Barbell Shrugged - All About Women’s Bodybuilding, and What Happens When Your Picture Goes Viral on Social Media with Koko King — Muscle Maven Radio Episode #4

Episode Date: February 28, 2019

Koreena King (aka Koko) has been in the bodybuilding world for less than a decade, but has made a name for herself in her native Ontario with her in-depth knowledge of the bodybuilding world, as well as her posing coaching and competition makeup skills. She’s worked as a posing coach and makeup artist in the industry for years.     We’re all a part of the social media community, consuming and observing trends, online behavior, and interaction. The fitness community online can be especially harsh, with plenty of judgement to go around (from your form, to the way you look, to the validity of your accomplishments, and more). But have you ever stopped to think about how you would feel if a picture of you went viral, shared on dozens of accounts with tens of thousands of people commenting on your appearance? My guest today, Koreena King, is a bodybuilder who dealt with this very thing. We discuss what it’s like to get hundreds of comments and messages a day (many of them kind, but many of them extremely abusive), what it’s like to look different from the “typical norm” even within the bodybuilding community and how to maintain a strong sense of self in an increasingly superficial online world, and we deep dive into women’s bodybuilding in general: the different categories, what it’s like to train and compete, drug use, and much more.   Enjoy! -Ashleigh   Minute Breakdown: 6 – 29 A chat about competitive women’s bodybuilding: different categories, conditioning, competition, judging, and posing   29 - 42 – Koko’s personal journey with competition prep, diet, experience with contest prep drugs or “gear” like Anavar, Winstrol and others, including side effects   42 - 56 - Koko’s story about her picture going viral, and how she dealt with it being shared dozens of times and commented on by tens of thousands of people; a larger discussion about the psychology behind social media   56 – How we can develop a strong sense of self offline in an industry (and world) where we live so much of our lives on social media; and how to develop empathy for people on social media, even the ones leaving nasty comments! ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/mmr-king ----------------------------------------------------------------------   ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Muscle Maven Radio. I am your host, Ashley Van Houten, aka the only chick host currently on the Shrug Collective Network. That's how you can tell me apart because my voice is a couple octaves higher, I think. Anyway, today is a very fun episode for me personally, I hope for you as well, because we're talking about a subject in a sport that I am very invested in, and that is bodybuilding. I competed in natural amateur bodybuilding in the figure category for a number of years, had a fair bit of success and a lot of fun with it. And as someone who is basically obsessed with Arnold Schwarzenegger and World's Strongest Man and American Gladiator since I was a kid, I guess you could just say I've kind of always had a thing for muscles. And I like bodybuilding

because it's just a fun experiment. You get to witness your body grow and see the changes that you can make with hard work and dedication. And you get to play with tweaks and changes with different diets and workouts, see how your body reacts and just grows with years of consistent weightlifting. And to some people, that sounds like an actual nightmare. But to me, it's fun. And unless you're professionally bodybuilding, you can do this in conjunction with other sports, like I've played with CrossFit and powerlifting and jujitsu and all kinds of fun stuff, while still also training like and considering myself a bodybuilder. So, but of course, the sport is more complicated than just my personal account of it. There's a lot more

to it. And I just wanted to have a bro sesh about bodybuilding with a fellow lady bro, who is as into the sport as I am. And her name is Karina Coco King. She's kind of a big deal in the Ontario bodybuilding scene, which, as a lot of people may not know, She's kind of a big deal in the Ontario bodybuilding scene, which as a lot of people may not know, it's actually a pretty big meathead community in Canada. And some pretty big names came out of Ontario. We're talking Ben Pekulski, Chris Bumstead, like some pretty jacked aesthetic dudes.

Look, I'm going to guess because I actually live here a lot of the time that it's just because it's so cold for like six months of the year that we have nothing better to do. We just stay in the gym and get jacked. But anyway, Coco happens to be my neighbor and she was someone who did my competition makeup. She helped me with my posing and I'll just interject here. I competed three times, made it to the national level in Canada, and I won my first two shows and came in the top five in nationals, and Coco helped me with that. So she is crazy strong. She has crazy dimensions. She's very knowledgeable about the industry. As I said, she's taught posing and stage beauty for a long time, and she's someone that's just

been really influential in the local female fitness world because she's someone who is just absolutely unafraid to be who she is, whether you love it or hate it. And she does not fade into the background. If you follow her on Instagram, check her out. She is a jacked chick with face tattoos. So she's a pretty polarizing figure. And she just handles it really well. And that brings me to the other big topic that we talk about,

which is actually the main reason that I reached out to her. And that is originally she had a different Instagram account that was much more fitness focused and she had a lot of followers. She had like 30,000 followers. And one of her pictures,

one of her bodybuilding pictures went hugely viral online and she didn't plan for it just happened. It ended up being shared by dozens of different accounts. Some of them had hundreds of 1000s of followers, millions of followers. She was never credited, but it was commented on by multiple 10s of 1000s of people, some positive, but a lot of it absolutely horrifying in the abusive and cruel kind of commentary towards an actual human being that these people did not know. And I think that it's an interesting conversation for us to have because in the fitness world, the social media community

that we have, it can be very aesthetic, right? Like whether you're a CrossFitter or a bodybuilder or whatever, I mean, people, fitness people care what they look like. And they are maybe more picky about what they look like than the average person. And I think also, on social media, we're now used to just seeing people's judgment of other people laid bare. And while many of you listening may think like, I would never comment a disgusting comment on someone's picture of someone that I don't even know, much less send them a personal DM telling them how unsexy or disgusting or awful they are. I think that we are sometimes desensitized to that kind of behavior because we just assume, look, you put yourself out there, you kind of get what you,

what you get, you got to expect it. And that's what social media is. But I think that it's interesting to hear a firsthand account from the other side, from an actual human being who experienced this kind of treatment, and she has a very interesting take on it. So I really hope you enjoy this episode. Make sure you give Coco a follow and make sure you're following Shrug Collective and myself on Instagram. So at Shrug Collective and at The Muscle Maven so that you are and knowing that social media is just one dimensional. So take it with a grain of salt. And it's about cultivating, I think, your own sense of self-worth offline because that's where it really matters. So enjoy my conversation with Coco King. You have to always give yourself an artist's name. This is a cute little tripod. Thank you. I can tell you're going to be distracted really easily.

That's why I went with Muscle Maven for my Instagram account because I started it to document my very first bodybuilding show because I didn't want to be annoying as fuck on Facebook. I was trying to be thoughtful. I'm like, I don't want to post all my stupid food and ab pics on Facebook. Like everyone else posts pictures of their cats. I'm going to do it here. So that if people want it, then they can go look at it,

but they don't have to. And like, fast forward six years later, now I have a podcast called muscle Maven radio. What actually, no, probably it's probably been. Yeah. Like five or six. That's bananas. I remember like posing and i remember when your delts came in and i was like whoa you remember when my delts arrived i was like she's too legit to quit yeah a little bit i'm actually i'm i oh no i specifically remember because we were at lansdowne and you were told me that you were competing or something and i was like what bikini and I think you did like and I think you like stood relaxed

and then your lats just came out of nowhere like this T-Rex you were just like our pterodactyl I remember that that was cute I am 99% lats at this point oh I believe it which is why I still get offended when people are like bikini butt I mean I guess the world that we're living in

figure girls even at a very low amateur level like I competed are still like just jacked oh yeah figure now is on the level that was like even five years ago man like I was looking back at even Nicole Wilkins if you compare like Nicole Wilkins like 2013-14 physique to now like she would get like laughed off the stage like you look at like cindy and oh it's insane and those genetics like you can if you're white just give up like you cannot compete with like it's me real sad you just can't like top three tiered so actually think about it so phil heath obviously not white the 212 um flex lewis he's white uh shaniqua grant uh she won women's physique overall Olympia.

