{"id":420,"date":"2015-12-30T15:44:15","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T15:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/ashapiro009\/training-tanning-and-branding-with-the-bikini-bodybuilding-s"},"modified":"2019-04-05T05:09:02","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T05:09:02","slug":"training-tanning-and-branding-with-the-bikini-bodybuilding-stars-of-instagram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/training-tanning-and-branding-with-the-bikini-bodybuilding-stars-of-instagram\/","title":{"rendered":"Training, Tanning, and Branding With The Bikini Bodybuilding Stars Of Instagram"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty-six-year-old Ashley Kaltwasser is the reigning world champion of a polarizing new bodybuilding competition that raises questions about attainable female body image while cultivating a massive following on social media.<\/b> But the LeBron James of #BikiniCompetitor culture doesn\u2019t have the answers — she\u2019s busy trying to make history.<\/p>\n

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\"Training,<\/div>\n

Photographs by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News, Isaac Hinds<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cBodybuilder\u201d is not the first word that comes to mind when you see Ashley Kaltwasser. She has a sprinter\u2019s body and a pageant girl\u2019s good looks. Her teeth are bleach-white, nails French-manicured, hair dyed black and Keratin-treated so it falls in a glossy curtain down her back. When we meet in her fifth-floor room at The Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas, she\u2019s in her stage makeup \u2014 fake lashes, heavy powder. It\u2019s a late September afternoon, the day before the 2014 Bikini Olympia competition, and Kaltwasser is already dark from her first layer of spray tan. She\u2019ll get another layer before bed and one more the next morning. The contest rules call for \u201ca natural and healthy tan,\u201d but Kaltwasser always goes for Boehner orange because it looks better onstage. The table, the bed, and the bathroom are strewn with what can best be described as product: bottles of serums, sprays, powders, glosses, and scrubs.<\/p>\n

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\"Ashley<\/p>\n

Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Orleans is about a mile from the Strip, near a D\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu adult emporium and a Budget car rental. This weekend it\u2019s the site of Joe Weider\u2019s Olympia<\/a>, the biggest bodybuilding event of the year. The place teems with thousands of bodybuilding fans: men with arms like vine-choked tree trunks, women whose skirts reveal remarkable quads. They come from Southern California and Florida, the coastal epicenters of the sport, but also from Sydney, Seoul, Oslo, and all across the midsection of America. To them, Kaltwasser is something of a celebrity. Whenever she walks through the lobby, at least three people ask to take her picture. Sometimes it\u2019s gawking men who smell like Axe body spray, but more often it\u2019s those guys\u2019 girlfriends. \u201cMy coach says I have the same body type as you,\u201d says one starry-eyed woman. The elevators are decorated with life-size photos of the top competitors. Kaltwasser is thrilled when she discovers this. For the rest of the weekend, she takes \u201cher\u201d elevator almost every time.<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Isaac Hinds \/ Via hardbodynews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Kaltwasser is quickly becoming the LeBron James of the bikini division, a new, more accessible and relatable category of bodybuilding. Long the provenance of MTV Spring Breakers and a close relative of the wet T-shirt contest, these competitions are gaining legitimacy as a sport and attracting legions of participants and fans. The number of professional competitions has more than doubled since 2010, when the professional arm of the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness added bikini to its roster of female divisions. (Those divisions, in order from most to least jacked: bodybuilding, physique, fitness, figure, and now bikini).<\/p>\n

The addition is part of the IFBB\u2019s effort to change bodybuilding\u2019s image from freakishly strapped ectomorphs to something sleeker, more modern, and, well, sexier. On a broader scale, bikini competition culture is changing the conversation about what health and fitness should look like. It\u2019s a conversation that\u2019s taking place largely on Instagram, where women like Kaltwasser \u2014 and women who want to be like Kaltwasser \u2014 get advice, give support, and pose in their underwear.<\/p>\n

Advocates of this \u201cbikini body\u201d say it\u2019s opening up the world of weightlifting to women who wouldn\u2019t otherwise think of approaching a squat rack. \u201cThey\u2019ll come and they don\u2019t even know how to pick up a weight,\u201d says Shannon Dey, who goes by Momma Bombshell. Her company, Bombshell Fitness<\/a>, is one of the largest professional fitness coaching businesses in the country, and 80% of her competing clients are in the bikini division. \u201cThis type of body is gorgeous and fit, yet it\u2019s attainable,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

