Iron Maidens: The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the WorldKristin Kaye believed fate had delivered her to Broadway when, at age twenty-three and fresh from drama school, she was hired as the playwright and director of a one-night only extravaganza at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City. The show she’d been hired for? The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World, a stage production featuring twenty-five of the world’s most muscular women. With the theories she'd learned in her Women’s Studies classes still fresh in her mind, Kristin thought this was her chance to enter a whole new feminist arena, but in reality she was about to enter another world entirely. Her carefully orchestrated artistic interludes would be sandwiched between skits involving white lace thongs, smoke machines, and a bodybuilder spinning by her neck. Kristin tells the whole story in this hilarious book, alternating between an account of directing the show, which builds to the disastrous climax of opening night, and reportage on women’s bodybuilding and the little-known sub-culture around it, including the use of steroids, the side business of strong women who wrestle men for money, and the judging controversy that threatens to split the sport in two. |