She's obviously not white. Uh. What about Chris Bumstead? What about Chris's sister? But he didn't, he didn't win. Chris Bumstead got second. But everybody really likes the way he looks though. Yeah.

Maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but I like it a lot. Uh, I guess like his biggest downfall would be, I don't know, I know he doesn't like his biceps. But isn't he in a different category anyway? He's trying to do that. He's this classic. Yeah, which is like what people used to look like in the 70s before everyone became complete freak shows. Like he still got beat by

um, like not white. You can't compete with like. We're getting into like real politics already. Just immediately like shutting down white people from bodybuilding. Just get out of here. Cause think about it, man, all the top tiered athletes, except for bikini, like if you're like black, you cannot do bikini. Like it's insane. You're literally too muscular, like minimal effort. Like you would actually have to not train to do bikini and be black. But, um, okay. Here's my question because we were just

you were bursting my bubble about how like figure people look like bodybuilders now and bikini people look like figure people do you think that at some point they might try to do like uh whatever you'd call it for women like a classic division where it's basically like just going back to what normal people looked like well so they do do a division in um brazil that's called like bikini wellness or wellness something isn't that just the butt one though yeah but so they have almost figure leanness up top so nice cap delts nice fullness to the muscle bellies um you can see separation in the abs with some vascularity but then they have very full round glutes like really big quads and like to me that's a beautiful division because it's what about those of us who don't have big bums but are 90%

lats I want to go back to normal figure oh v taper normal figure crazy muscular steroids insane jack so for me figure crossfitter who dieted that's what i want to go back to so my definition of figure is when you can start at someone's hair and go down the entire scale of their body to their tippy toes and not one part of your eye actually stands out like not one part of you goes holy shit like look at her glutes oh my god like look at her x-frame oh my god look at her delts like there's this very harmonious synchronicity from top to bottom flow so I look at like the top five athletes for like figure Olympia figure like Arnold's and something stands out I'm like holy shit look at her delts like her x-frame is insane so to me the representation the definition of figure should be like ultimately that flow so like I remember when Nicole Wilkins

was top tiered she had like that beautiful flow. Like in a lineup, she necessarily wouldn't pop because your eye wasn't drawn to that freak factor. So like I love the I mean, visually speaking, I love looking at like the top tiered athletes because there is like that. Holy fuck. Like look at that girl's waist. Look at her delts. But by definition, the sport was created on is that like beautiful flow top to bottom. So like even you with your like lats, you still have like that free factor. Like when you stand relaxed from behind, it's like, whoa. That's what stands out.

Yeah. So like truly by definition of figure, it's not ideal because we still are stopping. So meaning your ratios are more superior to your back than the rest of your body yeah i guess that's the problem though is that that beautiful flow where nothing sticks out is very appealing to look at and people like it but it doesn't have that freak factor and that's what people go to shows for and that's what people like on facebook because there's something freaky about if you look at like the all the top tiered athletes predominantly on instagram they might not necessarily have

competed or even done anything substantial in terms of like bodybuilding career, but their physique just stands out because it's like, holy crap, like look at her glutes or look at her delts, like look at the fullness to her muscle bellies or men, for example. So we are instinctively drawn to like the holy fuck factor when it comes to like looking at people. So the definition almost needs to be rewritten for each category or else people will keep complaining like, oh, that's not bikini. Oh, that's not figure. That's not women's physique. And also because they basically took out women's bodybuilding.

It kind of bumps up every category. But figure now is like just insane. So grainy and hard and vascular and I remember initially there was like we don't want to see any separation like any glute striations and now some of the top tiered athletes like they have those crisp tie-ins and then they have like striations on like their upper glutes but by the definition of figure that's not what it was based off of well do you think that on an amateur level and this is something that I have seen with friends and stuff when I was competing, I think one of the reasons why I did okay at a very low level is because I,

first of all, I got into it kind of old, so I didn't really have to. Well, the reason I didn't really. Old lady muscles. Yeah, but also I wasn't like trying to prove that I was awesome to people. Like I wasn't doing it for validation. I was doing it to see if I could get a six pack. So I didn't try that hard. And let me explain. So I, first of all, I didn't take any kind of drugs ever. Anything that's even, you could kind of sort of say it was a drug. I stayed away from everything cause I just did whatever. It's not,

no judgment. I just didn't fucking care about whatever. And I got literally as lean as I needed to, to not look, to look like I belonged there and no leaner. Whereas all of my friends, it seemed like who were doing bikini too, and then figure they would get so fucking lean that they would first of all be dying and then, and look like skeleton garbage. But then the judges would be like, you're too lean for bikini or whatever. Like I can see all your bones and whatever. But there was something in their brain that they were like, if lean is what you want, then leaner is better where they're not listening to what the categories are because people get obsessive. They get obsessive looking in the mirror.

They go too far. They take too many like diuretics or whatever. You know what I mean? So like, I think the fact that I was, I'm not saying that I didn't work hard because I did, but the fact that I sort of had a like I'm gonna do the least amount of work possible kind of saved me and I wonder why that well because at an amateur level they will always reward potential so say for example not saying that you were soft but they will always reward a better shape softer than a harder leaner person that has less of a potential if you will

like so many times on an amateur level i've seen shape and symmetry rewarded over conditioning now when you get like national and then ifbb you need shape symmetry and conditioning right but like all the times like they always reward shape and symmetry over conditioning like if you have one girl who looks on stage like two weeks out but her shape is just there they'll always push her and but in front of someone who is like and also in the like natural amateur it's like you get very depleted you get very flat so typically the leaner someone is the flatter they look and it takes away from their overall shape. If you come in a little bit softer,

your conditioning might not be as sharp, you're not depleted, your muscle bellies are gonna be filled out, your shape is just, and your just overall stage presence is gonna be more vivacious. Then someone who's like, hit me, and he fern. But I also feel like sometimes maybe people who don't naturally have that shape,

like there are people in figure who are just straight up and down they have none of this whatsoever but they also were like I'm just gonna get so fucking dick skin yeah that they won't it won't matter that I don't actually have an appealing shape they're just like I'll just get leaner so I'm freakier looking so they have to put me I will be rewarded on some level but regardless like people who just genetically don't have it they just should stop like Daylon Bailey like she stopped competing because like she just doesn't have it like she's all abs and delts but her waist is very blocky and thick her quad shape is really not ideal for the sport and that's why she just sticks to like branding and doing her flag not fail stuff because like you have to objectively step outside of yourself assess your body and if you just don't have it

just don't do it like if you want to do it for shits if you just don't have it just don't do it like if you want to do it for shits and giggles but don't do it for the placing do it for like the actual process yeah but like i have a really strong belief like for anyone doing amateur that want to become a pro like if it takes you years and 12 15 20 shows to get a pro card you will not be a good pro because you genetically do not have it all of the best pros like to example go back to the bumpsteads it goes regionals provincials nationals pro card yeah all of the best athletes like canadian us it's because they just have it and it works like some people turn pro very quickly and some take years it's not a politic

thing it's like if you have it the judges see it and you will get rewarded like there's so many like even bikini girls it's a little bit trickier because the competition is just like so dense and the comparables are so like the same but like man there's some girls who've been competing like for so long and they feel like man i should get my pro card like i've been competing for like six years i've done like 22 shows like it's my time quantity it's quality man i'm like well that's funny because that chick over there she just did regionals provincials nationals i got a pro card before you why yeah you're probably leaner than her but she just has it her shape is better than you like she will be rewarded accordingly like the people that take years to get a pro card i just i'm gonna give up man be a

fitness model this is kind of why i wish I was willing to take steroids. Cause I did pretty good. I just, I can't, I can't, I can't be big enough. I can't be big enough and hard enough. You'd be a really good white girl. Like, I mean, whatever. I'm never, yeah. And I'm never, I don't, I don't want to be pro.