That word \u201cattainable\u201d comes up a lot when people in the industry talk about the bikini fitness trend. It\u2019s being offered up as an antidote to thinspo culture \u2014 instead of thigh gaps, it\u2019s \u201cstrong not skinny\u201d; instead of pro-ana, it\u2019s \u201ceat to grow.\u201d Kaltwasser, a former all-state athlete who professes her love for steak and pizza, is the poster woman for this trend.<\/p>\n

But another story is playing out on social media. A search for #BikiniCompetitor on Instagram brings up endless reels of selfies at the gym, food weighed to the gram, quotes like \u201cfail to plan, plan to fail,\u201d and memes about not being able to walk after \u201cleg day.\u201d They chant their mantras in hashtags: #BeastMode, #NoExcuses, #RiseAndGrind. In profile after profile, women describe themselves as \u201crecovered\u201d from disorders like bulimia and compulsive exercising. All of it raises the question: Is the lifestyle that Kaltwasser literally embodies really a new and healthier attitude toward the female body, or is it a new expression of sexist old ideas and dangerous standards of beauty?<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Bikini competitors are quick to say that they aren\u2019t just girls who go to the gym; they\u2019re athletes who train. Or, as Kaltwasser says on more than one occasion, \u201cThis isn\u2019t just some bar contest. It\u2019s a sport.\u201d The 26-year-old from Akron, Ohio, has always competed in sports that were about individual performance \u2014 gymnastics, swimming, running. In high school they called her AK-47; she broke six track and cross-country records and qualified for state championships in both sports. Another thing she likes to say to reporters: \u201cI worked for this body my whole life.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

She started training for the brand-new bikini division in 2010 after deciding that college wasn\u2019t for her. She found Summer Montabone, a personal trainer and the owner of a local gym who runs Team VIP<\/a> (Very Impressive Physique), a coaching group for bikini competitors. \u201cYou knew she was an athlete,\u201d says Montabone, who is still Kaltwasser\u2019s competition coach. These days Kaltwasser works out six days a week, doing an hour of weightlifting and a half-hour on a cardio machine when she\u2019s preparing for a show. Sometimes she\u2019ll do another session of cardio in the evenings.<\/p>\n

Kaltwasser doesn\u2019t have a boyfriend. In high school, boys were intimidated by her. \u201cYou could just feel the atmosphere change when she was around,\u201d her former running coach tells me. \u201cShe\u2019s so hardworking and so dominant in whatever she does.\u201d This is the part of Kaltwasser that made her a track star, and it\u2019s what makes her a bikini competitor now.<\/p>\n

Even on the amateur level, a lot of competitors are like Kaltwasser. They have the mind-sets of CEOs; they push themselves to extremes in all aspects of their lives. Bikini competitions are seductive to these kinds of women: They seem to promise that perfection is possible if you put in the work. As Liz Ortiz, an Army soldier, bikini competitor, and mother of three told me, \u201cI set my standards so high, and [competing] is just part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaltwasser\u2019s competitive drive has propelled her to the top in very little time. She was a rookie when she won last year\u2019s Olympia, an event that has grown from a three-man competition at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1965 to become the fitness industry\u2019s Super Bowl, a four-day event in Las Vegas that draws more than 55,000 fans. Since last year\u2019s Olympia, Kaltwasser has entered six shows and won five. She estimates that she\u2019s earned over $100,000 in prize money, along with endorsement deals, modeling gigs, and paid appearances. She has the forgivable egotism of a small-town girl who\u2019s still a little starstruck by her own life. \u201cWinning the Olympia changed everything for me,\u201d she says. \u201cWho goes to seven countries in a year?\u201d She liked Sweden the most because there were no \u201ctrashy areas, no homeless people.\u201d She\u2019s still learning how to talk to the press. \u201cWhen I don\u2019t know what else to do, I smile,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

