Carla Temple: Chocolate-covered mint patties

and red wine get her all carbed up and vascular.

Right: Jackie Roos, Jose Baumgartner, Gladys
Portugues, Marjo Selin, mighty Mary Roberts.

If you want to build the kind

of body that onLy men buiLt
before, you'd better hope your
parents bLended the right kind of
chromosomes. CarLa TempLe's
did. ALLshe had to do was work
at itjust Likethe guys do.
On May 6 in Toronto it paid off
and CarLaput herself within
range of the big one.

ACUT
e're talkinggams here, sailor. AtToronto's Skyline Hotel, site ofthe 1984 International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB) Women's World Professional
Bodybuilding Championship, the eyeballs and flashbulbs are popping atlegs
that leave the Betty Grable ideals of the 1930s far behind. Traipsing around
the lobby, posing for photographers,
18 contestants sport calves that erupt
with muscles like Rubik's cubes under nylons, and then ascend to thighs
plated with thick, tanned flesh bulging like surgically implanted clutch purses.
No illusion created by Gucci spiked heels, these symmetrical
swellings manifest
thousands of hours agonizing under weights at gymnasiums in preparation for tomorrow,
~ay 6, 1984, when hundreds of gaga fans will howl for their favorite to stand at day's end
among the five finalists.
Many ofthe fans have had reservations at the Skyline for a month. They forked out $75
for VIP seating and access to the backstage hospitality suite, and now they skitter about
the lobby and enclosed shopping mall hawk-eyeing every woman with an excessive suntan.
Carrying expensive cameras, autograph books and favorite copies oftheir bible, Muscle
& Fitness magazine, the fans cruise the hallways for their idols. They proffer for signatures
glossy 8x IOs, purchased through various mail-order outlets; friends snap them grinning deliriously beside their heroines. Unmindful of personal space, they squeeze biceps, gawk
blatantly down blouses to inspect pectorals and moan critiques of body parts: "Mama,
those calves are deadly !"
Female aficionados seem less intimidated by the bodybuilders'
huge boyfriends/husands. Yes, some devotees are lesbians, and the flips ide is also true: some male enthusiasts
are Milquetoasts or beergutters who would have an aneurysm if they came face-to-face
wi th a barbell.
They can list career highlights and vital statistics like baseball-card collectors. And they
know the best hangouts to catch the buzz: open restaurants, because the competitors like
to be seen; no-smoking sections near the salad bar for those still furiously dieting, pasta

Pump Priming: Mike Hamill readies Carlafor her 17opponents; she will later beat 12. Muscle czar Ben Weider is "categorically against women
developing muscles, through the use of steroids or other drugs, that develop them way out of proportion of what a normal woman would be."

restaurants the night before a contest,

when competitors load carbohydrates
tarches) to give their muscles that extra
"pump" (added muscle dimension) on the
morrow.
The fans ponder the absence of Rachel
1IcLish, the sport's most high-profile
bampion, seen in Playboy modeling bai.hing suits and in Diet Pepsi commercials
eUing a sweaty Lee Majors to "Suck it
in. " They babble about Californian Mary
Roberts's pre-contest reclusiveness and
newcomer Kris Alexander's surprising
fifth-place finish in Vegas among the
heavyweights at the Caesar's Cup, filmed
for George Butler's new movie, Pumping
Iron 11: The Women. They chatter about
the chances of the newest Olympian, Vancouver's Carla Temple, who at 23 enters
her first professional contest tomorrow.

Junior Mlnt:sAnd

Chronlosonles

Pstairsin the Skyline, Carla Temple

is still a bit groggy after sleeping off
the late-night flightfrom Vancouver.
Wearing a yellow off-the-shoulder
-weatshirt and baggy, gray-fleece track
pan , she laughs at the interviewer's dismay about her wakening snack: chocolate-covered mint patties washed down

