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Petra Browne

As seen in: The Baffler, The Believer, Believer Magazine
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Articles by Petra Browne

Brawl for All | Sean Nam

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By Petra Browne, Sean Nam, Declan Ryan
| The Baffler Verified
Sham prizefighting goes by many names these days—crossover boxing, celebrity boxing, influencer boxing—but it’s been around a long time. In the 1940s, a retired Jack Dempsey, folk hero of the Roaring Twenties, struck a path on the comeback trail by taking on a string of wrestlers. In 1975, George Foreman traveled to Toronto to flatten five tomato cans, one after the other, in a single night, in a bid to restore his confidence after Muhammad Ali had shattered it in Zaire.
Open in Who Shared Issue with article?

Humping Iron | Petra Browne

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By Petra Browne, Rafia Zakaria
| The Baffler Verified
Halfway through Ronnie Cramer’s 2001 documentary Highway Amazon, bottle blond Christine Fetzer speaks into a cordless phone. The camera is tight on her face, though by now we’ve seen over thirty minutes of her dense, sinuous body, including shots of her doing a dumbbell routine on the shoulder of a road beside bluffs of red sandstone. Even as she tours the country, she has to keep up her physique.
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How Bodybuilding's Major Federation Reins in the Size of Female Athletes

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By Petra Browne
| The Believer Verified
Years ago, when my body simply was what it was, soft and long, before I had even contemplated changing it into anything else, I came across Martin Schoeller’s Female Bodybuilders on a bookstore display table. In it were studio-lit portraits of women whose faces had been reduced to bone and socket and vein, whose skin had been stained with spray tan and eyes outlined in shadow. Enormous muscles rose up to enclose their necks. They looked prehistoric, fossilized and eternal.
Open in Who Shared Issue with article?

How Bodybuilding's Major Federation Reins in the Size of Female Athletes

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By Petra Browne, Niela Orr Verified
| Believer Magazine
Petra Browne Years ago, when my body simply was what it was, soft and long, before I had even contemplated changing it into anything else, I came across Martin Schoeller’s Female Bodybuilders on a bookstore display table. In it were studio-lit portraits of women whose faces had been reduced to bone and socket and vein, whose skin had been stained with spray tan and eyes outlined in shadow. Enormous muscles rose up to enclose their necks. They looked prehistoric, fossilized and eternal.
Open in Who Shared Issue with article?
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