Being barbell Barbie: Former cheerleader builds body and tears down stereotype

Google female bodybuilding, and the search engine will cough up about 171,000 image results. And as expected, the vast majority of those images are rigid women, with square jaws and mountains of muscles threatening to rip through their over-tanned skin like a piece of paper. Those female bodies leave little glamour to a sport that actually works to emphasize being fit and healthy.

But standing in the center of the bustling crowd at the a weight lifting competition in Columbus, Ohio, a petite blonde bombshell stands at 4’11” with perfect makeup, bleached blonde hair and beautifully tanned skin. Susan “Siouxsie” Gisselberg looks like a real-life Barbie doll fresh from its pink, shrink-wrapped box. As she clutches her cell phone, she attempts to round up several of her friends to watch her bodybuilding boyfriend, Blake Dedas, compete.

But don’t let this former cheerleader’s looks fool you. Gisselberg, who weighs around 110 pounds, can bench 25 pounds more than her own weight, squat 231 pounds, and dead-lift 242 pounds.
She is a professional female body builder.

“Those women that look like men? That’s not typical,” said Gisselberg, who graduated from UK in December 2008 with a degree in art studio. “You say female bodybuilding and you think of a square jaw and a raspy voice, and it’s not like that.”

She said a lot of women think they cannot train hard or train heavy because they worry they will get “too big.” But Gisselberg said unless you are on hard drugs like steroids, that’s not going to happen.

“It’s really sad (girls think that) because I mean, looking at me, I don’t look grotesque. I look toned and fit,” she said. “A girl will say ‘I don’t want to get too big’ and it kind of hurts my feelings because I’ve been doing this for 10 years and it’s taken me this long to get this big.”

Gisselberg has been powerlifting since her freshman year of high school, but never had a chance to compete in bodybuilding competitions because she was too busy cheerleading. After she stopped participating in college cheerleading she was left with a strong desire to compete. She decided to focus on bodybuilding, and hasn’t looked back since.

Now, she works to break the stereotypes people have about female bodybuilding through talking to people, competing and studying to become a personal trainer. But those stereotypes aren’t just about how female bodybuilders look, they’re about society’s standards for women, as well.

“You look at what they consider a fit male, and he’s got like, an eight-pack and he’s all bulky,” she said. “Then you look at the fit female, and she’ll look like she hasn’t eaten. She’s all skinny and twiggy.”
She said society misplaces the emphasis on being thin, rather than being fit or being healthy.

“Girls shouldn’t aspire to be the twiggy, big-boobie kind of person because it’s unattainable,” Gisselberg said. “We aren’t all built like that. I’m not built like that.”

To get the proper workout and achieve the best, healthiest results, Gisselberg said the Johnson Center on campus was instrumental in her desire to stay fit. She not only enjoyed being able to use the gym, but also enjoyed having access to a good personal trainer.

“I would have just been that same, 80-pound little girl eating once a day if he hadn’t told me to eat,” she said. “He told me I couldn’t just come in and grab the pink eight-pound barbells and expect to get anything done.”

And after a few years of work and having graduated, Gisselberg now trains with friends who help to keep her motivated. Her boyfriend, Dedas, who competes in men’s competitions, also helps her work toward her goals.

“A lot of times in relationships people get jealous of how much time you spend in the gym away from them,” Dedas said. “We’d be more disappointed if either one of us slacked off. (Working out together) definitely keeps us motivated.”

Dedas said that since the two spend all their time in the gym, they get along really well, and never have to ‘compromise anything.’

“You’re both going through the same stuff,” Dedas said. “We never fight or anything.”

Being a bodybuilder and spending so much time in the gym is expensive. With a gym membership costing around $40 a month, and special food and other supplements costing right around $100, it can be a costly hobby to maintain.

But for Gisselberg, it’s all worth it to be able to compete on an international level.

“I’m getting paid to do what I love to do,” she said. “It’s almost like not having a job, because you’re basically making a living off of doing something that you’d be doing anyway.”

For now, she competes in competitions, but she is also working at Starbucks and preparing to take her certification exam next month to become a professional personal trainer. She hopes to work with women in the future who are willing to push their limits, and do it for themselves.

“A lot of people are afraid of the gym because they don’t want to be judged,” she said. “You can’t worry about what people think about you. You’re doing it for yourself and not anybody else.”

Working out to look ‘awesome’

Walking down the steps into the Lexington Athletic Club, Gisselberg is easy to spot. One of the only women on the floor, she has two long chains wrapped around a heavy set of barbells. Muscles flexed, she grimaces as she lifts the heavy metal from the ground. She bends her elbows, bringing the weights to her chest, before breathing a sigh of relief as she goes to put the weight back down on the floor.

“She definitely intimidates 90 percent of the guys in the weight room because she’s lifting more weight than them,” Dedas said. “There are a lot of misconceptions of how to train women versus how to train men, but a lot of people don’t realize that women have the same muscles as men. They have to train similarly. She trains that way and has better abs than most guys out there.”

For strength, Gisselberg uses a program in which she progresses to a higher weight each week while lowering the number of repetitions she does. She works in three main categories: benching, squatting, and powerlifting.

“Powerlifting has been a huge help in my bodybuilding endeavors because with strength comes muscle,” she said.

And with that type of muscle and workouts, Gisselberg believes women can rebuild the concept of female bodybuilding – but also just look good.

“Most girls can’t bench or even squat their own body weight or do a single pull up, but those are the things that help you look awesome in a pair of skinny jeans and a halter-top — not jogging on the treadmill for an hour.”