I don't want to do, but I do kind of like, I miss the competition. I miss getting lean. I miss the fun of it. I miss seeing what your body's capable of doing. But once I kind of went through the, the the the very small ranks of amateur that i did i kind of feel like what's the point if i'm not going to try to go further and i don't want to go further the goal is to do it so that you could be like the best at it but as an amateur like say for example you turn pro in the natty circuit it's like okay i'm now a pro but I can't compete with the pros like there's

no unless you're black like literally you cannot compete naturally and hold your own and even like like black people they still don't aren't natural but like because in the first like I've been training for what eight years now eight years yeah something like that and really it seems longer it seems longer yeah but there's like that and really it seems longer it seems longer yeah but there's like training and there's like actually taking it seriously right and I attempted perhaps three times and my first two preps I was naughty I was so like gun ho because like with my dad being mixed I was like yo I got those black girl genetics like I'm superior to the rest of you peasants like I can do this like. Like I can, I can be a really shrugged collective white people.

No offense, but I got me some black jeans. Um, no, I was like, I think I can actually be a really good, like natural athlete. So I was so gung ho, but I mean, I got lean ish, but definitely not dick skin, like not vascular, not hard, not grainy. Um, but I always was putting on muscle pretty well. And let's, at this point, I just want to back up because I'm going to introduce you like offline, but I want to kind of just start from the beginning here about why, you know, so much about bodybuilding and what your kind of background is like. And, you know, I feel like I, I, again'm coming into this, as we say in the podcasting world,

I'm kind of just free balling it. I don't have a lot of, I don't have questions like prepared like I normally do because I just, we know each other. We've known each other for a long time. I've followed your like fitness journey and your social media stuff closely forever. So I just, I had a very specific kind of conversation that I wanted to have with you. But before we get into that,

I kind of want to just back up for the listeners and for you to just tell us a bit about your history and sort of like any kind of sports, athletics, fitness, and how you got to be in sort of like the bodybuilding world. My memory is so bad. Okay, so back in the day back when i was yeah meanwhile how old are you like 30 oh yeah i just turned 30 30 30 back in the day when you were 22 back in the day well if we go way way back like my youth was spent mucking horse stalls like dirty

farm girl farmers are always the strongest yo we are like yeah it's baling hay honestly literally true it's scooping shit and baling hay like there is an unprecedented amount of muscle that is needed in your youth to perform such duties yeah um but like growing up i was just always into horses i spent my entire day out in the barn so like i remember being a kid like i must have been eight or ten and walking through this like the barn with like one bale in each hand I don't know how much a bale of hay weighs now it's probably like 40 pounds and I remember the farmer at the time being like never have I seen a girl let alone a 10 year old girl carry two bales of hay at once and I was like yeah man I'm cool um so I did volleyball and like badminton and ultimate frisbee so not really nerd sports yeah like all the nerd sports i didn't do

anything like brute force here that needed a lot of more like skill and like thought-provoking skill as opposed to like muscle um and then i remember my dad getting me into the gym so my dad actually used to be a bodybuilder like way back in the day when he lived in bahamas so he started training to lose that where he's Yeah, he was born and raised in Bahamas. So we, he had to lose weight, I remember. And I was always like a daddy's girl. Like I was always trying to impress him and like monkey see, monkey do. So I remember going to Orleans and like training. And one of the funniest things is I always only ever did sumo squat on the Smith machine and tricep extensions because that's all I knew like how to do and funny to this day my best body parts are my triceps and

my quads so ironically enough it goes back to what I started training the most yeah um and then I guess I just kind of dicked around at the gym for a couple years not really knowing what I was doing and then I started dating a bodybuilder we dated for four years and I remember at that time knowing what like competing was and I would see girls at the gym that I'd be like oh my god like I want to look like that looking back now like they were like little dainty like bikini like do you remember oxygen magazine of course I was like oh my god those girls are jacked they're so shredded and now I'm like yo those they weighed 80 pounds like those girls are no offense but like a joke like I would never want to look like that like I would never want to be that tiny and yeah I don't know how

to say that without insulting people so um all bodies are nice bodies this is what we're gonna talk about later yeah but um I just remember being almost jealous of how these people looked and I felt like what's stopping me from looking like that and I was like well well nothing like I could look like that so um I started training and then the guy that I was dating at the time introduced me to bodybuilding like we'd go to shows and he was competing and honestly just jealousy like I would see these girls and I was like man like they look so beautiful up there on stage with their sparkly suits and I was just jealous of them so I started learning how to train more and I really just dove really deep into the sport like it

consumed me so I would just watch and analyze um posing styles mannerisms, just like everything. And to this day, like ironically enough, as I speak about it, I've never competed, but my knowledge in the sport, like not to toot my own horn is stronger than 99.9% of the people that compete. And some people like respect me more in this industry than they do their own coaches. And people are like, Oh, why don't you coach? Like, why don't you train anyone? I'm like, like man I don't want to be someone's excuse for failure like people always need like someone to to blame when they when they suck so um but at this point it's still like a just a passion for you you're just interested you like to learn about it you like to watch it you like to I've never like this time in my life I've been this is the most stagnant I've

ever been with lack of training just because of my career has kind of overweighed the gym. But, like, my Instagram feed is all competitors. Like, there's not, I know what goes on in this industry in and out. Like, there's everything I just, I know about. And even one of my girlfriends, she's like, hey, I know you don't pose anyone anymore, but, like, I would really love it if you could. I'm like, yeah, man, just, like, come over. We'll do a couple sessions. Because in the back of my mind, I'm like, no one will pose her better than I could. And she's my friend. So I want to help her out. So you stopped doing,

so this was another thing I was going to say. So you, you had posing clients, you helped people learn how to pose, which is a massive part of bodybuilding as anyone who's played with it knows. Man. But like, it's some of the, like you like you're like for example you said you didn't try but some of the best athletes are the ones that step on stage and there's like this effortless they're more relaxed yeah there's like this effortless they're just up there and they're just posing and walking it's like an effortless calm beauty most people like you want to pose on stage the way that you look at others so like if you're in the audience your eye will always be drawn to a something that looks horrible or something like be something that's like beautiful and confident and elegant and even some of the top tiered pros like I could pick apart their posing and I'm like why in god's name do they do that like it's so distracting from

their physique so one of the things to your success is I remember when you pose like it's so distracting from their physique so one of the things to your success is I remember when you pose like there's just like this effortless seamless beauty almost like like yeah you care but it's like I'm just here I'm just I appreciate that that is my sweet spot you know because one of the things that I did from a young age you can ask my mother is we would be out in the backyard and we'd have the like slip and slide and the sprinkler on and I'm like three years old and my like bikini and I'm like doing pose downs because I was watching wrestling. I had an older brother. I watched wrestling. I was obsessed with like world's strongest man when I was seven years old. Like I've always been into this shit too, but I've always been ham. I've never been embarrassed to like smile cute and go like

this in a bikini ever. That was like the least scary part about bodybuilding to me. Like when the day came and everyone else is like, Oh Jesus, like I got to get up and I'm in a bikini ever that was like the least scary part about bodybuilding to me like when the day came and everyone else is like oh jesus like i gotta get up and i'm in this bikini and it's up my ass and i'm like so dehydrated i'm like this part is fucking cinch like i can go up there and smile cute that's no problem like this is the easiest part with that said i mean i certainly had to practice posing and i got better because if i look at a picture from my i only did three shows if i look at a picture from the first one to the third one, my posing is way better. I mean, to say that it doesn't take practice and technique and looking at yourself in front of a mirror is stupid. But I definitely think there are people who it comes more naturally to than others.