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\"Bikini \"\"<\/div>\n

This year she\u2019s trying for something that no bikini competitor has done yet: win the Olympia twice. Her biggest threat is Yeshaira Robles, another relative newcomer. On paper, the two women couldn\u2019t be more different. Kaltwasser curls her eyelashes and wears matching workout clothes. She loves cats and calls her father \u201cDaddy.\u201d She doesn\u2019t curse and she only likes the kind of rap that plays on the radio. Robles is a 35-year-old Puerto Rican from the Bronx. She\u2019s got a husband and a daughter and a smoldering gaze that makes her opponents look like they\u2019re posing for elementary school portraits. If Kaltwasser is Hannah Montana, Robles is Miley with a sledgehammer in hand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Kaltwasser (@ashleykfit<\/a>) is starting the weekend with 80,000 followers on Instagram, the majority of whom came after last year\u2019s Olympia. She\u2019s hoping to break 100,000 this time, which will likely only happen if she wins. Many bikini competitors use Instagram like a high school cafeteria, chatting, bragging, stirring up drama, gushing about their \u201cswolemates,\u201d all with plenty of emojis and exclamation points. But Kaltwasser and her fellow Olympia competitors are pros. They\u2019re building brands, not making friends. Their images are more polished, the self-promotion more blatant. They have endorsement deals that require them to post about their sponsors. Kaltwasser, for example, has agreements with Gaspari supplements, Muscle Egg liquid egg whites, Liquid Sun Rayz spray tanning, FitnessRx for Women<\/i> magazine, and Better Bodies fitness apparel.<\/p>\n

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Kaltwasser checks her Instagram while at the gym. <\/span> Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For Kaltwasser, social media outlets like Instagram have brought exposure, but they\u2019ve brought critics too. Those followers can determine whether she gets a sponsorship or modeling gig; they can determine the future of her career. \u201cI try not to go out in public without my makeup on because you never know when someone\u2019s going to ask for a picture, and then it\u2019ll be on Instagram,\u201d she says. Her Instagram has plenty of beauty shots, most of which feature her prominent glutes. Recently she\u2019s been hard-selling Fuel Meals, a food service that ships premade meals tailored to bodybuilders\u2019 diets. Still she tries not to come across as an adbot in a bikini. Her account also features dogs in sweaters and a photo of herself in a pepperoni-pizza-print onesie.<\/p>\n

It makes sense that bikini competitors and wannabes would flock to Instagram, a female-dominated social media platform where image matters most. Their presence there is hard to ignore; it\u2019s turned the site into a 24-7 forum for tips and tricks. Competitors\u2019 accounts are littered with questions, some from girls as young as 14: \u201cHow many calories and carbs do you eat and stay this lean?\u201d \u201cHow can you get veins on your abs?\u201d \u201cWhat does your typical diet consist of?\u201d \u201cWhat moves are you doing to get all that hammie definition?\u201d \u201cHow do you dry ure stomache out like that????\u201d \u201cWhat sorts of things do you eat? And how many meals a day?\u201d \u201cWhat are your butt workouts??\u201d<\/p>\n

In her hotel room that afternoon, Kaltwasser opens the mini-fridge and plucks a doggie bag of mush from a mound of other bags. She brought enough meals for the whole trip, divided and frozen. There\u2019s little variation: chicken, sweet potato, asparagus, broccoli. Ground oats and egg whites cooked into patties. She often eats things cold right out of the bag. \u201cI like the taste of simple food,\u201d she says. \u201cI never really want to eat crap.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAbs are made in the kitchen\u201d is another much-repeated Instagram line. Bikini competitors\u2019 feeds showcase elaborate meal preps, and debates rage on about the etiquette of taking your food scale to a restaurant. Some competitors stick to strict quantities of protein, fats, and carbohydrates, which they tweak obsessively in the weeks leading up to a show. Kaltwasser doesn\u2019t track her calories or grams. She follows a meal plan that she writes herself with Montabone\u2019s help. She eats six or seven small meals a day and drinks two gallons of water. She cuts out sodium the week before her shows and drinks cups of dandelion root tea, a natural diuretic. She \u201ceats clean\u201d but doesn\u2019t worry about things like pesticides or artificial sweeteners. She likes the blue packets more than the pink. The yellow ones are just OK. Real sugar is not a concept she knows. After every show, she allows herself to have a cheat meal. Right now she\u2019s craving salad, one with the works: apples, cranberries, walnuts, and blue cheese dressing. \u201cA real<\/i> salad,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

