Jozeffa Alajahji

Jozeffa Alajahji

Before she had ever even seen a picture of a real-life female bodybuilder, Jozeffa Alajahji wanted to look like a cartoon. Growing up in Sweden, she had seen images of larger-than-life women with huge muscles and tiny waists – and loved how big and strong they looked. “I thought they looked amazing and I wanted to be just like that,” she says.

Jozeffa was born in Syria and moved to Sweden with her parents when she was a baby. As a child she was very athletic and competed as a swimmer (which she says is why her lats “pop a little”). At the age of 14, she began working out in a gym in order to get stronger for swimming. But she quickly fell in love with training and the gym became an end in itself. Her body began to change and after a year she says she was “completely hooked”. She competed in figure for the first time when she was 18.

At 22, Jozeffa took two years off competing and grow so she could move up to women’s bodybuilding. “I had always wanted to do women’s bodybuilding, but never dared to make the switch until I realized it was time,” she says. It was only after she won her first show as a female bodybuilder – the European championship in Alicante, Spain, in 2021 – that she felt sure she was big enough. A few months later she turned pro by winning the NPC Worldwide Amateur Olympia in Italy.

Still only 26 years old, Jozeffa now lives in Spain. At 5-foot-7 and at around 194 pounds in the offseason and around 165 onstage at her last show, she is working on adding size and increasing muscle maturity to be competitive at the pro level. But when she thinks of her ideal physique, she still thinks of those images that first inspired her. “It always comes back to the cartoons!” she says. “I want that crazy X shape!”

Contest history:
–       2021 European Championship, women’s bodybuilding, 1st
–       2021 NPC Worldwide Amateur Olympia, women’s bodybuilding, 1st