But anyway, you used to do posing work with not just like with bikini with figure with bodybuilding everybody and even to this day like I remember I started incorporating like classic poses into like women's physique routine like like old school Frank Zane um like Arnold style poses and predominantly in the last two years it's become more popular because of um classic physique but people are like oh man no women's physique like you can't pose like that and there's there's this one girl her name's danny reardon on instagram she's called like little monster and she i love her her physique is amazing but she does a lot of like old school poses incorporated into her routine but there's still like a beautiful femininity to it but um so how come you don't you don't do it anymore oh god because i make too much money doing what i do i

got no time i got no time okay that's good so that's just priorities it's not like you don't like it anymore you're just like I got better no like because like at the end of the day it's like do I want to take an hour to post someone to make 60 bucks no like anyone that I actually help now it's pro bono like I definitely do not do it for the money because it's I just want to see them successful and like I want them all their hard work in the gym needs to be shown on stage in a certain manner. So I would hate to see my friends do all this hard work. I'd watch them on Instagram for three months, and then I'd see stage pictures, and I'd be like, who the fuck did your posing?

When you can't actually showcase your physique, it's detrimental because you put in 16, 20 weeks of hard-ass work, and the thing that matters the most is how you present yourself. Because you have to understand, at the end of the day, six human beings are looking at you and judging you. And instinctively, as humans, we're drawn to a certain presence and a certain mannerism on stage. And this cool, confident, elegant, poised physique

is what people are instinctively drawn to. And it's almost like there's like this kind of sexual energy about it, regardless if it's male or female judge. But I always though, it's like, are you attracted? And that it's not 100% sexual, but it's like, I am attracted to this person who likes attraction. Yeah. So like, whenever there's a female head judge, I'll always tell the girls or men to pose in a mannerism that would attract a female or if the head judge is a male I'll be be a little bit sexier have like more of like a cat type walk but some girl head judges might be intimidated or be like well that girl looks like a bitch

it's a bit much so you actually have to tailor your posing style typically to like the head judge based off its male or female but just having like an awareness of how the human psyche works when it looks at something is how you want to learn how to pose yourself on stage that is so interesting and like tailor your posing towards the sex of the judge okay so another question that i want to ask you and i'm sure all of your billions of fans on social media want to know about this too um you and I I fully believe that you don't ever have to have had competed to know the sport inside and out and be a good coach like you look at every sport football MMA everything some of the best coaches in the world never played this Charles Glass like he's never

competed 100 so I mean that's not even really a conversation however can you talk a little bit about why like you said you had three attempts they all at different stages and prep ended why talk about it a little bit why did you stop why did you oh it's it's actually ironically pretty simple um the first oh it's so hard to remember but literally the last two times i remember i remember so one one of my issues is i never hire a coach so my problem is i always get pretty fucking fat so like i've started prep my heavies was 230 and i'm five foot eight so that's two but you're a solid five eight you're not like a small shoulder i'm not like i. But you're a solid five, eight. You're not like a small shoulder. I'm not like, I'm not, you're a farm girl. I'm a farm. Like I'm meaty. So I'm not like, uh, I'm not a loose two 30. I was still pretty tight, but I started at two 30. And my problem is, is like,

my preps aren't like 16 weeks. Like I would love a 16 week prep. These are like 30 week preps because I have to lose. What is it? Two 230 to like a stage weight would be like 145 150 so that is a substantial amount of weight that cannot be done over a 20 week period so 30 weeks out and man I would just go and go and I would do like I always backed out either around six or four weeks out so always about a month away and that's really when the biggest changes happen ironically enough and even though I can sit here and tell myself that and in the moment when I was prepping tell myself that I still didn't believe myself so in the moment I would assess the situation and I'd be like man like I'm not ready you know at five

foot eight I should be waiting about this much at this point and I'm not I'm not vascular enough I'm not lean enough um keeping in mind though the first two attempts were natural so I was comparing myself to sauced up versions of what I thought I should look like um so I really just backed out of the first one just for a lack of confidence and I was like I'm just not big enough I'm not and my first time I wanted to do figure and I had the shape, but I was like, I just, I'm just not there. So I just stopped. And I prioritized it in my head being like, Oh, prep isn't important. Like, I don't need to do this. Like, I don't need to prove anything to anyone. So I stopped. Is there an element too, of you being so enmeshed in this world that you were like, if I can't go in there and be like the freakiest number one best,

I'm not going to do it. One of the biggest issues is like having such a strong hold on this industry and knowing so much, it's actually a blessing and a curse because I don't want to do something to be okay at it. Like if I compete, I want an overall, if I compete, I want to become a pro. If I become a pro, I want to be like the best in the world. And I can objectively look at my body and I know that I would never be the best in the world. Like I know I could never be like women's physique Olympia. Like maybe under some really good gear and some guidance top 10, just because of like my ratio and shape.

But I mean, I have tattoos against my side. There's not many fully tattooed people who sit top 10 in like the Olympia the Arnold's just because it simply blurs lines and symmetry and density um and yeah and I don't know if I'd be willing to take the amount of gear that it's going to take to become a top-tiered athlete like I work in the beauty industry I have to be mindful of my skin my voice my hairline uh hair growth in general. Um, is there, is there any part of you that regrets not being able, like not following through and just trying? Oh God, no, man. Like

my life has been like a beautiful ride of like my life. Like I, there is not one thing in life I ever regret. Like who's to say if I competed that I wouldn't have done something that wouldn't have led me to where I am here in life. so like everything in my life has had this beautiful synchronicity and like I've never been unhappy in life like when I stopped prep I would look back and I just laugh it off I'm like oh well it's not that you can't do it again and if you do it again just know not to stop but um the second time I prepped I was uh I was like yeah fuck this i'm not doing this natty like i see i see what these girls need to be like let's let's do some shit so i remember uh doing five milligrams of annavar and then as i came closer to it i incurred wait this was your third

prep you said the third one was the one that you weren't natural i think you said the first two you tried natty and then the last one You were like Off we go Off to the races I would still consider Five milligrams of Anovar And five milligrams of Winnie To be pretty fucking natty So herein is where

We come to The interesting conversation Because it's all Like it's different Some people are like Oh you took like What's the thing That everybody takes

To get Lean? Yeah Clenbuterol? Yeah like that And then there's another diuretic or something. Oh, you can't,

uh, I'll dactone. Yeah. Yeah. Like all that shit. I also know everything about drugs. I know like all what women take. I know all what men take.

Um, but I also believe in expressing variables. So like all we start very minimally and see what your body's capable of, as opposed to like exposing all of these things. Cause I do remember my second, like my second prep I was trying to do um women's yeah women's physique and I got really close like that was definitely my favorite look because I got pretty lean I was about six weeks out um and I actually met a guy so i was like i was so i was single during my prep and then i was like oh yeah don't date when you're in prep firstly because it's not like you can go on a date be

like let me just eat my spinach and my vinegar oh psc i gotta go home early because i gotta wake up and do fast and cardio yeah so i remember getting into a relationship and just stopping prep because i prioritized like his needs. Having fun, but also, yeah. Yeah, I was like, you know, like I don't want to have to wake up early to do cardio. And I was like, do you know what? Like I've hit a point. I see what I'm capable of.

But because I had this male introduced into my life, I just totally prioritized him over competing. And I could definitely, at that point I was so tired. I was looking for an excuse to like stop. Okay okay so what did you take for your third prep um bar winning later on what's that um windstroll it's like it helps you get like um god I'll probably get like backlashed on like what it does. Cause like VAR makes you strong. Sometimes it can help you. It makes you retain water. That seems to be like the one that people say is like,

okay for girls. Cause it doesn't mess you up. So the key is like you would want something that doesn't have androgenic side effects. So the least toxic, if you will, steroids. So typically like if you look at a bikini athlete, they can take.