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Photograph Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Kaltwasser doesn\u2019t measure her body-fat percentage, but she estimates that it\u2019s between 10 and 12% \u2014 well below the 21 to 32% that experts recommend for women her age, though not unheard of for a competitive athlete. She gains a few pounds in the off-season but emphasizes that the bikini body is supposed to be maintainable. \u201cIt\u2019s a livable lifestyle,\u201d she likes to say.<\/p>\n

Not everyone agrees. \u201cPeople see photos of competitors and think that\u2019s how they look year-round,\u201d says Layne Norton, a bodybuilding coach<\/a> in Florida. Norton has a Ph.D. in nutritional sciences and considers himself a renegade for his less restrictive approach to dieting. According to him, \u201cstage-lean\u201d is a fleeting state, one that women peak for just like any athlete peaks for a competition. The idea that anyone can maintain that kind of physique has created a black market of sorts in the coaching industry. It can seem like every bikini competitor on Instagram sells a \u201cbikini body\u201d diet and workout plan. Some of these women have certifications but most probably don\u2019t. \u201cIt\u2019s gotten really terrible,\u201d says Norton. \u201cA girl goes and wins a show and has abs and so now she\u2019s a coach to make money.\u201d<\/p>\n

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These coaches can wreak havoc on their clients\u2019 lives. Ruthie Harrison is 5-foot-10, blonde-haired and blue-eyed with a disturbingly symmetrical face. She looks like a fitness model because she is. For nearly a year and a half, she was also a client of Momma Bombshell, aka Shannon Dey of Bombshell Fitness. Harrison, who is 25 now and works as a mechanical engineer, signed up with Team Bombshell in 2011. \u201cI saw all these photos of women in bikinis on her website and thought, Wow, if I could be a part of that, that would be really cool<\/i>.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The meal plan took some getting used to \u2014 she had never measured cups of rice or counted asparagus spears before, and she didn\u2019t understand why salt and seasonings were forbidden (spices cause cravings, she was later told). \u201c[Dey] would always tell everyone, \u2018Follow the plan, stick to the plan,\u2019 and if you asked why she\u2019d say, \u2018Why are you asking why; just do it. Your mind\u2019s in the wrong place if you\u2019re asking why.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison\u2019s training plan had her doing an hour and a half of cardio six days a week on top of weight training five days a week. All told, each day she was spending three to five hours at the gym and eating an estimated 1,500 calories. Sometimes she\u2019d fall asleep at the table in front of her last meal of the night \u2014 a tiny steak and salad greens.<\/p>\n

Harrison says Dey had her clients wear rubber corsets called Squeems, meant to narrow women\u2019s waists. \u201cWe wore them all day,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Dey says that if Harrison was spending that much time in the gym, it was \u201cdue to her own physical limitations, not our recommended plans.\u201d (The Bombshell website<\/a> refers to a workout program of one and a half to three hours a day of gym time, five to six days per week.) Dey doesn\u2019t recall Harrison\u2019s meal plan, but says that a 1,500-calorie-a-day diet was not uncommon during prep. She recommends Squeems to clients, she says, because \u201cthey have proven very effective in creating the hourglass shape competitors desire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harrison went pro within a year of joining Dey\u2019s team. She lived for the trophies and for Dey\u2019s positive feedback week after week. But she also developed a secret habit of binging and purging, which only got worse the better she performed. After one show, she spent a week in total isolation, eating and throwing up seven times a day. When Harrison qualified for the Olympia in 2012, she realized she couldn\u2019t survive another prep. She confessed everything to Dey, who told her she was having a reaction to \u201ca self-imagined stress.\u201d Harrison competed in the 2012 Olympia in the midst of a full-blown eating disorder and didn\u2019t place.<\/p>\n