with red wine. It seems the candy is a

dandy source of carbohydrate; the red
wine brings out desired vascularity and
acts as a diuretic to remove retained water
between the muscle and the skin. If you
want to win, the muscles have got to show.
While an average in-shape woman carries perhaps 20 percent body fat, bodybuilders carry around 12 percent, dropping to six percent for a contest. But because it takes 36 hours for food to turn to
visible fat, the dieting is mostly over.
The arduous workouts are also concluded for the moment: Temple ceased
hefting weights three days previously. "If
you get too pumped, you don't have cuts
(the articulations between the muscles).
Posing brings out your cuts. If you give
your muscles time to separate, then when
you carb up and pump up at the contest,
your muscles go pshwooosh (translates as:
get real big).
Temple's parents combined the right
chromosomes. Even when she was a waitress at Gastown's Town Pump, few patrons would comment on her beauty without noting the dramatic tapering from the
wide shoulders to the slim hips. When
Mike Hamill, a competitive bodybuilder
and owner of the Olympic Gym, cast an
appraising eye over the goods as they

stood in late 1980, he persuaded her to

commence training. Then he persuaded
her to commence being his ladyfriend and
his gym's publicity rep.
Temple could now devote herself to the
gym. The 90-minute workouts four days
per week and six-mile runs on her days off
put her in competition shape within 18
months. She won the middleweight
Okanagan Novice Bodybuilding title, the
B.C. Championship with a perfect score
and the Western Canadian Championship.
After a year of media profiles, ad campaigns and a weekly fitness segment on
CKVU's Vancouver show (notable for a
scarcely tasteful crotch-focus intro), she
bagged the Canadian title.
The blitz abated in London, England, on
October I last year when Carla, in the best
competition shape of her career, managed
only a fifth place in the World Amateur
Championship's middleweight division.
Lying on her bed at the Skyline, popping
some more Junior Mints, Temple munches
and muses. ''The last contest discouraged
me in a way. As far as I can see, there is no
criteria in women's bodybuilding. I don't
want to kid myself and think I'm going to
win (tomorrow) even though I compete to
win. It's so hard to feel that it's a fair game
out there."

Prime Pumping: Winner-to-be Lori Bowen-Rice is backed by Dr. Lynn Pirie, Dinah L. Anderson and (in blue) Finnish bodybuilder Marjo
Selin whose body type and style is most like Carla Temple's. Fans who have paidjor VIP tickets have access to the "pump room," and use it.

Kay Bax~er Gives

The World

'~To

he aesthetic ambiguity plaguing

the sport is massively exemplified
in Australian Bev Frances, the
world powerlifting champion who
dropped 40 pounds and entered competitive bodybuilding. Frances is featured in
Pumping Ironll:The Women, her inclusion
calculated to show the movement's radical
fringe. Although not entered in tomorrow's contest, she is in attendance and
fans point her out and snigger at every opportunity. With no breasts, hulking shoulders, an unattractive face without any
makeup and a drab shag haircut, there is
virtually no way to discern her from aman.
As she walked through the concourses
hand-in-hand with her boyfriend, uninitiates would gawk and point: "Lookit
dem queers. " Speculation is rife regarding
their sex life. Yet she has undeniably developed her muscle more than any other
female bodybuilder, more than most male
competitors. If muscles were the only
criterion, she would walk away with every
title.
"She is the masculine type of woman's
bodybuilder whose physique we don't accept," says Ben Weider. Weider is the head

honcho; in 1946, along with brother Joe,

he founded the IFBB, of which he is world
president.
Bro Joe, 61,is the big businessman heading the magazines Flex, Shape (890,000
copies) and Muscle & Fitness, whose
1,700,000 readers make it America's fifthlargest exported magazine. Joe also oversees the business of muscle-building products from his Xanadu in Woodland Hills,
California; Ben prefers to administrate
from Montreal where the brothers grew
up.

Surrounded by the maelstrom of jittering competitors and pursuing fans in the

lobby of the Skyline, Ben Weider wore a
blue blazer and matching IFBB tie, which
was embroidered with a golden bodybuilder surrounded by a green wreath.
A fit, graying 59, he defended Weider
(and hence IFBB) principles. "We are
categorically against women developing
muscles, through the use of steroids or
other drugs, that develop them way out of
proportion of what a normal woman
would be. The most important aspect of
muscularity is shape. What kind of shape?
The ideal feminine physique. And if she
(the athlete) is in favor of having a woman
develop massive muscularity of the malephysique type-well, she's just not on the

