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When I was reading comics as a kid, bodybuilders were considered somewhat on the freakish side. There were competitions, like Mr. Universe, but they did not have the same kind of following the beauty pageants like Miss America had. And the beauty pageants were, of course, about "beauty", whatever the standard happened to be at the time, not about body building. Muscles were the last thing the judges (and audience) wanted to see in the swimsuit competition.

Superheroes tended to be drawn in a manner that suited their abilities. The Flash was lean like a runner, Namor was built like an Olymic swimmer, and the strong guys, like Superman, tended to take as their models not body builders but the circus strongmen of yore. And those guys tended to be slab-like, some even fat. Superman's torso was more cylindrical than "hourglass" shaped.

As bodybuilding moved in from the fringes -- in no small part due to the success of PUMPING IRON -- more and more artists began using body builders as their "models". Only the guys, at first. It took even longer from female body builders to get acceptance. (Wonder Woman had been the exception. Harry Peters had drawn her quite muscular, and she'd actually lost definition over the years.)