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Layne Norton, the coach from Florida, says he’s seen “an enormous amount of women who had normal relationships with food before fitness start to have eating disorders.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Dey confirms that she and Harrison spoke \u201cat length\u201d about Harrison\u2019s eating disorder, and that she may have told Harrison that she was putting too much pressure on herself. When asked about the prevalence of eating disorders among her other clients, Dey wrote: \u201cSeveral studies have shown that eating disorders are not a result of calorie restriction, rather they are often triggered by trauma and stress \u2026 In a sport where much of the emphasis is on food manipulation, individuals who have such issues to begin with may find dealing with these issues while manipulating food to prove difficult.\u201d But Layne Norton, the coach from Florida, says he\u2019s seen \u201can enormous amount of women who had normal relationships with food before fitness start to have eating disorders.\u201d He estimates that up to 70% of the women who come to him have had an eating disorder in the past.<\/p>\n

Harrison stopped competing after the 2012 Olympia, and things got worse for a while. \u201cI had no idea how to eat on my own,\u201d she says. Eventually she found a therapist who helped her see how much she\u2019d let competing affect her self-image. Last year she wrote a blog post<\/a> about her experience on Team Bombshell. \u201cCompeting brought out a savage underlying weakness,\u201d she wrote, \u201cto sacrifice all happiness and reason for the sake of succeeding.\u201d According to Harrison, Dey asked her to take it down. Harrison refused, though she did remove some details about her time as a Bombshell.<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Many bodybuilders, whether they realize it or not, share this idea that their physiques reflect their morals, their work ethic, and ultimately their self-worth. It\u2019s a notion that\u2019s as old as the Greeks and that crops up everywhere from Bible verses to Renaissance philosophy to the weight room \u2014 and now social media. The semi-naked selfies on Instagram mean more than \u201cLook at my body.\u201d They mean, \u201cLook at my dedication. Look at my discipline. I am a better person for this.\u201d It\u2019s common for these women to testify about booze, partying, and bad relationships forsaken for the morality of the gym. \u201cThe only bar I\u2019m hitting,\u201d says the caption under a photo of a squat rack. \u201cGetting wheysted,\u201d says the label on the protein shake.<\/p>\n

Kaltwasser\u2019s physique is her product and her livelihood, and she\u2019s under enormous pressure to maintain it. Despite this, she says she doesn\u2019t have a history of eating disorders and that she\u2019s indebted to her coach for all she\u2019s done. She talks about starting her own training and nutrition business when her career on the stage is over. \u201cRight now I feel like I\u2019m building up credentials,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen the time comes and I can\u2019t compete anymore, they\u2019ll look at my resume and it will make me seem more credible.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Kaltwasser eats her second-to-last meal of the night before the final at a \u201cMeet the Olympians\u201d event \u2014 four ounces of chicken and half an avocado mashed together. There\u2019s a steady flow of visitors to her table, but nothing like the crowds who line up to meet reigning Mr. Olympia<\/a> Phil \u201cThe Gift\u201d Heath and his rival<\/a> Kai Greene. The hours wear on and Kaltwasser is clearly ready to go. Still, she smiles, signs photos, applies and reapplies lip gloss.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s past 10 at night by the time she gets to the ninth-floor hotel room, where the illicit spray tanners have set up shop. Kaltwasser\u2019s face is bare and freckled, and in her track suit she looks like the high-school runner she once was. Hotel management strictly forbids tanning in the rooms, so one woman keeps her eye on the peephole while another hoses a naked Kaltwasser with a spray gun attached to a turbine while she stands in a tent-like pod. In the room next door, a half-dozen women in bathrobes wait their turn. They eat out of Tupperwares and scroll on their phones. The Biggest Loser<\/i> blares on TV, and it\u2019s hard not to see a parallel world: the dieting, their exercise regimens, the obsession we seem to have with watching bodies transform.<\/p>\n

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Bodybuilding forums are full of complaints about “protein farts,” and, in the crush of the expo floor, the problem is clear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