same wavelength as us. Everybody would

be turned off; you'd have no movement at
all."
Kay Baxter, who bills herself as "the
most controversial physique in women's
bodybuilding," is one of the "ultimate
muscularity" bodybuilders and a populist
fave (World's Best Female Bodybuilder in
Women's Physique magazine's poll for
three years running). Unlike Frances,
though, Baxter is 99 percent radiant sensual woman.
Lying on her Skyline bed, swathed in
the wires and straps of an "electro-muscle
stimulator" (direct current causes involuntary muscle contractions, enhancing "cuts "), Baxter, 38, is nothing short of
awesome. Everything about her is large,
from her thighs and shoulders to her calm
blue eyes and happy wide mouth. Underneath the wiring, her skimpy turquoise
Danskin and black-net tank top accentuate imposing tan breasts-that not entirely natural one percent you were wondering about.
"They would like me to go away," says
Baxter of the IFBB judges. "I believe in
ultimate bodybuilding, that that is the only
way it can be a sport. And the people who
control the sport right now feel that (it
should be) sort of a body shaping ... "

Oilers: Fans have been eyeing every woman in sight with a serious suntan. Now comes the glisten of oil to reflect each nuance of muscular
definition straight at thejudges. Those with husbands or boyfriends are anointed reverentially by them, while those without help each other.
(The current ideal is shapely Rachel
:\IcLish. The IFBB promo material says
explicitly, Muscular development must not
be carried to excess where it resembles the
massive muscularity of the male physique.

If you turn people off, you sell a lot less

'eider products.)
. Whoever is the biggest in this contest
omorrow is going to get points taken off.
_-\.odit's probably going to be me," Baxter
says, with an off-handed shrug. "The
IFBB controls all the women's pro cone ts. And Weider is too big ofa monopoly
o buck. So Ijust show up at these places
d make a statement. Let the public
ow what's going on.
.'Another reason why I do it, is because
I can. It's a genetic gift ... And just bee the IFBB doesn't like my gift, that
oesn't mean I shouldn't still give it to the
'orld," says Baxter, with a huge grin and
a y tan ripple.

a~ O~her Carla
axter says the sleek "Barbie Doll"
look will win tomorrow. When this
information is trundled up the elevator back to our hometown girl's
:oom. Carla Temple unleashes one of her
Cazzling Pepsodent smiles. "Well, lucky
- me then, because I think I'm a Barbie

B
I

Doll," laughs Temple, pouring a glass of

vino.
Slipping away from the sundry secretaries, go-fers and hangers-on that glom
onto him whenever he appears in the
Skyline's concourses, Ben Weider thumbs
through color photos of Our Miss Temple.
"She's got it all," he says with a knowing nod. "She's pretty. She has a beautiful
all-round symmetrical physique. She's got
the muscles and she's feminine and that's
what we want. So she stands a very good
chance."
The bodybuilder to beat, though, is
"that other Carla." Carla Dunlap is a
black, 29-year-old native of Newark, New
Jersey, undefeated since October, 1982,
who last year captured the three top titles:
the 1983World's, the Ms. Olympia and the
Caesar's World Cup, where she even defeated Rachel McLish. If she takes it tomorrow she would be the first two-time
world's champion.
Rumors have filtered back to "our
Carla" that when Steve Wennerstrom,
editor of Women's Physique World, showed
Dunlap some pictures of her Vancouver
namesake, Dunlap speculated on early retirement. Future champions, Dunlap said,
would come out of the same "genetic pool
as Carla Temple from Vancouver. "
Dunlap sits poolside in a mauve velour

warm-up suit. "She has a beautiful

physique," she groans appreciatively as
she leafs through a Temple article in Muscle Canada. "She has a very good chance
of winning. "
Other top contenders, who haveTemple
photos shoved in their faces as they sit
over low-sodium meals in restaurants or
scoff at Vogue models while perusing
magazine racks, say Temple is "very
pretty" and hence "very marketable."
The implication is that Temple would be
a good representative for the sport, that
she would not "turn people off," that the
Weiders and others would sell more
magazines and therefore more products.
The judges know this. A woman like Carla
Temple could turn people on to this infant
sport.
Just like Rachel McLish.

