REVIEW OF DWW EU-20 by Tomboy tomboymbmw@aol.com Schoolgirl vs. Schoolboy Armwrestling Please address all comments, constructive suggestions and civilized requests to tomboymbmw@aol.com ARMWRESTLING Back in their schooldays, some guys may have armwrestled a girl or two who proved to be stronger than they were, or may have heard about an exceptional girl who was stronger than most of the boys. But is the average girl a match for, or maybe even stronger than, the average boy? Most guys figured they would never know the answer to that question, because it would take something like an organized armwrestling tournament between boys and girls to settle the issue, and that was never likely to happen, right? Wrong! Two years ago, Danube Women Wrestling (DWW) released a video of an organized armwrestling and legwrestling tournament between a group of about 40 girls and boys. The scene was a school gymnasium in Budapest, Hungary. The contestants were mostly 11 and 12 years old, although the group included a couple of nine-year-olds, a couple of 13- year-olds and a few 10-year-olds as well. It should be noted that although DWW has a well-earned reputation for producing erotic and exciting videos featuring nude and topless wrestling between adult contestants, this tape is not in that category. Rather, like all of DWW's videos involving young contestants, the tape is part of its "EU" series, which features pure sports competition and is totally "G-Rated." Indeed, about a half-dozen of the contestants' parents, as well as their teachers, were in the audience when this tape was recorded. The video is totally suitable for family viewing, and you might even want to show it to your preteen daughters for inspiration, or to your preteen sons to correct any misguided male chauvinist notions that girls are "the weaker sex." The fact is, that at least among this group of kids, the girls proved pretty convincingly that the boys were the weaker sex. Out of 25 armwrestling matches between boys and girls, the girls won 15 and the boys won only 10, a 3-2 ratio. In legwrestling, the result was even more lopsided in favor of the girls, who won 9 out of 13 mixed matches, more than two-thirds of the bouts. For the armwrestling competition, the contestants stood at a high table, which had a post for each contestant to grip. They started off using right hands, and if nobody won within a minute, they switched to left hands. The rivalry between the boys and girls was pretty intense, with cheers coming from the girls' section whenever a girl won. The girls were definitely out to prove a point, and they weren't holding back, nor were the boys. Among the more interesting bouts was one in which a 10-year- old girl named Anna faced a 12-year-old male opponent, in a match that lasted almost a full minute. You could see the strain building in the boy's face as the younger girl confidently held her ground, and then very slowly began to force his arm down. He desperately resisted with everything he had, but it wasn't enough. The 10-year-old girl proved to be the stronger, and she eventually forced the older boy's hand to the table. At that point, either from utter exhaustion or total humiliation, the boy simply fell over backwards, dragging the table down on top of him! The star girls, however, were two cute 12-year-olds, the dark-haired Lilla and the light brown-haired Xenia. Both of these girls were trim and slightly on the slender side, but very strong. Except for one 13-year-old, they defeated all the boys who went up against them, sometimes with amazing ease. The best matches, though, were the ones that they had with the same boy, a relatively strong 12-year-old named Marion who was around their height and weight. Lilla was the first to have a bout with Marion. The girl dominated the contest throughout, and the boy was simply no match for her. Although he struggled hard, he never had the advantage. As her slender bicep swelled with the intense effort, she slowly forced his arm down to the table. Within half a minute or so, Marion had succumbed to her superior strength, and his hand was pressed firmly to the table. A little later, Marion went up against Xenia, and that match was far more dramatic. These two 12-year-olds seemed evenly matched. For almost half a minute, their arms were about even. Then the boy began to force the girl's hand down, further and further, and it looked like he was going to win. His face was red with the effort, while hers was calmer, as if she were focusing her mental strength and concentration. Finally, he had forced her hand to a mere two inches above the table, and it looked like the victory was his. But then, with incredible strength and willpower, she held him there! For perhaps the next 15 seconds, he tried with all his might to force her hand down those last two inches, but to no avail. She continued to hold him, obviously trying to run out the clock. Finally, the first minute elapsed, and she was saved by the bell. Under the rules, they would now resume the contest with their left arms. Anxious to begin, Xenia immediately put her left arm up, while Marion pounded his right hand against the table to restore the circulation to his numbed fingers. Then he put his left arm up against Xenia's, and the contest resumed. For about the next 30 seconds, he tried with everything he had to force her arm from the upright position, but she steadily held her ground. His face got redder and redder from the all-out effort, while a confident smile began to appear on the girl's face. Finally, when it was clear that she had successfully withstood the best he had to give, she began to turn on the power. Marion resisted, but the worried look on his face showed that this time he wasn't very sure of his ability to match the girl. Finally, when she had drained enough of the boy's strength to be confident of the outcome, Xenia gave it everything she had,and started forcing Marion's hand to the table. Although the girl had been able to hold off the boy and "save the day" when her right hand had been forced close to the table, the boy did not have the power to duplicate that feat when the tables were turned. His hand went down to the table and the match was over. After