Who are all taking drugs also. Oh, a thousand, one million, a hundred, baz Who are all taking drugs also. of their delts like they just don't have like that stringy drawn down appearance like they look healthy and full that's anivar helping them do that well it could be a man a couple different drugs like gh is also a really prevalent one um i would is this ghb you're talking about uh like well growth hormones so it's like you can take certain units i don't know i've never stabbed myself in anything so i'm really not known with dosages, but G-Skid's you,

um, helps you keep you very lean. It helps like without losing muscle when you're on like a caloric deficit, helps give you like beautiful skin. Your hair is better. So why isn't everybody just taking that? Basically everyone is even celebrities like fucking Jennifer Lopez. Like even if you Google celebrities and growth hormone,

like it's very, very known. Like in, cause it's, you can literally take it literally take you like such a prude i'm like i won't even take pre-workout oh man that's why i'm down in life but back then like i just wanted to do like bare minimum so i did uh with annabelle to start like probably for the first 20 weeks and then i introduced um winnie later on because there was a little bit of a caloric deficit and increased cardio and then Primo which is I mean I don't remember like half a tab whatever it is but that's like kind of a hardener it helps you keep muscle while you're in a caloric deficit so basically drugs are meant to help you get lean help you put on muscle help you keep

muscle wearing it when you're in a caloric deficit and help lower any estrogen because i think one of my saving graces is i have like very high tests for a female like i do not have a girl's body by any means like i carry my weight exactly like a male like i have always a very lean bottom half and i carry my weight predominantly um in my back and in my arms like my arms like are the last thing now, but like, I'll have like, like feathering through my quads after like dieting for like two weeks. Um, so anything to drop estrogen, I never really needed to take a lot of just because I'd never really had a lot of estrogen in me. So how was that third prep with all of those kind of different drugs? Did you

like it? Did you feel good? Was it, were there any kind of side effects later that you didn't like or any backlash after the fact that wasn't good no so like it's hard to say especially like if we touch on side effects so even on my youtube channel i posted a video of me shaving facial hair because from a young age like 10 11 like i started shaving my face and when you because i wanted to be like my dad like again daddy issues um don't we all yeah so like i would see him shave and i was like oh well if he shaves i'm gonna start shaving so like for my face i actually have a lot of hair growth not even like what's considered like a lot for like female and heavy gear like i can grow a fucking beard like i could be a lumber jack and as like in a zombie apocalypse i'm gonna grow a beard shave my head and I'm a dude

like I am not gonna get I'm glad you live next to me I'll protect you help me out yeah I'll protect you but like so increased facial hair growth that wasn't even a thing because I've always had like really bad like almost like um you know like that ovarian cyst thing where like women just yeah a lot of facial hair have you ever like, and before the bodybuilding stuff, like did you do hormone testing and stuff to make sure that things are like healthy and safe? No, I am the unhealthiest person in the entire world. I've almost never been to a doctor. All right, folks, don't listen to Coco.

No, do not. Don't do what Coco does. Just learn and listen. There should actually be a disclaimer on this one. There needs to be a disclaimer. Do not do as I do. Coco does just learn and listen there's a disclaimer on this one there needs to be a disclaimer do not do as I do like even last year I was actually going hypoglycemic every single day after a workout um also noted I don't even eat protein like when I got lean like last year my diet was a hundred

percent carb based like I would wake up and eat oatmeal with toast, a couple bagels. I would eat rice. Were you constantly starving? Because that's what carbs do to me. Like, you just eat carbs and you're hungry again. Why weren't you eating protein? It upsets my tummy. Have you tried all the proteins? No.

I don't, like, I would eat chicken. You're just not into protein. Like, I just don't, like, I didn't need it. I'm pretty muscular. I'm losing need it I'm like yeah I guess I'm pretty muscular um I'm losing weight I'm getting leaner I'm not craving it yeah I just I just I wasn't eating vegetables like I literally was all like if you saw my Instagram last year it was well I do remember a lot of like sugar candy intro workouts so I actually started posting like stop posting because I didn't want to influence people

because what I was experiencing is definitely like not normal. Like you do not diet on like intra Swedish berries and like donuts post-workout. Yeah. But just like my body was just responding super awesome to like carbs. I don't know. I've never been a carb person. I've always done like almost like keto style dieting. And then. So you like high fat a lot of the time prior to like last two years now. But like even

now I'm like losing weight right now. And like ask Ross, like literally all I eat is carbs. Like today I've had three packages of oatmeal, cereal and a bagel. I would die. I literally eat 90% protein. Like if I could, if I had to pick one macronutrient to eat and never eat the other two, it would be protein. Just only. No, I can't. I can't. Dude, I even had a chicken wrap the other day and my stomach was super like, I don't

know if it's from years of like pounding 220 grams of chicken a day, like probably like five years straight. I just ate so much protein. It probably has a lot to do with it. Now I just have like an intolerance. Like beef is when it started, um, like red meats, like anything super gamey and now even chicken. So if I'm to stomach anything, it would be just eggs and like clean fish, like, um, tilapia or haddock. That's really interesting. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. No, no, no. Okay. So I do have one like big kind of

topic that I want to talk about. And then if we want to like continue to nerd out on bodybuilding forever, we can, but one of the things that I really wanted to talk to you about because I saw it happen and it was the first time it had ever happened to someone that I knew personally. And this is the infamous picture of you that went viral on social media. And the reason I want to have this conversation, especially with this audience is because the people who are listening are largely in the sort of like bodybuilder CrossFit, just like to work out kind of crew. And so most of us on social media, we follow that kind of community. And so we're following a lot of fit people and muscular

people and whatever, that's kind of what our world is. And everybody who's on social media constantly, which is everybody, we see the, you know, the like different like gossip magazines or groups who are talking about this famous person did this. And this person broke up with this person because they fucked this person, et cetera. Right. Like it's all gossip and it's all kind of talking about people as if they sort of aren't human. And we've all seen like the comments on like YouTube videos. And we've seen comments on like famous people's Instagram posts. And I think we get to the point, like a lot of us can roll our eyes and be like, this is gross. And social media is like the lowest common denominator, but we also are very

desensitized to it. We're just like, it's kind of a wild West out there. It's kind of gross. Everyone just says whatever they want. Cause they're anonymous. And even if they aren't anonymous, it's just sort of like this level of distance, you know? Um, but I wanted to have a conversation with somebody who lived through this and I want to, I want to know what it was like, because it's fucking intense. Like you. Okay. So to back up, you got a picture. I have to like post like, you're going to have to post it when we post, you're going to have to post this picture and you're gonna have to send it to me so I can show it. But you were going through some kind of prep or you were working out and you were like, you were pretty into the working out at the time. So you were like, you were more muscular maybe

than other times of your life. And you posted this picture. And for everybody listening, Coco is the queen of posing. The queen of angles also has a ridiculous shape anyway but all of these factors came together came in a picture that makes you look very jacked like freakishly jacked so I have to well firstly let's just roll back to what preceded that photo so that was actually the longest prep I did I did like a 26 week prep and that's when I actually stopped it for a boy. Yeah. The irony is that you probably were like smaller than you usually are. So when I prepped you basically, those last like few weeks I was in a caloric deficit. I definitely was depleted. And then I stopped prep and that was the first leg workout I had in like after having stopped prep so the variables to this picture are

um a I was pretty lean b the carbs were plenty so it was probably a week into not prepping so I was like I was balls deep in carbs like I probably went up 10 pounds in a week just from like glycemic index just being pushed my body retaining a whole bunch of water from the amount of carbs I was eating so that leg pump was like one for the books legendary like I remember training and then be like my fucking legs are gonna explode but I also specifically remember that photo because I was wearing I was covered up so prior to that I was basically half naked in the gym wearing short shorts and a sports bra but because I felt like bloated and really swollen and really full I had on leggings and a black top and when I train I always wear a belt so I train legs had a crazy like I did like a fucking next level finisher I think I did like 10 sets of like a hundred like just a thousand reps on like leg extensions and then i went into

this is late at night and i went into the the studio room and the guy was in there actually you know that was like those pusher things that you see in high school they're like cleaning the floor it's like mini zamboni yeah it's a mini zamboni and that's a canadian reference yeah yeah we like zambonis up here and then true yeah um so this guy is cleaning the floor and i literally scurried over and was i was having a douchebag moment where oh we got we had technical difficulties we're good we're good so i like scurried in and i was like oh man this guy this guy's going to think I'm a douche, but I was just snapping some pictures. So the most slack I got in this photo was a Photoshop, B steroids, C, she looks like a dude. So first I'll dress the Photoshop is fucking right. It looks Photoshop. It looks Photoshop to the tits. Number one thing that makes it looks photoshopped is wood floors but they're shiny no you know when they do the cleaning they work in like a figure eight like

so the floors look warped and if i actually probably go back a few years i can probably find the video because i remember doing a video and screen capping that picture from the video so the floors look warped. My waist looks crazy small because at that point my quads were 28 inches. So 28 inches. 28 inches. So my quads were flared. My waist was probably cinched in probably 26 inches

because my waist at the time would have been around 28. So it probably took in like two inches off the waist. And then I was standing relaxed, so my shoulders were out. So the ratio is like super wide across, like probably 50 something across, tiny waist, flared legs. And to boot, my leggings had vertical stripes through them. So the stripes of my pants were deformed around the curvature of my quad. It was the perfect storm for a viral picture. But I didn't expect it to go viral, obviously.

