Beverley "Bev" Francis (born 15 February 1955) is an Australian gym owner and retired professional bodybuilder, powerlifter, and national shot put champion.

[4][6][7][9] After becoming the first woman to bench press over 300 lb (140 kg), a picture of Francis striking a most muscular pose, or "the crab", while wearing a bikini appeared in several bodybuilding magazines around the world.

Her powerlifting accolade led to her being invited by producer George Butler to take part in the film Pumping Iron II: The Women, which was being shot around the Cesar's World Cup being held in Las Vegas in December 1983.

[4][1] Disappointed with the results, she attempted to reinvent her physique along the lines of what was being rewarded, especially after hearing that she was "too muscular" for the judges' tastes.

[1] At the prejudging, Francis walked out with 160 lb (73 kg) of dense and conditioned muscles stacked on her 5 ft 5 in (1.65 m) frame.

On the second night, just before the start of the final two rounds, ESPN (in an unprecedented move for professional bodybuilding) flashed up the half-time scores for their national audience and those inside the Shrine Auditorium to see Francis in the lead.

Since the posing rounds had never been recognised as opportunities for a lagging competitor to come from behind, most insiders, including Francis herself, predicted that she only had to avoid falling over to take the title.

Francis's hand rose halfway to her face in shock before she regained her composure, smiled, and congratulated Murray.

The audience and commentators were thrown off by this result, since Francis was in the lead after the first two (more contentious) rounds, only to be overtaken somehow in the concluding set.

It was usually suggested that the IFBB and ESPN leadership did not want a woman carrying more muscle mass than most middleweight men to be recognised as the planet's premier female bodybuilder, and instructed the judges to swing the contest in Murray's favor.

[11] A few months later, the IFBB issued a new policy announcement warning that excessive overt muscularity would be marked down, sparking persistent debate over the subjective criteria and "how much is too much".

[1]Francis and her career played a significant role in the concurrent turmoil over ideals of form (especially regarding muscle mass) and judging criteria for female bodybuilders, which often relied on vague, contentious, and shifting notions of a "feminine" figure.

[13][14] Her 1983 debut in the made-for-film Cesar's World Cup received much attention for potentially pushing the sport in a more muscular direction.

[14] However, when she placed 8th, her loss led her to spend years changing her look in an attempt to meet the apparent ideal preferred by the judges.

[1] Despite years of attempting to achieve higher scores on the femininity aspect of the contests with measures including a nose job, hair bleaching, and slimming down her physique by losing muscle, Francis still failed to take first place at the major competitions.

However, after successfully developing methods of achieving a more symmetrical physique while maintaining the size built from her powerlifting background (the three power lifts are central to bodybuilding, and bodybuilders with backgrounds as champion powerlifters tend to have tremendous size and density for their frames), she won the World Championship in 1987.

There, she was criticised as not having the fullness or muscularity compared to winner Lenda Murray, and subsequently worked on becoming as massive and symmetrical as possible for the 1991 Olympia.

[1] Marcia Pally, in a 1985 article on the film Pumping Iron II: The Women, had reported that people often thought of Francis as lesbian.