A To~a"yWeird
AsslgnnJen~
he culmination of all the sweat
and strain is unveiled in the backstage "pump room" at noon on the
day of the contest. Pastel sweatshirts are carefully pulled off over coiffed
and sprayed hairstyles to reveal rippling
mahogany shoulders; leg-warmers drop
below mightily the wed thigh biceps.
Muscle mags like to refer to these

Toilers: Carla Temple's splits andBetty-Boop gesture in her Free-Posing routine brings howls from the crowd. Erica Mes, Marjo Selin, Tina
Plakinger and Carla Dunlap, above, get unserious. Right: Temple, winner Bowen-Rice and second-place Dunlap show symmetry indeed.

events as' 'A Meeting of Goddesses. " One

can see why, as husbands kneel as if in
obeisance,
annointing their wives'
sinewed calves with oil. NBC Sports World
cameras pan around the melee of reporters, photographers and boyfriends to
focus on satin-clad rumps. Chromium
dumbbells flash in the TV lighting as
women pump up golden arms. Wine, for
vascularity, is passed around the increasingly jammed little yellow room.
Carla Temple enters the fracas in a clinging white angora dress, her blonde frosted
hair done up, her dangerously long fingernails gleaming red in the intense light. In
one corner she strips to her posing bikini,
and looks alarmingly slight next to the
hulking Kay Baxter, who wears a bikini
similar but much larger.
George Butler clicks photos for his upcoming book, Maidens of Iron. Against
one wall Carla Dunlap watches impassively, wired to her Walkman. Reclusive
Mary Roberts, cute face atop a body to
shame a stevedore, chews oranges and
then unladylike and unconcerned spits the
pulp into a Baggie.
One reporter, overwhelmed by 18ofthe
best female bodies in the world, walks
over to Sports World's preppy commentator Bill Macatee and gibbers on about
what a terrific assignment this is. Macatee

sneers down his madeup nose, "Are you

kidding? This is a totally weird assignment."
About a thousand muscle fans who do
not think it is weird fill the huge competition ballroom with their hoots and cheers
as the tanned and oiled contestants finally
file out onto the stage. This is where the
beefis.
The first offourrounds, Muscularity, requires each contestant to perform five
mandatory poses at the front of the stage.
And man, do they hit 'em. When the MC
meekly calls for "front double biceps,"
the contestant slams her arms into doubleknotted doughnuts of steel as the crowd
goes jack-bananas; or else she sensually
flows into position, smiling delightfully,
and only then plugs in the current and
those arms pop into hard-edged peaks and
valleys, structural fibers trying to burst
through skin corded with veins shoved to
the surface. The crowd goes "ooohh,"
and then lapses into frothing hysteria.
Aesthetics aside, when the bodybuilders grind their pelvises down to bring out
every last sinew in their lower torso for the
"abdominals and thighs," the response
from male members in the audience has an
added burlesque-house tone that encourages the performer to pursed-lipped, smoldering-eyed glances.

The contenders emerge as the judges

move down the line. The reigning champ,
Carla Dunlap, moves like blackberry jelly
between poses until she locks into a
chiseled-in-ebony flex. Largest contender
is Mary Roberts, a 33-year-old Californian
second in muscle mass only to Kay Baxter.
Wisconsin's 27-year-old Tina Plakinger
was a virtual unknown until she took second place behind Dunlap at the Caesar's
Cup, relegating a disgruntled Rachel
McLish to third place. Plakinger seems to
be the crowd's new-blood favorite, along
with Texan brunette Lori Bowen-Rice, 25,
who placed fourth in Vegas. At the World's
Amateurs in London, Bowen-Rice poseddown against Carla Temple to take third
place to Temple's fifth.
The body type most like Carla Temple's
is Finland's statuesque Marjo Selin, 27,
who has had more experience in the pro
ranks. Wherever Temple is in the standings, Selin will be close by; the third-round
Free Posing will likely decide.
For round two, Symmetry, the contestants merely walk onstage with their muscles relaxed, arms by their sides, and do
four quarter-turns to allow the judges to assess the proportion, body parts and muscle groups. Yawn city. The audience filters
out to make their prediction calls and await
the evening's more exciting final rounds.