I don't think anyone does. But at the time, too, let's also back up because when this comes out, obviously we're going to put in the show notes all the places where people can follow you and you have a different career and that's what your Instagram is mostly focused on now. You still have some fitness pictures,

but at the time- My hands can still be found on Instagram. Yeah, you still like to show your booty sometimes. But at that time, you were a lot more heavily into the like bodybuilding part of it. Like you were more of a fitness account than a professional account. You had like what, like 25,000 followers? How many? More than that? Well, no, like, I had 30,000. And then it was literally was solely based off bodybuilding. And actually, as I started promoting my work, like what I do to make a living. Yeah, I lost followers. Yeah. So like, as soon as I started posting more beauty stuff, I lost followers.

But also too, like that was after work. And I remember having a full face of makeup on. So here you have this chick who has crazy ratios, covered in tattoos, makeup, black hair braided, looking like some Clydesdale Viking covered in tattoos. So you've had all of these variables that are definitely like, like I'm a niche market. I call it niche market pussy. So it therefore makes me very, um,

I'm an easy target. So people can either look at me and go, Ooh, I would never want to look like that. Or let me send you a picture of my penis. So they ew I would never want to look like that or let me send you a picture of my penis so they're like I want to be in that yeah here's my penis yeah um ew I would never want those tattoos why is she wearing so much makeup why does she have her head shaved um so there's a lot of things to pick on now when I got into this industry remember I was saying like I would look at these girls and i would be jealous so

everything that i became is what i always wanted to be like i wanted to be like i would i want people to look at me and either go oh my god i love her body or she looks like a fucking dude like that is my goal you don't want to fade into the background like even to this day like when i go into the gym i want to look like i belong like I want to look like I want the respect of people to go oh wow she works hard for her physique she's been training for a long time um like I just want I essentially I want it's ego related like I want people to be jealous of me because they can understand by looking at my physique it correlates with hard work and I'm a hard-working. I respect people that work hard. Therefore, that's what I want to emulate. So when this picture, I posted it and how it actually

became viral was, I didn't know at the time who he was, but, uh, his name's little, little Duval. I think he's a rapper or a comedian or something. He has like 2 million followers on Instagram and he turned me into a meme. So he like took that picture and next to it spliced the words, like, if this is your girlfriend, she's actually your boyfriend. And there was probably like a hundred to 200,000 comments on the photo, which I definitely scrolled through periodically, but it never, ever, ever affected me. And I wish I can take like what I'm about to tell you. Like, I wish I can take like what I'm about to tell you like I wish I could take this mentality and just give it to everyone put it like into the masses so like

when someone tells me their opinion a I want to know the facts behind their opinion so I can see if I can hold it with merit so like for example if you were to come to me and you had a political view that was different than mine I wouldn't poo- poo your view, but I'd want to hear like tangible, actual facts. And then I'd be like, shit. Yeah. Like my, you've changed my point of view because I get why you think that. Yeah, exactly. So like when I look at these pictures of these people saying negative things, like I would never hold anything that these people have to say with merit, like never, like firstly, I don't know them. Secondly, I do not respect people who talk ill of anyone. Like I can think all this crazy shit about people on the internet, but never in my right mind would I ever go on someone's picture

and comment what I actually think about them. Like it's so beyond disrespectful and I would never value a person that would do that. So when I looked at all these comments, A, they were just kind of solidifying everything that I had actually always wanted. Like as a kid, I always wanted to look like those chicks. Like I always wanted to do that. So Photoshop, I was like, I can see why they would think it's Photoshop,

but like I fucking done it. Like I look Photoshop. Like this is it. Like that's what I always wanted to do. I look like I'm on crazy steroids. Thank you Photoshopped. Like this is, this is it. Like that's what I always, I look like I'm on crazy steroids. Thank you. That means that I work. Oh my God.

Like it's, it's actually insane when people like would comment all these like, like, Oh, she must have a dick or all this stuff. I'm like, if only you guys knew the limited amount of gear, like I take Skittles,

like five mil. Like people laugh at me when they know how much I take and they almost don't believe it. But I guess the people who believe it with the people who have known me the longest and they can see like, hey, my facial structure hasn't changed. My voice is the same. Like I literally do not look like I'm on gear because I take like the littlest amount of dose that you possibly can just to have like a slight edge. Okay. Here's a question. I'm going to play devil's advocate here for a second so um first of all a lot of respect for anybody who can have a picture go as viral

as yours did and not want to jump off a bridge i mean that is it was really intense it got it got re like reposted over and over again probably every few months you'll post and be like oh there it goes again like it went and it's like on the like gym memes like gym humor or like gym bros pages and it's like check this out comment below like it's not even anything that's that's useful it's just like a negative way yeah yeah okay but my question is so you're saying you can look at this picture that went viral and see thousands and thousands of mostly disgusting comments and it doesn't phase you but but you did just say that one of the reasons you want to look the way you do is because you want people to look at you and be like holy shit like i'm jealous of this or i want this or i want to look like that so it seems like on one

hand you're like i'm i'm accepting that i want outside people to feel a certain way about me but then when they say something shitty you're're like, nah, I don't care. It's more of like. Is it like selective? It's more of like the people who have my mindset. Like, so say, for example, you take 100 people, just random pedestrians. Of that 100, 98% of those people will not think my physique is ideal. But the people who work out and the people who train, they would either respect my physique

or the girls that train and work out, they'd be like, man, I want to look like that chick. So like, I want, you know, the ego to be for the people that think like me. Like, I can't, like, if I look at some women nowadays, like the crazy ratios that they have, like with Brazilian booty lifts like BBLs, they remove fat from the waist and they inject it into the into the glutes to get this crazy, crazy, like artificial, almost like comical body type. And I look at that and I'm like, man, I wouldn't want to look like that. But you take 70 percent of the rest of the female and they would love to look like that. So everyone has their own likes and dislikes and typically the way that you want to look is the people you're branding yourself yeah to want to be like like it's like your group your group yeah like minded people it's like my crew it's a very small percentage in this world like the types of

people who could look at my physique and appreciate it and and see it and value it for what it is but it's those types of people that like I guess that's what drives me for like that that jealousy or like that wanting this to to look like me like I just want the respect if that makes sense like so there's no part of you that when this thing keeps getting keeps getting reposted that you're like these people obviously and there are tons of people who are still like holy shit that's amazing or like this chick's amazing whatever but there's a lot of people posting gross stuff there's no part of you that's like this these people are real human beings who are looking at this picture do not see me as a human being at all have no respect for who i am that i have like a soul and a heart and that I work hard and that

whatever whatever my background is like how can I expect them to understand it when it's not like their life like you have to think of the modern person it's like they go they work they go home they sit at home they maybe go to the gym but their goal is to like uh very like boxy like they like that very like up and down look like they don't understand the sport. So it's like I don't get upset or angry at people from making negative comments when they just don't know. Should we should we feel a little bit more like like should we hold people on social media to a higher standard, though? Because I feel like the fact that we have all just been like, yep, it's a nightmare. Everyone's disgusting. And you have to just basically assume that people are going to say gross things to you and send gross messages to you and say the worst thing.