To walk through the Olympia Expo, which sprawls across the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, is to do battle with an army of broad shoulders, tens of thousands strong. Women in tight-fitting fitness garb stand with trays of protein bites. Ice cream machines churn out protein soft-serve; Sylvester Stallone promotes protein candy chews. This is maybe the only place in the world where you will ever sidestep someone throwing up from too many protein samples. Bodybuilding forums are full of complaints about \u201cprotein farts,\u201d and, in the crush of the expo floor, the problem is clear. Stallone is whisked around by bodyguards and hidden behind sunglasses and a frozen smirk, but miraculously Jen Selter (@jenselter<\/a>), the \u201cButt Selfie (or #belfie) Queen\u201d of Instagram, is standing alone, almost blending into the crowd with her velvet sweatpants and her Louis Vuitton bag. Selter, who has more Instagram followers than all the bikini pros at the Olympia combined \u2014 5.1 million \u2014 says that she has a lot of respect for the bikini division and wouldn\u2019t rule out the possibility of competing one day. \u201cI love that clean, healthy lifestyle,\u201d she explains. According to Kaltwasser, Selter would probably not do well in a bikini competition. \u201cSymmetry is important,\u201d she tells me, tactfully.<\/p>\n

Prejudging for the women\u2019s divisions happens on Friday morning, on a makeshift stage near a booth selling Isobags, which are the most intense lunch boxes<\/a> you\u2019ve ever seen. Kaltwasser has been up since 5, doing the tanning, the makeup, the fake lashes, the hair routine. She\u2019s eaten mostly carbs today \u2014 rice cakes, oats. The glycogen from the sugar will fill out her muscles in these last crucial hours. She\u2019s in a silk bathrobe with her name embroidered across the back above the words \u201cIFBB Pro.\u201d She opens the bathrobe to reveal a tanned, waxed body and the bikini: emerald, her trademark color, and studded with first-cut Swarovski crystals. Kaltwasser says it\u2019s worth about $3,000 but the company gave it to her for free, along with some serious bling for her fingers and wrists.<\/p>\n

Kaltwasser is jittery as she puts the final touches on her makeup. For her and the other bikini competitors, prejudging is the most important part of the day. It\u2019s when the judges make their decisions, and those decisions rarely change at the finals show. The women are judged on their bodies, of course, but also on their walks, their smiles, their skin tones, and how they interact with the judges. \u201cHooker makeup\u201d will detract from the score, they tell me. Kaltwasser\u2019s weakness is her presentation. Sometimes her legs shake or she forgets to smile. \u201cI get nervous because I care so much,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The competitors strut out one by one and pose to a frenetic mash-up of club songs. They\u2019re allowed to pose however they want to show off their figures, and the results are sometimes bizarre to the untrained eye \u2014 hips popped out, waists dramatically torqued, backs arched and legs spread like a farm animal doing its business. Butt-wiggling and shoulder-shimmying are frowned upon, one judge tells me, but they happen a lot.<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Isaac Hinds<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

There are 27 women \u2014 more than any other division, men\u2019s or women\u2019s \u2014 at the Olympia. If you\u2019ve only seen these women on Instagram, the most remarkable thing about seeing them onstage is how small they are in real life. Kaltwasser is one of the tallest at 5-foot-5. Onstage they all wear clear, sky-high heels.<\/p>\n

Yeshaira Robles comes out toward the end in a pink suit with gold-highlighted hair. She looks ripped and gorgeous, of course, but maybe a teensy bit bored. Her gaze doesn\u2019t smolder so much as say, \u201cJust give me the trophy and let\u2019s get this over with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because she\u2019s the defending champion, Kaltwasser goes last. She looks poised and confident. Her legs stay steady, even when she crosses them for the back pose. There\u2019s something refreshing about her routine; she doesn\u2019t wink or pout at the judges but keeps her smile wide. The judges bring six women to the center, including Kaltwasser and Robles. This is first callouts, and it means these are the six women in the running for a top spot. The judges move the women around to compare them. Robles gets moved to the far end \u2014 that means she\u2019s out of the running for first. Kaltwasser gets moved to the middle. They move a first-time Olympia competitor named Janet Layug next to her. The thing everyone seems to know about Layug is that she won a Hooters pageant of some kind earlier this year. She\u2019s stunning in a Victoria\u2019s Secret runway model-type way, long and lean with a face that one webcast commentator described as \u201ca pillar of beauty.\u201d She poses with a winner\u2019s cockiness, smiling just enough to show she\u2019s having a good time. Here, next to Layug, Kaltwasser looks almost (almost<\/i>) stocky, her smile like Miss Ohio\u2019s at the state fair.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Layug] had the stage presence that I didn\u2019t have,\u201d Kaltwasser tells me later. Based on prejudging, Kaltwasser thinks she has a spot in the top two, but second won\u2019t make history. She spends the afternoon glued to her iPhone, reading comments and predictions on social media. All the events are live-streaming, and people are weighing in from around the world. A popular bodybuilding Twitter account @musclephone<\/a> thinks Kaltwasser \u201cwon it from the back,\u201d but will the judges agree?<\/p>\n