teveWennerstrom, former editor of

he tumultuous five-year history of women's competitive bodybuilding

began in Venice, California, traditional str.onghold offreaks and freethinker.s.
Since the 1930smen had sweated out their dumbbell flys on the legendary
sand of Muscle Beach. Venice's Gold's gym was notoriou::>for its stable of
muscleheads, including the wild-card champion Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Women in the vicinity at the time were groupies or tanned buxomettes, suitable
only as photo props to be draped over the males' massive deltoids. A few oddball femmes who actually wanted to strain and sweat were begrudgingly allowed into the
sanctum sanctorum of Gold's. Noteworthy was a tousle-haired, brunette, fonner ballerinanamed Lisa Lyon who was built like the proverbial brick outhouse and wore
the clothes to flaunt it.
Lyon persuadeli Gold's and an L.A. TV channel to sponsor what she christened the
"First Women's World Bodybuilding Championship" at L.A.'s Embassy Auditorium. By all accounts it was aratbag affair, poorly organized, with all contestants
Californians. Lyon won easily and promptly retired, her title unchallenged and her
celebrity status assured. As the darling of .
talk shows, bemused sports journals and
such photographers as the nefarious Helmut Newton, she spread the gospel of distaff muscularity and left the sport halfformed. The dubious patron saint of the
sport also appeared nude in Playboy, to the
outcry ofthemore serious bodybuilders.
By the time of the next major competition, the 1980".Ms. Olympia contest at
PhiladeJphia's Sheraton Hotel, the fever
had caught and the sports world was about
to be knocked on its gluteus maximii. The
women had buried any concept of a T&A
bikini beauty parade, and many far surpassed Lisa Lyon's finely carved smooth
curves. The issue was muscle.
Enter Rachel McLish, who took fhe
title and remains the iconoclast. Onstage,
pumped and oiled, she portrayed womanhood never before seen. She was "ripped" to the tits, her bodyfat reduced so
low that every fiber, tendril and sinew of
her incredibly developed musculature
showed through the bronzed skin. Where
there might have been cleavage, her gymhardened
pectorals
bulged, visibly
striated with muscle fiber; her biceps popped out of arms that were "cut up" like a
topographical map. The formerly ideal flat Cut And Ripped to match any competing
stomach was hollowed out and rippled male, Rachel McLish's womanhood still
with washboard-patterned abdominals.
amazes and delights adoring audiences.
The bodybuilding world flipped. Here
was a woman who had developed, cut and ripped her physique t.orival any male competitor. Yet it was all slender and lithe, and above a pair of munchkin titties was a
gorgeous, most feminine, full-mouthed, glittering-eyed, model's face, framed by a
glorious mane of black hair.
The audience loved her. The show was on the road. It was amuscIe-building contest, and these women were challenging the.accepted nature ofthe female form.
Claudia Wilbourn, 33, a former Miss California Bodybuilder, took second at Lyon's
initial' 'event. " Now ajournalist for Flex magazine, she happily took time backstage
at the Skyline to recall the tumult ofthose formative days:
"We were called men and dykes, " she says, looking very trim and elegant in a
black jumpsuit and punky haircut. "The press, like People magazine, just descended
on us and were very confrontative, treating us like freaks, not athletes. They wanted
to follow us into the bathroom. And I wasn't allowed into the pro ranks because I was
considered too muscular!"
Wilbourn, like many others, eventually found the media treatment and the narcissistic regimen too dehumanizing and left competition. She still supports bodybuilding, which transformed her from an acne-plagued, sickly, teenage bookworm to a
celebrity of sorts, and she is pleased with the media's increasedTespect. "Today, no
guy would say these (competitors) are not attractive women. It's accepted now."

