms of female bodybuilders. Goode likes women who enhance--not distort--the feminine shape through weight training. These beautifully wrought women--Monica Mercedes (left) of Venice, California, and L. Toni Dee (above) of Vallejo, California, among them--know that the curve of muscle packs a powerful sensuous appeal, and that a well-tuned body responds most generously to stimulation.