Like, should we? Should we? Because when you think back, I just read this book called Digital Minimalism, and it talks a lot about, like, the history of social media and, like, online kind of sharing and connecting apps and stuff. And one of the things that they talk about is that originally a lot of these apps really were created with the intent to help people share and stay connected. Now it's about dopamine hits. Now it's about wasting your time so that you eventually look at advertising. But originally it was like, I want to see what this, I want to find this person from high school. I want to see what they're up to.

Yeah, maybe I want to see if they're fat, but also I just want to like see what these people are doing. And then it becomes more involved and more involved, more involved. And now it's like, let's look at like the freakiest or weirdest pictures. Let's talk shit about people that we've never met because it somehow makes us, I don't know, feel like feel better. I don't even know if it does. It can't because they, you know, keep you keep doing it. And I don't think most of these people who are willing to say something shitty about a complete stranger aren't winners in life. Like, I think that's fair to say.

Well, I mean, the thing is is is like if you take my physique so take take your physique at its best take my physique at its best and let's say let's take a just a generic fitness model her body at the best take a hundred people people are gonna look at you and if you gave them totally free range like they could just like um totally say what they want with no bias some people might look at you and go ew fuck like no i wouldn't want to look like her like no i don't like you you can never be perfect like you can never fit a mold to like never make everybody happy if i walk through life with no tattoos um with no muscle i dress like i'm from the hamptons like fucking wear like have leather bound books and I smell like rich mahogany.

I'd like you better. No, but it's like if you take a hundred people, some people are going to love me and some people are going to hate me. So like one of the analogies I've been using recently, it's like who hates Ellen? No one. No one fucking hates Ellen. Who hates like Keanu Reeves? No one. No one better hate Keanu Reeves. Right? That's what I'm saying. I feel strongly about that one. Who fucking hates Ellen. Who hates like Keanu Reeves? No one. No one better hate Keanu Reeves.

Right? That's what I'm saying. I feel strongly about that one. Who fucking hates Oprah? I think some people hate Oprah. Actually, lots of people hate Oprah. But so let's take her out of the equation, but we can also use her as another reference. But so take Keanu, take Ellen.

These people don't give a fuck what they look like. Truly. They're not ugly, but they're not like Keanu has his moments. But Ellen, like she's cute, but she's not like hot. She's not ugly but they're not like keanu has his moments but ellen like she's cute but she's not like hot she's not ugly she just sits middle ground look at kim kardashian everyone usually has a strong opinion about her either lover or the hater who tries the most to love to have people love them kardashian it's like the people who care the most usually get like the haters so it's like if you just generally just do your own thing and are a good person and just do what you need to do in life and just like the people who know me.

I don't know many people who hate me, like to be honest. But even though like my look could definitely be swayed, like some people love me or hate me based off my appearance. But it's like the people that don't know me, I literally do not care what they think because they don't know who I am. And they're just making a judgment based off my appearance, which is fine because I'm a high target. Like when I started getting tattooed, I realized that people would make judgments. Like when I go into Ardennes or Claire's, when I walk around with like an earring in

my hand, I walk it around like I'm serving a fucking platter because I don't want them to think I'm there to steal it. But like when I go through life, I know that I'm accepting the fact, okay, Karina, you have tattoos and you're quite muscular and you certainly look a certain way. And in a very government-based town, you will get judged. So I take the responsibility of how I look and I take that and I know not to let people's opinions of me

make me feel anything less than what I am. I know who I am as a person and it's not total shit. I have things I can improve upon, but I'm aware of those things on what to fix. You look at Kim K, she tries so hard to look a certain way to have people love her

and most people don't. Ellen, she doesn't give a fuck how she looks. She just does her own thing and she's chill. Be more like Ellen. Yeah, be more like Ellen. And she's high target. Like she's an open lesbian. Like a lot of people aren't gonna like Ellen

because she's a lesbian, but she's just a really good fucking human being. I want to ask another social media related question because one of the other things that you were infamous for that people loved following you for when you had your fitness account was your takedowns of people DMing you, which were at times either hilarious, so funny, so fun, very cold blooded sometimes, but very interesting. And it really was, it was really kind of a cool sociological way that you shed light on what it's like to be a

woman. And especially again again a woman with a very niche look on social media so you you would and you'd post on facebook too but on instagram like in your stories you would post people's dms to you and then your responses which were either like seriously like get the fuck out of my dms like you're a serial killer or just hilarious like just messing with people for the sake of messing with them but it also showed like how frequently you were getting again direct messages so this isn't just people being like i'm just going to comment on this picture like it's not a human being this is someone being like this is a human being and i'm a dm her my opinion or dick but people were sending you messages and you can tell me at the height of it like how many you were getting a day from dudes who were either like I want to marry you will you step on me for sexual

pleasure like how big is your waist how big is your are your arms how big are your hands like will you wear high heels and like sit on me like you know what I mean like it went on and on and on in retrospect though the images that I was publishing on Instagram definitely would have warranted those types of responses because. So you asked for it. Yeah. I mean, some of the pictures were pretty provocative, like me posing. My underwear would be low. My ass would be hanging out.

So any sort of male, I definitely do not blame men because you take like a certain woman who portrays herself in a way. So I'm not that type of person so the way that I portrayed myself on Instagram didn't reflect who I was so were you posting those pictures to see what kind of reaction oh I just do it for the gram just for the likes just for the likes like really like you're posting this picture you're like I'm gonna get a bunch of comments dms from perverts were you were expecting it? Were you looking forward to it? Like entertainment value? At a point, it was definitely entertainment value.

And to this day, I actually want to print them all out and create, Ross came up with this idea, a little coffee table book. Amazing. But give all the proceeds to like women's shelters and just, but like, there's a lot of them and they're quite comical, but I would like blank out their names

because I didn't want it to result in like cyber bullying. But at the time, the pictures that I was like posting would have presented a way so that guys felt obligated to kind of like approach me in a more aggressive fashion than say someone who might have been a little bit more covered up. But even when I had like boyfriends clearly on Instagram, I'd still get messages. But that was quite fun. Except for it just happened recently and it got me booted off Instagram with a dick pic. Yeah. So this was another one that somebody sent you a picture of his dick. You posted it in your stories.

So I. Anonymously. So basically. Anonymous dick. He was like, he sent me the picture of his dick. And basically I was like, you show me yours. I'm going to show you mine. So then I sent him back just a picture of a google dick so then I reposted that scenario on my story sad I missed it when it originally I have I have the photo I'll show it to you I'll show you what created my demise yeah um so yeah the Instagram deactivated my account

and inevitably it led to it getting deleted so I had to create a new account um and I'm trying to keep it predominantly um work-based but still what's interesting is my clientele is 60 percent comparator so to actually keep my name still relevant in the fitness industry I still will post like a picture of my ass or a picture of my physique looking in a way so that it draws females towards my account because I get a lot of comparators as my clients. Right. So I can't just be all eyebrows. I'll have to be, Hey, I'm that eyebrow chick who also works out squat. Yeah. So it makes there like a little bit more tangibility for those clients to book in with me. And is that purposely the niche you're going for? So you're, you are microblading

specialist, but you also do makeup. You do eyelashes, eyelashash extensions you do all kinds of stuff right um and you're focusing on that vanity and sanity stuff is that is that a you're purposefully kind of like speaking to the fitness community because that's again just a community you're in and they also like to do all that shit one of the smartest like business handles is p to be a big fish in a small pond so if you want to do that you have to work within a niche market. So Ottawa itself is a niche. It's a small town. But you have to think of fitness comparators. It's A1, Vanity and Sanity. These women are accustomed to spending a certain amount of money on their bodies and on their faces.