Body & Power magazine (TheArt and

Sport of Women's Bodybuilding),

now editor of Women's Physique
World and official IFBB historian, is no
slouch in these circles. Competitors sit on
his lap a lot.
He was responsible for Carla Dunlap entering her first competition (she won), and
has long supported Carla Temple in his
publications. Backstage in the VIP lounge
he shoves back his ever-present
"Women's
Bodybuilding" -emblazoned
ballcap and says, "Carla Temple's back
should be more cut up. She has no other
weaknesses. "

His pro-tern call: first place to Lori

Bowen-Rice, second to Mary Roberts,
third Tina Plakinger, fourth Carla Dunlap
and fifth Carla Temple. Citing the same
weakness, ex-competitor Claudia Wilbourn makes the same call. Scooting
around, taking more shots for his book,
George Butler places Temple at fifth as
well, with Plakinger fourth, Roberts third,
Dunlap second and Bowen-Rice in top
spot.
Most of the public, though, being more
familiar with the Finnish athlete, places
Marjo Selin in fifth spot with Temple out of
the money ranks.
The houselights dim for round three,
Free Posing, in which the women perform
their best moves in a continuous routine to
the music oftheir choice. The crowd roars
its readiness for this orgasm of contorting
oiled flesh.
The thunderous bass line of Michael
Jackson's Billie Jean pounds through the

house speakers. Tina Plakinger slithers

onstage in a black leatherette bikini, one
white glove and jauntily angled fedora
cocked on her black locks. With a grin that
threatens to swallow the rest of her face,
she slams her muscles into wire ropes undulating beneath her shimmering dusky
skin. Still holding a pose, copping Michael
Jackson to aT, she glides across the stage
as if it were ice.
The audience goes nuts. Dammit, the
girl is moonwalking (that breakdancing
move where you appear to walk backward
while moving forward). Her slim hands
run down her thighs as she thrusts her pelvis to the rhythm. This routine is going to
be hard to beat.
Marjo Selin cannot top it. Regal in an
electric-blue posing suit, she offers a perfunctory robotics routine to Kraftwerk's
Euro-pop WeAre The Robots.
As the hyperkinetic instrumental theme
from Staying Alive swells through the
room, Carla Temple bounds on stage, a
huge animal grin rivaling the whiteness of
her bikini. Her wild gray-blue eyes bore
into the judges, smoldering, letting them
know that she is extremely glad to be right
here, right now. Here it is, you little
people, her dynamic poses seem to shout;
this is what it is all about. And thenwham i-a move no one has ever seen before: her muscle-cabled legs flat on the
stage in full-forward splits, her arms extended parallel to the floor, yet twisted to
bring out every rivulet of hard-earned
sinew, her mouth agape as ifin the wonder
and ecstasy of her own maneuver. The
crowd's brains are sauteed. Old people
cover their ears to shut out the shrieking.
Temple demurely swivels on her bum
into a profile pose, and while displaying
great triceps gives a kooky grin and points
a long red-nailed finger to her head. After a
brief Betty Boop-style moment, as if to
say, "Whooo Meee?" she skips offstage
to massive applause.
Whewww!
No one knows what to make of top contender Lori Bowen-Rice. Her blurry, distorted, Z.Z. Top tape is the perfect accompaniment to a clumsy routine in which she
slams into teeth-grinding poses with all the
grace of C-3PO. Her great body carries
much muscle mass while retaining femininity, but her jitters must have dried up
her joints. The lining from her posing
trunks bags out over her buttocks as she
awkwardly hops offstage.
"C'mon, Panther," yell the Carla Dunlap fans as the sleek black woman sidles
center stage to Prince's 1999. This is sex.
Sultry-lidded eyes lovingly caress every
one of her own gleaming body parts as she
pops the bulges out of her smooth musculature. Her lips pull back in a feline snarl of
approval as she glories in the feel of the
pump. Then, coquettishly, she scorches
the judge's row with a haughty flirtatious
leer. She will score high.

Big Mary Roberts blasts the hard-coremassiveness fans.

"Jeez, would you go to bed with that?"
someone whispers. "It'd be like sleeping
with a sack full of wolverines. "
Roberts is likely over the fine line of
femininity, but in a contest where muscle
counts, she is a top gun.
As for Kay Baxter: well, the crowd still
loves her, especially when she presents a
back on which you could easily set dinner
for four. But she isjust too extreme for the
Weider-oriented IFBB judges.
There is the traditional rustling of papers at the podium; the crowd falls into its
traditional hushed silence; the announcer
clears his traditional throat. "The five
finalists in the 1984IFBB Women's World
Professional Bodybuilding Championship
are. . ." Heartbeat. "Tina Plakinger,
Carla ... Temple, Lori Bowen-Rice, Carla
Dunlap and Mary Roberts."

