Arab College girls

Most people have been referring to bodybuilding as sport for males only. Women are active body builders now and have changed the perception that some of them are celebrity professional bodybuilders wielding trophies and championships' prizes to show. All over the world women are taking up bodybuilding both for body fitness and also for competitive purposes.

Women participation in body building can be traced back to around four decades ago, when records indicate that some women began taking part in major bodybuilding competitions. Modern developments in the industry have however seen women achieve muscle proportions far beyond the normalcy. More than ever before, body building women are training intensely with weights, exercising hard and long with the burning desire to build more attractive and muscle packed bodies and also to prevent solid bone loss. Women have progressed from exercising for general body fitness and to simply lose body fat, to working out with the single intent of building tough muscle tissues all over their bodies.

Bodybuilding has attained grounds as an extremely popular sport. The women who participate in the contests are sometimes more lean than muscular and their physiques are not really packed with voluminous well toned muscles. Most professional women had similar muscles as you would find on an ordinary man who had never though of building muscles. However, still many a woman fear that intense weight training in the body building program would make them bulky. The society to some extent has conditioned women to think that being muscular is a man thing. In fact, some women still hold the opinion and firm believe that weight training is exclusively for men.

This is especially so in developing nations where cultural restrictions and social dogmatism are still very high. Contemporary research into the area of female body building has however established that strength training results to many health benefits for women. Such benefits include increased average bone mass, reversing bone loss, increased body muscle strength, coordination and balance, prevention of tissue cancer and prevention of skin creasing and stretch marks. Women body building has gained in popularity across the world, and thus providing an alternative sport for those women who would prefer to build on and develop their level of muscularity instead of slimming.

The success of women body building has been mirrored on the global scene by the prestigious Ms. Olympia body building championship. The inaugural Ms. Olympia contest was held in the year 1980 and was won by the greatest of all woman bodybuilders, Rachel McLeish. Even today when women are seriously into body building, the masculine and amply toned body of Rachel McLeish resembles that stature of what today is regarded as a star fitness and figure competition.

Women body builders attain a firm skin all over their body which is relatively more attractive despite age than their counterparts who loath workouts. Indeed in the recent years, awareness into female body fitness and figure contest aside beauty parades has led to women body building being socially accepted as a desirable thing.

The toy industry is worth billions every year, especially in pre-school education, where manufacturers target parents who want to fast track their children's intelligence. Some of the claims made by toy manufacturers in respect of children's learning have been controversial and also been costly to themselves. Only a few months ago, the Walt Disney Company offered refunds to all parents who bought their Einstein DVDS within the last five years after a row with a campaign group over its educational merits.

Educational Toys Are Waste of Money

Krister Svensson, Director of The International Toy Research Centre in Stockholm, believes that the actual concept of "educational" toys is flawed. He said: “ Toys don’t teach cognitive or motor skills; they just encourage children to practise them. You can make a complex toy that forces children to manipulate them in a certain way, but children can learn just as much from repeatedly taking the lid off a shoebox and putting it back on again.”

Early Child Development and Learning

In her book, Buy, Buy, Baby, journalist Susan Gregory Thomas argued that limited neuroscience investigation into the development of children led to a national focus on the early years. In 1997, the White House Conference on Early Child Development and Learning was convened by Hillary Clinton with high profile media coverage. Thomas argued that this played heavily on the argument that there was a critical window of learning encompassing the first three years of child development, which susbsequently fostered the huge educational pre-school market, feeding on parental angst.

First Three Years of Child Development Critical?

Sara Meads, a senior policy analyst at Education Sector, published a report called: "Million Dollar Babies: Why Infants Can't Be Hardwired for Success." She argued that recent neuroscience research indicated that the brain continues to grow and develop and is not reliant on the first three years of child development as suggested. She pointed to overstimulation making babies (and adults) anxious.

Interplay UK

When the argument of educational toys moves away from the controversial first years, then the benefits become more apparent. The best educational toys are not necessarily aimed at pre-school children. Interplay, a UK based firm, has become the British Toy Industry's leading supplier of Nature and Science products with its ant farms, bath bombs and constructive kits feeding off the never-ending curiosity of young minds. Many of their products actually support the National Curriculum too. Other companies such as BrightMinds and Logiblocs are UK Curriculum friendly too.