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Lenda Murray (born February 22, 1962 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American bodybuilder. She is the world’s most successful woman bodybuilder to date: an 8-time winner of the Ms. Olympia title, the highest achievement in professional female bodybuilding. At Henry Ford High School in the Detroit suburb of Sterling Heights, Murray was both a record-holding sprinter and varsity cheerleader. She went on to attend Western Michigan University where she continued to cheerlead and became the school’s homecoming queen in 1982. After a brief tenure cheerleading for the Michigan Panthers in the now-defunct United States Football League, Murray took to the bodybuilding stage in 1985. She rose quickly through the ranks, soon winning contests at the state- and regional-levels. In 1989, she earned her professional status at the International Federation of BodyBuilders North American Championships. Murray soon became a regular presence in bodybuilding magazines and a favorite subject of photographer Bill Dobbins[1] who focused extensively on her in his books The Women and Modern Amazons. On November 24, 1990, Murray succeeded 6-time champion Cory Everson to become Ms. Olympia a title Murray would hold for most of the following decade. She appeared in such mass-market publications as Sports Illustrated, Ebony and Vanity Fair magazine as well as in Annie Leibovitz’s photo essay Women. Murray’s physique became the standard against which professional female bodybuilders are now judged literally an hourglass figure, with broad shoulders tapering into a V-shaped torso mirrored by a proportionally-developed lower body. After a four year retirement following back-to-back defeats in the late 1990’s, Murray returned to the Ms. Olympia stage to win the 2002 title. As of this writing, she continues to compete professionally. Lenda is married to Urel McGill and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Despite Murray’s personal success, professional women’s bodybuilding has seen a decline in sponsor-support and mass-media attention since the 1990’s. The rampant use of performance enhancing drugs such as anabolic steroids among male and female bodybuilders alike has given ammunition to their critics. Extreme dieting is another part of the bodybuilder regimen which has come under attack, especially considering the health risks run by female bodybuilders who aspire to body fat levels below 3% - far less than the typical minimum of 18% for other female athletes. However, writers such as Leslie Heywood [Bodymakers], Maria R. Lowe [Women of Steel], Laurie Fierstein, Joanna Frueh and Judith Stein [Picturing the Modern Amazon] all make the case that female bodybuilding is by-definition an act of transgression against traditional gender boundaries. As such, its failure to catch-on as a mainstream sport should be viewed in its proper context. Indeed, the increasing acceptance of women’s muscularity and athleticism in popular media and throughout society is seen by many as evidence that female bodybuilders like Lenda Murray have had a large and lasting - yet often unrecognized - effect on our culture. Contest history
Data originally published on Wikipedia |