Hleronyrnous Boscll In
A WIII'te Bikini

ru

undfour: the Posedown. After

the five side-by-side finalists repeat the mandatory poses from
ound one, the quirky, happy synthesizer figure that opens Cyndi Lauper's
big hit, Girls Just Want to Have Fun,
swoops out of the EA. The audience is on
its collective feet, hurling fists to the ceiling, howling their encouragement to their
fave.
Onstage is a free-for-all. Total pandemonium, as the athletes do everything
they can, short of fisticuffs, to snag top
honors. It is a Hieronymous-Bosch-goesMuscle- Beach-Party confusion of rippling
pecs, lats, tris, delts 'n' abs.
Tina Plakinger is moon walking across
the stage. Mary Roberts is flexing openhanded as if threatening to grab the entire
judges' row. Dunlap is undulating like an
orgiastic nest of mambas. Bowen-Rice
blasts up and down the stage, leaping to a
lower level to throw all that brown muscle
right in the judges' pusses. Carla Temple,
pummeling the judges with a supernova
smile, locks into her poses so strenuously
she threatens to vibrate right through the
boards.
By the time the four-minute song fades,
the bodybuilders are running out of retinaboggling poses and the audience is getting
hoarse. While the judges confer on their
decisions, one is left dizzied, wondering if
perhaps NBC's Bill Macatee was right all
along: maybe this is a totally weird sport.
The waiting women stand quivering,
achingly smiling, all eyes upon them. The
MC steps to the podium. Ta-da!And, as expected, because this is her pro debut and
because of her comparatively slight
physique, Our Miss Carla is awarded fifth.
Everyone is pleased as punch. Carla
beams. Within hours everyone who is anyone in the bodybuilding universe will

know of a new contender on the Mount of

the Olympians.
Not handling the decision quite so
gracefully is fourth place Tina Plakinger.
When she hears her name next her glorious, hopeful grin drops into her bikini top.
When Mary Roberts is awarded only
third, boos and jeers fill the ballroom. Her
smile remains fixed, but the lights go outin
her eyes. Few judges would now like to
meet her in a dark alley.
Dunlap and Bowen-Rice stand pokerfaced under the lights, to their fans twin
pillars of the temple of the new goddesses.
The MC announces, "In second place ... "
Someone in the audience yells out, "Dunlap." She grins and nods. And so it is.
Lori Bowen-Rice, the new blood, in
only her second pro contest, has become
the top woman bodybuilder in the world.
She raises her cut, ripped, pumped, golden-tanned arms in a victorious V-sign, and
then begins to weep. Girls will always be
girls, even if they are stronger than boys.
Backstage, as Bowen-Rice is coerced
out of her husband's congratulatory embrace for Muscle & Fitness photos, Carla
Temple's corner is buzzing. Boyfriend
Mike Hamill grins elatedly, his shirt
soaked through with the past hour's tension. NBC, CBC, and CTV are all shoving
microphones in Temple's face. She laughs
almost hysterically through it all. Muscle
& Fitness want her in California for a cover
shoot in four days. Muscle & Fitness's assistant to the publisher, Bill Dobbins,
confirms an interview for a major feature.
George Butler has been so impressed tonight that he wants to see Carla in two
weeks to shoot extra footage for Pumping
Iron II: The Women.

As Mike and Carla tear themselves

away from the media to "go and drink
something fattening," other competitors
head off to the VIP lounge to gorge themselves on the huge vats of multicolored ice
cream at the after-party.
At 1:30 a.m. that morning, Carla is
wakened by the phone. It is Joe Weider,
calling from California to officially ask her
to the invitation-only Miss Olympia
Championship, November in Montreal.
This is the other top pro competition in the
female bodybuilding world. Temple
thanks him. She falls asleep thinking that
even harder training will soon have to
begin. She smiles in her sleep.
EPILOGUE: Somewhere, in the dark, later
that morning, Rachel McLish comes awake
with a start. She looks over at her clock and
sees that she still has a while before the
alarm goes off. She thinks for a moment,
and then pulls her sleek body from between
the sheets: it is never too early to start training for your comeback at the Miss Olympia.
There's going to be some tough competition ...
they say there's this girl named
Carla Templefrom Vancouver ...