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. The reasons for this have 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 hard-wired 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. All bodybuilders can elicit strong visceral reactions in the general public, but none more so than the female bodybuilder. While the general acceptance level for muscle on women has changed dramatically in entertainment and sports over the years, a hyper-developed muscular woman can still conjure awe, intimidation, resentment, fear, envy, as well as complicated and powerful sexual responses, especially in men. This confrontation with unwanted feelings can induce irrational hatred, sometimes even within the bodybuilding world itself (see "Women Between the Covers").

Appreciating a muscular physique on a man or a woman makes you a person who appreciates a muscular physique on a man or a woman and nothing else. All other assumptions are irrelevant in the context of the sport of bodybuilding. The phrase "get over it" comes to mind.YES, BUT IS SHE CUTE? For whatever reason - those Darwinian imperatives again? - no female athlete can escape being sexualized or to have her personal appearance become the dominant factor in her perceived worthiness. When the WNBA began their first season, popular sports radio jock Jim Rome regularly insulted the physical appearance of some of the league's professional female basketball players, calling one star in particular a "horse." It was a cheap shot, one out of step with treating women as athletes, much less as equals, and Rome later said he regretted making the comments.

Some of us do have the ability to grow up, thank goodness. Of course, female bodybuilders endure the same harsh scrutiny for their looks, regardless of their physique achievements. Just check out some bodybuilding bulletin boards and see how nasty the appraisals can get. Yet, inversely, at the same time a different audience eroticizes women bodybuilders solely for their physiques - as a urgeoning underground muscle fetish industry proves. But does this industry exist because women bodybuilders are being pushed beyond the fringes of their own subculture into this underground? Their options and opportunities in the bodybuilding mainstream seem to expire by the day. It is an odd world, this underground, much of it centered on the Internet. There, men treat muscular women like mythic goddesses, putting them in a virtual glass diorama where they can be ogled and worshipped indefinitely. It is the polar opposite of the rejection women bodybuilders often experience from the general public and the very subculture they chose to join. It's understandable that a woman would gravitate to this world where acceptance and other rewards are found. In the end, though, they are caught in yet another paradox: they have become bodybuilders to attain autonomy and self-empowerment, but then find themselves in another situation where they are disempowered, throttled by the conflicting messages of intense desire and rejection.

Yet there they are. Still onstage, still in the gym. After over two decades of different measures of praise, derision, respect, disrespect and neglect. Through the continuing tumult and instability of the sport, they return to the weights to prepare for the next show. Why do these women become bodybuilders, anyway? What keeps them going? NEVER SAY DIE Lynchburg, Virginia, may not seem the ideal U.S. city to gauge the health of a progressive cultural movement, but the small Southern city is now the permanent home of the Jan Tana Pro Classic. This contest, which exists solely due to the beneficence of its founder and promoter Jan Tana, is an annual bodybuilding show that now also features a professional fitness contest and the Masters Olympia. This year, the group of contests was held on August 17. It was the 15th anniversary of Jan Tana bodybuilding show, which, according to the IFBB, has yet to turn a profit.

Tana is a successful makeup and tanning mogul, a tireless businesswoman and an innovator in her industry. She's also extremely passionate about the sport of bodybuilding. Known for her dramatic, glitzy stage productions, Tana dropped the theatrics this year, instead ceding the time to competitors that she would normally reserve for other entertainment. She allowed each show's entrant, not just the top 15 as is customary, to perform his or her entire posing routine. Between the three contests, that came to 61 routines. A total of 23 women bodybuilders competed in three weight classes. As usual, the women, like the men, came in all shapes and sizes. The level of attention to "feminine" accoutrements spanned the extremes: Some of the women were particularly fastidious about following the perceived rule changes of 2000, others seemed to ignore them entirely. Every women posed enthusiastically, though some more artfully than others. Here was a contest that didn't make money, populated with women bodybuilders who have endured a series of jolts to their sport that would have discouraged lesser spirits. Obviously, they aren't there for the money, the fame, the verdant fields of Lynchburg, lovely as they are. So what's left?

The love of the sport itself. The same passion for bodybuilding that drove Dave Draper to spend hours in a reeking dungeon in the '60s. The same love of the pump that Arnold Schwarzenegger craved throughout his career. The same intense desire for testing personal limits that powered Dorian Yates' brutal, solitary workouts. The same hunger for self-improvement and empowerment that lifting weights and growing muscle have provided for millions of men. The same determination for self-mastery that Joe Weider has preached for over six decades. Many top male athletes are in the sport solely for the financial rewards: the endorsement contracts, the generous prize winnings and personal appearance fees - opportunities not available to women bodybuilders. Yet, despite this lack of material benefits, the women work as hard as the men, achieving a physique standard comparable to their male counterparts. What motivates these women is the pure joy of the sport.

They've discovered the life-changing properties of bodybuilding and there's no turning back. If women's bodybuilding could die, it would have by now. Some thought it would fade of its own accord. It didn't. Some thought fitness contests would kill it. They didn't. Some think figure contests will finish off women's bodybuilding. They won't. Women's bodybuilding is here to stay for the same reason men's bodybuilding is here to stay: because of the basic, pure passion all bodybuilders have for their sport. Women have caught the bodybuilding bug, and they love it. They've more than earned the respect of the bodybuilding world. It's time they got it.