I love competitive bodybuilding and have since a friend of my Mom's passed a stack of old women's bodybuilding magazines on to me in Jr. High. I had never in my wildest dreams imagined that a woman could look the way these women did. It was mind blowing enough to see the physical potential that men could reach just by altering their diets and lifting weights- but the women were something else.
"Pillow" Ms. Alaska 1981
Maybe it was all so fascinating because being a woman, I sat with the blueprints of possibility and physical perfection in my hands. This was a world where women rivaled men in terms of physical ability, making the two sexes equal and justly one in the same. It proved that what men could do, women could do. I appreciated the fairness and the empowerment that female bodybuilding offered.

The women in these magazines were lean, balanced and feminine. One bodybuilder nicknamed "Pillow" (because of an oversized goose-down jacket she always wore), caught my attention. A native of San Jose, California- she moved to Alaska after finishing nursing school and became a dancer. Soon after, she competed in and won the 1981 Ms. Alaska bodybuilding competition.

I was inspired by her symmetrical physique and realized that attaining a strong, anatomy-chart like body was not as far fetched as I had first thought. If a hometown girl could build it, so could I. In my mind, possibility transformed into reality and my life as a competitive bodybuilder began.