Women Who Shoulder Animals.

Woman and Bull

 Woman Carrying A Bull by Vladimir Fokanov

I like this image a lot — the wonderful cognitive dissonance between the nude female and the impossible weight of the bull carried so easily on her shoulder. She is not alone you know — there are quite a few such images of women with animals hefted on their shoulders. And I find them all compelling…still trying to figure out what it is that pleases me so. In the meantime…I'll just leave her here engaged in her task and figure she and the bull will find a future place in the writing.

Please visit Vladimir Fokanov's Flickr account to see more of his work. 

9 thoughts on “Women Who Shoulder Animals.”

  1. What??! This is ridiculously awesome. I adore this! Why I do is a mystery to me also but I’m off to find more women carrying impossibly heavy animals… Thank you for this!

  2. Phyllis Holliday

    What a wonderful collection of strong women! I admired all of them on your
    Pinterest site. Every one with a different story.

  3. Thanks Phyllis — I am working very hard right now to get and keep a level of strength and fitness — I love Olympic weight lifting, Crossfit, and shotokan karate. It’s a gift at almost 60 to still be able to do pullups, lift heavy weight from the ground to over head…and handstands. So I am inspired often by remarkable women from the past and current athletes who show the way to an aging that still is powerful and supple. Diana Nyad — the premier long distance open water swimmer I have admired years has at 64 years of age completed a goal she could not do 35 years earlier — a 110 mile ocean swim between the Florida Keys and Cuba. How awesome is that?

  4. It is wonderful, isn’t it? I realize now too the image is also a female version of the story of Milo of Croton, a Greek Olympian from the 6th century B.C. who was famous for having He was said to have carried a bull on his shoulder. He achieved the feat of lifting the bull by starting in childhood, lifting and carrying a newborn calf and repeating the feat daily until the bull and Milo grew to maturity.

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