Female trouble: the most positive force in the global bodybuilding community just may be its women. Too bad they aren't treated that way

Consider this exchange between magazine editors in the offices of Weider Publications. Editor 1: "Who killed women's bodybuilding?"

Editor 2: "Women bodybuilders." Although this snide conversational snippet shows a condescending and dismissive attitude toward its subject, what's fascinating about this putdown of women's bodybuilding is the year it took place: 1993. The editors quoted anonymously above no longer work for Weider and are out of the sport altogether. Women's bodybuilding, on the other hand, is still very much with us. Despite dwindling opportunities for IFBB professional women bodybuilders onstage and in print, the numbers of female competitors at the NPC level remain consistently strong. In 2002, 56 women bodybuilders competed n the NPC USA Championships, 18 more than the number of USA it ness competitors.

Not that the doomsayers of the port haven't had reason to call in Dr. Kevorkian to finish it off.

In 1999, the Ms. Olympia, the sport's premier contest, was suddenly canceled, then hastily resurrected two weeks later in New Jersey. The crisis hastened the retirement of four-time Ms. Olympia Kim Chizevsky, perhaps the greatest female bodybuilder of all time. Chizevsky, as fans of the sport know, switched to fitness and, now, figure contests.

This near-death experience prompted the IFBB to implement drastic changes to all professional women's bodybuilding shows. Beginning in 2000, all contests would be required to feature weight classes, and the Ms. Olympia was to be bundled in with the Olympia Weekend to avoid it withering on the vine alone. More tellingly, new guidelines for athlete presentation were introduced, including attention to makeup, hair and other aesthetic considerations thought to be traditionally feminine.

Three years later, not much has changed. Predictions of the extinction of women's bodybuilding are still more common than Elvis sightings. Why? It's not that women aren't good at bodybuilding. In fact, the subtext of much of the criticism of women bodybuilders is that they're too good at it--too hard, too big, too vascular. The implied recommendation to increase the popularity of women's bodybuilding is to persuade the women to stop being excellent bodybuilders and start being mediocre bodybuilders.

Not all of them are complying. That many of these women continue to achieve physique excellence is beyond dispute. For instance, at the 2002 USA Championships, FLEX Editor-in-Chief Peter McGough, a hard-to-impress physique analyst with decades of experience, marveled at the muscle quality of long-time NPC competitor Annie Rivieccio, who finished fifth in the heavyweights. "You don't see that quality in many of the men," he remarked.

Women have distinguished themselves from their male counterparts in other ways. You don't see women bodybuilders filled with Synthol, rushed to hospitals after contests, and walking around with their limbs in casts and slings because their egos got in the way of their training. You don't regularly see women bodybuilders doubled over onstage from exhaustion and dehydration, or hear about them being involved in embarrassing altercations, getting arrested, or throwing temper tantrums after every contest--although few would blame them if they did. Many female bodybuilders are highly educated multidegreed professionals who spend long hours fighting with weights in the gym and fighting long-established societal prejudices outside of it. They're solid citizens and exceptional athletes who persevere despite meager prize winnings and constantly evolving judging standards that seem to change on the whims of officials. And then there are the nasty personal insults they endure from the general public and, sadly, even fro m those in their own bodybuilding subculture.

Why do they do this again?

THE DARWIN FACTOR Female bodybuilders have borne the brunt of the inherent gender struggle that affects the acceptance of women as athletes. While still trailing their male counterparts in popularity and rewards, female athletes in general are taken more seriously than ever before, but female bodybuilders seem to be going in the other direction, finding it difficult to assimilate even into the bodybuilding subculture from which they were born. This fact has been blamed on everything from inadequate media attention to mismanagement of the sport, but maybe it's something more primal.

On one level, women's bodybuilding appears to violate Darwinian imperatives of our hardwired sex roles, while also allowing for the evolution of the human animal to transcend culturally defined preordained destinies. Women's bodybuilding is a progressive cultural movement that defies long-held conventions and traditions. While many people accept the existence of women bodybuilders--i.e., society at large is used to seeing them--the sport still has its sworn enemies. Depending on your point of view, women's bodybuilding is either a step forward in human potential or an insult to nature.