They want waterproof, sweatproof brows. And they also like to be on trend. And eyebrows are on trend. So you have all of these variables that equate to a perfect scenario that makes a client like what you need and then I just brand myself in a way that the images look like are nice and I present myself in a way so that people know that I'm legit yeah um but I definitely like I would like to be like more heavily based within it's an industry that's constantly growing and I want to grow within it and especially with like makeup like I don't know anyone who gets more like makeup requests for a show but in the makeup industry and the fitness there's not a lot of good like great artists you are very hard to get I will tell you makeup wise even worse this

year though it's bad um so have you ever with any of the like dm interactions where you were basically responding to guys being like can you sit on my face with like, I love lamp. I love lamp. Did you ever get guys like saying like, yeah, my bad. I probably came on a little too strong. I'm sorry. Like did people ever kind of like come to their senses and talk like a normal human or not really?

Well, no, because one of the things is I don't like, I actually don't like engagement. So I would immediately like message them back and I'd actually block them because I do not want that back and forth. I don't want to have to. So you weren't trying to teach these guys any lessons. This was purely entertainment, purely entertainment value. It got to the point where the response from like my followers was like, man, I love it when you post this and this and this. I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. What started as just kind of cheeky. Now it's like, okay. As soon as I get a DM, I'm going to,

I don't even think about it. It's the first thing that comes to my mind and I'll send you to actually have them saved on Facebook. So you can, if you want, you can post them with this, this interview. But they're pretty funny. And it was just the first thing that came to my mind. I think one of the things too that makes you popular among obviously fitness women, but just women in general is something that we've been talking about this whole time, which is that you, you that you're very honest,

and you're very open about everything you want to do. It's because I just don't, I literally do not care what people think about me. I honestly, I've never in my life felt sadness, or depression, or anxiety, or anything. About what other people think. Just in general, in life. My mood is on this one level,

because I literally do not care like why would i care it'd be the equivalent of someone on the street yelling up to me right now you look like a fat piece of shit or like you you look like you're on steroids like why would i i don't i do not know you yeah you could be a psychopath like i do not know you so why in any reasonable way would i hold the words that came out of your mouth why would i hold them with any merit like it makes no sense why people are like oh cyberbullying it's like just don't care it seems though like i'm so passionate about it because people say they don't care and they truly care. No. The amount of fucks I give are minus 74. So how, though, because you're in a world, like you just said, vanity and sanity, where people care way too much.

Way too much. And it doesn't seem like you, with all due respect, have much of a desire to teach lessons so much. It's just like, here I am. Take it or leave it. You know what I mean? But for all of the women who really do look up to you for whether they want to look like you or not respect how little you care about the shit that doesn't matter. And they look to you for somebody who is honest and, you know, can be who they truly are. Cause that's all any of us really want, right? Is to be who we really are. So what kind of advice can you give to your community who

cares way too much about what other people think about how to just stop caring, how to give less fucks? How do you do that? Well, I think one of the biggest things is it's not something that can be. So I've had a lot of women approach me saying like, Oh man, you should hold like talks and, you know, do this and write this and talk about this. But I really feel like regardless of what someone says, you have to do it on your own, man. Like I remember being a kid being teased. Oh, also spots. My body's covered in fucking vitiligo. So I also like from a kid was teased very young. So I remember as a kid having like spots all over my body and people calling me cow, that I looked like a block of marble cheese, like just being totally delicious. I know.

Fuck. I love delicious. That's a compliment. But I remember getting teased so much as a kid about my my vitiligo. And in the same hand, I also remember going home to my horse, Glory, who looked like a cow. She was spotted. She was like a paint. So she looked at the exact same markings as a cow.

And in the equine industry, her patterns were so like remarkable. Like she was like a one in a trillion horse. Like I had people offering me so much money for her, like my entire time growing up. And I was like, no, this is the first horse I ever bought. Like, I don't care. You can offer me $50,000. I'm not taking it. So all these people would make fun of me and then I would look at my horse who had the exact same skin as me and be like you're one in a million loves her and wants her like and is jealous of her yeah like you are a prized pig and now if you look

at like Winnie Harlow she's like one of the top models in the world and she's covered in vitiligo so often because she's different looking yeah like people are so afraid to be different and like they're just sheeps and i think a lot of the issues where um women have insecurities is because they they look at another person and they don't look like that but what makes them so remarkable is because they don't look like that other person like what makes you beautiful is not being, you know, quote unquote, like everyone else, you know? Like so when I look at myself and I see that I'm different looking, like I love that. Like I would never, ever, ever want to look like a normal person. Like ever.

Like I like it when I walk on the street. People look at me because I'm either thinking, thinking, oh wow, she looks really cool. Like she probably has a good story or like she's definitely going to go rob a bank right now. She looks ridiculous. Might kill me. Yeah. So embrace your 28 inch thighs, embrace your oversized lats, embrace what makes you, you.

That is the most like when I'm walking down the street, the women that stand out most to me are the women that are not like everyone else. Like when I'm at the gym and if I see a muscular female or even men, like if I see something that's remarkably different, I just like stop. I'm like, wow, that is, that is beautiful. And I think you have to really understand that being different. And it's such a, it's such a, like a cliche because everyone says like embrace anything that's different. But truly. Seems to be the answer. Cliches are, there's a reason they're a cliche because it kind of makes sense.

Some of the most unhappiest people in this world are the people who are the biggest sheeps. It's insane. Well, trying to please other people I think is what you're getting back to. And I've seen this over and over again too. And again, even just taking it back to the bodybuilding world is the people who are going out there to please or to try to impress other people tend to have a less good time with it than the people who are doing it for themselves or because they want to or because it makes them happy. I think one of my biggest issues is I've never competed because truly I've never wanted to do it for myself. My goal was to compete, to look a certain way that would get the respect of my peers and to win. And to win. Like I never truly wanted to do it to be like, okay, Karim, you're going to set a certain way that would get the respect of my peers. Um, and to win and to win, like I never truly wanted to do it to be like, okay, Kareem, you're going to set a goal. You're going to accomplish this goal. And that's it. Like I've always done it for the wrong reasons.

And even now people are like, well, why aren't you training that much? Or like, are you going to compete? I'm like, I just, I know if I did it, I'd be great. I could be like one of the best, I think like, cause of my shape. But I mean, that wouldn't make me happy. Like, because I know that I'm capable of it. It's almost like I don't need to do it because I know that if I did it, I could do it. If that makes, I don't know if that makes sense, but I never did it for the right reasons. I can never prep for the right reasons. I never prepped for myself. Well, I mean, I do think that this is kind of despite like all of the f-bombs and the interesting weird uh conversation that we've had I think that it does kind of end on yeah it's so many guys it ends on I think a good note that again you said maybe it's

cliche and maybe it's a little bit corny but there's truth to it there is absolute truth to like you're not getting out of this world alive. Do you want to spend the whole time trying to feel bad about yourself because you don't look like Kim Kardashian, or do you just want to lean into whoever you are and tear the ass out of it and enjoy it? And it seems to be working for you. So, all right. All right. That's all folks. I hope you enjoyed it. Uh, if you're going to take anything from this conversation, I think it should be that giant laps are awesome. And also to maybe just think before you comment online, maybe be a little bit more empathetic or just try to be nice, nice person online, because there's not enough of that. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it.

As I said before, make sure you are subscribed to Shrug Collectives, that you get the Muscle Maven Radio podcast every Thursday. Make sure you follow me and say hi on Instagram at the Muscle Maven so we can have a chat. We can put out better and increasingly interesting content for you. And I'll be honest, I don't actually know which podcast is going up next week. I've got interviews on deck with some CrossFit competitors, with some MMA fighters, with some boxers, lots of interesting people, but I don't know which one I'm going to give you yet. So you just have to stay tuned and subscribe. That's it. I hope you have a great week. Thank you for listening.