Bodybuilders All Pumped Up for Venice Holiday Competition

The usual phalanx of tanned, waxed and oiled hard-bodies turned out to do their front-double bicep flexes and back lat spreads at Friday’s annual Mr. & Ms. Muscle Beach Venice bodybuilding contest.

This year, though, holiday beachgoers were treated to something they hadn’t seen in Venice before: the sparkly bikinis, lipstick smiles and sky-high stilettos of “figure” competitors, who daintily toe the line between bodybuilding and pageantry.

Four women entered the figure round, with three doing double-duty in the women’s bodybuilding rounds.

“Adding figure was a no-brainer,” said Joe Wheatley, the contest’s organizer. “It’s a girl in a two-piece outfit and heels at the beach -- come on!”

The crowd, which had swelled to hundreds by noon, agreed, saving its loudest cheers, claps and whistles for the figure contestants. “You guys look great!” shouted one fan during a break.

Jennifer Thomas, 29, strutted across the stage wearing a spangled silver bathing suit and an unfailing grin as the judges asked her to flex, pose and turn. “It’s always good to be a pretty female bodybuilder, because there aren’t a lot of those out there,” she said after the initial judging round.

The Fourth of July contest is organized by the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, as are a Memorial Day classic and a larger Labor Day competition.

Bill Howard, 69, a local bodybuilding hero who fled to Venice from a Wisconsin orphanage in the late 1940s, started the Muscle Beach contest in the 1980s and ran it until he turned it over to Wheatley five years ago.

On Friday, he turned up in the bleachers sporting a stars-and-stripes neckerchief and orange sunglasses.

“There isn’t a country in the world, not even Afghanistan, that hasn’t heard of Muscle Beach, California, and that doesn’t know the images it strikes up,” he said, gesturing at the monolithic concrete barbells that frame the workout center. “If you are a bodybuilder, this place is a monument to you.”

Molli Oliver, 52, last year’s Ms. Muscle Beach and chairwoman of this year’s judging panel, agreed.

“This place, it’s legendary,” she said, fingering her gold bodybuilding pendant. “And there’s a community and a camaraderie that comes with that.”

Indeed, the contest had something of a summer-camp feel to it. A small army of gold statuettes, nearly one for each of the 30 contestants, sat on a table decked with flag-printed paper stars and an imposing Uncle Sam cutout.

“Competing is nerve-racking,” said Thomas, who competes in amateur bodybuilding events and women’s wrestling as well as figure contests. “You’re never sure you belong up there. But this is just fun.”

Even though they got most of the attention Friday, the women are still dwarfed by the bigger and brawnier men at Muscle Beach.

Howard remembered the early days of women’s bodybuilding in the 1960s.

“It was a man’s environment, with the scratching and the cursing -- women were just embarrassed,” Howard said.

Heidi Sutter was the first female bodybuilder who went to Gold’s Gym, in 1966, Howard remembered.

“She insisted on working out and showering, so we made accommodations,” he said. “And now you have moms coming in with their kids to work out.”

But Thomas, who started bodybuilding to lose weight, said women’s bodybuilding is still a long way from achieving equality.

“People look at us like we’re weird for doing this,” she said. “But I really enjoy being different from the average person.”