Kaltwasser\u2019s manager is J.M. Manion, owner of the Fitness Management Group and a man whose influence in the bodybuilding world is both obvious and hard to quantify. His father, Jim Manion, is president of the IFBB Pro League in the U.S. The younger Manion manages not only Kaltwasser but also Robles, Layug, and every other top contender at the Bikini Olympia. Every Bikini Olympia winner since the division began was managed by Manion at some point in her career. It seems like an unspoken rule that no one has a shot at the top spot until they sign with FMG.<\/p>\n

Manion\u2019s email address is also registered as the owner of two active porn sites devoted to IFBB competitors. One, called \u201cLacey D.\u201d (tagline: \u201cFor All Of You To See\u201d), features Lacey DeLuca, an FMG client who competed alongside Kaltwasser on the Bikini Olympia stage. According to DeLuca, 26, Manion photographed her for his porn site in 2012, soon after she became a bikini pro. \u201cEverything that J.M. does with me like that is very classy,\u201d she says. She adds that, as a manager, Manion \u201calways steers us in the right direction,\u201d telling them which shows to enter and which to avoid. DeLuca declined to comment on whether she\u2019s seen any profits from \u201cLacey D.\u201d Manion did not respond for comment about the relationship between his bikini competition endeavors and his pornographic ones.<\/p>\n

The bikini division is a blatant attempt to revive the sex appeal that women\u2019s bodybuilding had in its early days, before a steroid-fueled arms race turned the division into a carnival show of the impossibly huge. Back then, most female bodybuilders looked like the women in the bikini division today. For evidence, look no further than 1985\u2019s Pumping Iron II: The Women<\/i><\/a>, hornball sequel to Pumping Iron<\/i>, the film that helped make Arnold Schwarzenegger a star. For over an hour and a half, the camera ogles them up and down: in spandex at the gym, in bikinis by the pool, naked in a communal shower, all set to a synth-pop soundtrack. \u201cWell I\u2019ve always considered myself a powder puff, but I consider myself a really strong powder puff,\u201d says one woman who looks like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance<\/i>. \u201cGot to get that fat off,\u201d says a male trainer to another competitor. He pushes her through some T-bar rows, then they make out.<\/p>\n

Iris Kyle<\/a>, the 10-time Ms. Olympia whose quads are thicker than most horses\u2019, is not going to get a GQ<\/i> spread anytime soon, but Ashley Kaltwasser very well could. (Standing behind her at the podium, the male emcee jokes about having \u201cthe best seat in the house.\u201d) Kaltwasser got breast implants in 2011, not long after she started competing. Most women at the pro level do, because, as Kaltwasser put it, \u201cwhen your body fat gets down, your boobs go.\u201d Kaltwasser wanted to stay athletic-looking and she was aware that the judges don\u2019t go for the \u201cbimbo look,\u201d so she went for a sensible D-cup. But she also says she\u2019s not interested in being a sex symbol for guys. \u201cWhat are boys? I\u2019m all about the Olympia,\u201d she jokes. The posing, the getup, the hour-long makeup routine: She treats it as seriously as the training and the diet. She treats it all like a job, because it is. When I ask if there\u2019s a hookup scene at the Olympia, she gives me a strange look. \u201cProbably [among] the fans,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Isaac Hinds \/ Via hardbodynews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

A few hours after the morning\u2019s prejudging, Kaltwasser heads to the arena for the bikini finals. Tonight\u2019s show feels a bit like a warm-up to Saturday, when Phil Heath and rival Kai Greene will pack the arena with fans paying over $200 a seat. But the arena still sparkles with smartphone flashes, and the TV cameras swoop and soar. NBC\u2019s sports channel is planning to air two 90-minute specials about this year\u2019s Mr. Olympia, the competition\u2019s first major television coverage in 30 years.<\/p>\n