almost two full minutes of hard-fought struggle, the girl had finally conquered her male opponent, to the cheers of all the girls there. The boy walked away from the table with his head bowed and his arms clasped around him, his body language visibly proclaiming his defeat. In the end, though, the armwrestling tournament was won by a 13-year-old boy, who was appreciably stronger than the younger Lilla and Xenia. As he walked away from the table after the final bout, he threw up his hands in a gesture of victory, and received congratulations from the other boys. And congratulations were certainly in order. Had it not been for this boy's victory, the boys would have been utterly routed by the girls. And even so, no boy their own age had proved a match for the preteen Lilla or Xenia, or for several of the other girls as well. LEGWRESTLING Next came the legwrestling tournament. The contestants sat opposite each other on short wooden benches, close apart. One contestant would place his or her knees outside the knees of the other, and then try to squeeze the other's knees together. If the other could resist for a full minute, then the other won. If not, the positions were reversed, and the one who lost the first round could still win the bout if he or she pressed the opponent's knees together in a shorter amount of time. It was a test mostly of inner thigh strength, and in this the girls were clearly superior. As mentioned, the girls won more than two-thirds of the mixed contests. In one of the first of these contests, the 13-year-old boy who won the armwrestling tournament was defeated by the 12-year-old Xenia, and he lost to her again in a final bout towards the end of the tournament. Also, each of the 10-year-old girls defeated a 12-year-old boy. But the best match was between the little blonde 10-year-old Helga and a bigger 11-year-old boy. Like the armwrestling match between Xenia and Marion, this match too went the full distance, and was a test of the contestants' grit and willpower. Trying to press the older boy's knees together, Helga put all of her power into it. You could see her face become beet-red with the effort, and the muscle on the inside of her thigh was standing out from the strain. Had she failed to press the boy's knees together within a minute she would have lost. But finally, just as the clock was about to run out, she managed to get them to touch, so now it was his turn to reverse positions and try to beat her time. For about 40 seconds the older boy tried his best to press the 10-year-old's knees together, but she resisted with all her strength, and he just didn't have the power to do it. Then, as she sensed that she was going to win, she started talking to the boy, and although I don't speak Hungarian, her tone suggested that she was taunting him. Finally, the older boy put forth an all-out effort, with his face likewise becoming red from the strain. But it wasn't enough. The girl's legpower proved too much for him, and as she was declared the winner, she jumped up with a little cry of delight at her victory, and pranced off to receive congratulations from the girls and sit on her proud father's lap. The legwrestling tournament ended with a total victory for the girls, who won all the top places, soundly defeating all the boys. In armwrestling, they had bested all of the boys but one. What this tournament seems to prove, then, is that on average, preteen girls are superior to boys in both upper and lower body strength. Of course, it would be interesting to see if this result holds true with other groups in similar tournaments, and with older groups of competitors. At first, the belief held by many was that boys are superior to girls at all ages. Now that this belief has been shattered as to preteens, the next level of the belief seems to be that boys are definitely stronger when they reach 14 or 15. Perhaps a teenage mixed armwrestling and legwrestling tournament will demonstrate that this too is a myth. Times are changing. Girls no longer feel they have to "let the boys win," and they're willing to compete all out against the boys. And as girls adopt this more competitive mental attitude, and accompany that with strength training and participation in competitive sports, they may well find that this video is not an anomaly, and that the average teenage girl can at least equal, and conceivably even surpass, the average teenage boy in strength. And this may even hold true for adult women as well. The test is in the tournament. Meanwhile, getting back to this video, is EU-20 recommended? If you like to watch massively-muscled female bodybuilders armwrestle each other, or defeat guys in staged armwrestling matches, then don't bother with this tape. These are just ordinary kids having fun in a real contest,and bulging biceps are nowehere to be found. On the other hand, if you're curious to see perhaps the only video in existence of authentic organized armwrestling competition between boys and girls, then this tape might be worth ordering. Because the tournament involved a sufficiently large and randomly selected group of kids, the result sends an interesting message on the issue of assumed gender superiority, both to people at large and to parents and their kids. Girls might seriously benefit from watching this tape, in terms of improving their self-image and appreciating their potential. And boys might benefit too, in that the outcome of this video definitely erodes the foundation on which boys tend to erect their mistaken notion of male superiority. To order the video, and to find out information about prices and how to place an order, you can contact DWW's website, which is: http://members.magnet.at/users/wrestle.dww/ I have no connection with DWW, but have found them to be reputable and reliable, although sometimes just a trifle behind schedule in shipping orders when they're backlogged, which is probably a testimonial to their popularity. Incidentally, some of the same "average girls" who participated in the armwrestling tournament also participated a year later in a wrestling tournament against "average boys," with similarly interesting results. A review of the video of that tournament, DWW EU-25, will be coming soon.