Fortia Femina - Portraits of brazilian female bodybuilders

Fortia Femina began in 2004 and it is an ongoing project on Beauty and Anatomy of the female body resulting from the extreme hypertrophy. Bodybuilding, and its diverse feminine modalities, is the only sport, analogous to male modalities, in which the body achieves muscle growth solely for the purpose of its image, and not as a result of effort, as in athletics and high-intensity sports. The instrumentalization of the body, having only the image itself as a goal, in constant dialogue with representation, whether in the mirror or on the cell phone, and increasingly mediated by social networks. Initially practiced only by men, and officially approved in 1940, it was not until the late 70s that women began to modify their bodies through extreme weight training, in a manifestation resulting from the growing female protagonism in the West. These women, however, face a paradox: the search for acceptance by the praxis of the image - the mirror as their main benchmark for performance - and the prejudice, being the instrumentalization of the feminine with masculine signifiers, the antagonism to the common association of women with complementary concepts such as frailty. The boundaries between masculine and feminine signs, regardless of gender and orientation, are intersectional in female bodybuilding. The issue of behavioral limits is transcended by the pleasure of transformation and the challenge of overcoming it, supported by autonomy and satisfaction of body modification.