As the bikini competitors parade out one by one under the bright lights, I can see why Kaltwasser calls these competitions \u201cMiss America for the fit girl.\u201d It is a pageant in its purest form, a beauty contest without any of that fuss over saving sea lions and tap dancing. And the women are lovely, but the whole thing is a little mind-numbing. Twenty-seven pairs of breasts, round and high, twenty-seven flat bellies, twenty-seven winning smiles. Say what you will about performance-enhancing drugs; the most arresting moment of the night was watching a strapping, square-jawed female bodybuilder lip-synch to Cat Power\u2019s cover of \u201cSea of Love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaltwasser looks relaxed onstage, strutting and posing to the brassy beat of \u201cTimber\u201d and working her All-American, girl-next-door vibe. When it comes time to award the top six, Robles takes fourth, smiling gamely. Layug and Kaltwasser are the final two. When the emcee names Layug as the runner-up, Kaltwasser gasps and starts clapping just a second too soon.<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Isaac Hinds \/ Via hardbodynews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Commentators on Bodybuilding.com\u2019s live wrap-up remark that the judges went for the athlete over the model, that Kaltwasser\u2019s body is setting an attainable standard, and that this is a good thing for the sport. But they\u2019re wrong. There will never be a truly mainstream physique on a professional bodybuilding stage, because there\u2019s simply no place for \u201cmaintainable\u201d in a world where bodies must be built, sculpted, and improved. It\u2019s the bodybuilding mind-set, the body reflecting the inner self, that\u2019s gone mainstream, not the other way around.<\/p>\n

From the smoking balcony of The Orleans Arena you can see the whole Strip, all that sparkle and sex laid out from head to toe. Inside, Kaltwasser will stand for the next two hours in her green bikini and heels, giving interviews to NBC and the muscle press. Tomorrow she\u2019ll work all day at her sponsors\u2019 expo booths; she\u2019ll go to the Victory Gala and eat her real salad and some rolls with butter too. Sunday she\u2019ll get back in her bikini and pose for a Norwegian magazine, then she\u2019ll drive to a Gold\u2019s Gym and do hamstring exercises for another photo shoot. This year she may not have an off-season at all. From Vegas she flies straight to South Korea for the Korea Pro. Then there\u2019s a competition in Russia in November. (She will win them both.) The 2015 season starts three months later with the Arnold Classic.<\/p>\n

But, for now, all Kaltwasser has to do is raise her arms up and smile. Stars glitter on the screen behind her as another pop song plays. She\u2019ll get $25,000 for her win, the most ever awarded to a bikini competitor. In a Bodybuilding.com wrap-up video, Kaltwasser will say that her goal is to prove that the bikini division is about more than \u201cgenetics and diet and cardio.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know firsthand we\u2019re athletes,\u201d she\u2019ll say. \u201cI\u2019ve worked for this body my whole life.\u201d By this time tomorrow, her Instagram followers will hit 100,000.<\/p>\n

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Photograph by Isaac Hinds \/ Via hardbodynews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twenty-six-year-old Ashley Kaltwasser is the reigning world champion of a polarizing new bodybuilding competition that raises questions about attainable female body image while cultivating a massive following on social media. But the LeBron James of #BikiniCompetitor culture doesn\u2019t have the answers — she\u2019s busy trying to make history. Photographs by Ty Wright for BuzzFeed News, Isaac Hinds \u201cBodybuilder\u201d is not the first word that comes to mind when you see Ashley Kaltwasser. She has a sprinter\u2019s body and a pageant girl\u2019s good looks. Her teeth are bleach-white, nails French-manicured, hair dyed black and Keratin-treated so it falls in a glossy curtain down her back. When we meet in her fifth-floor room at The Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas, she\u2019s in her stage makeup \u2014 fake lashes, heavy powder. It\u2019s a late September afternoon, the day before the 2014 Bikini Olympia competition, and Kaltwasser is already dark from her first layer of spray tan. She\u2019ll get another layer before bed and one more the next morning. The contest rules call for \u201ca natural and healthy tan,\u201d but Kaltwasser always goes for Boehner orange because it looks better onstage. The table, the bed, and the bathroom are strewn with what can best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":421,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[116],"tags":[131,132,19,133,134,136],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madamemadeline.com\/false-lashes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}