Mary Roberts

Who is Mary Roberts?

Mary Roberts was one of the top professional female bodybuilders of the 1980s. She possessed a classic short, thick physique featuring an overwhelming upper body even as a lightweight. Roberts big arms, deltoids and chest with her mature looks and flashing, almost challenging dark eyes projected a very powerful, confident aura onstage.

A three-page photospread in Muscle & Fitness magazine's September 1982 issue on various female bodybuilder physique types used Roberts, doing a side chest pose in a blue leotard, to epitomize the most heavily muscled physique. The copy quoted famed male bodybuilder Casey Viator as calling Roberts physique "awesome." In its advance story on the 1984 Ms. Olympia, Strength Training for Beauty noted that the 1984 Worlds turned into a contest between the "hypermuscular" women such as Roberts and winner Lori Bowen and the more middle-of-the-road women such as 1983 Ms. Olympia Carla Dunlap. Bowen's and Roberts' placings were seen as a sign that size would be rewarded by women's bodybuilding judging more than it had been in the sport's infant years. When the 1984 Ms.