I Strip for God Part 2: Life of Kellie Everts aka Rasa Von Werder

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You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. In the following interview Kellie, in her own controversial and thought-provoking style, discusses where and how it all went wrong and how the women's event can again become a force within competitive bodybuilding. In June 1949, Rasa and her family moved to the United States and when she was eight years old they settled on a farm in New Jersey.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. But I kept pushing and tried stretching my legs from every angle imaginable, including bending forward and putting my leg behind me, and straight up. Men's levels decrease, they get more feminine, have less "virility" whereas women, with more testosterone, get hornier, and they can get more muscular. She first appeared as Miss Nude Universe, hers was the first female body builder as "Humping Iron", May 1977, predating Lisa Lyon's appearance by three years. As noted in the Salon piece, Everts believes in feeding men’s fantasies rather than sublimating their sexual desires.Black males also have more muscle, and I was told by a black woman bodybuilding journalist, "Iron Eyes," (now deceased) that they tried to stop the men from taking hormones for a while, and when they tested the men the black guys wiped the floor with the whites. If you don't make exercise fun, or emotionally stimulating, it gets old real fast, and harder to train if you just go through the same old weightlifting routine day after day.

In 1975 Kellie became the first female bodybuilder to appear in a mainstream publication — Esquire Magazine. The family ended up in a displaced persons camp, and in 1949 boarded the Navy ship USS Heintzelman bound for the US. This happened several years back when I discovered the existence of “The Stripper for God,” cult legend Kellie Everts. In the old days when female bodybuilding hit the scene, it was looked at with great interest and mixed feelings.But the attainment of female muscularity and its promotion actually began eight years earlier with one woman who would go on to become known as the progenitor of women's bodybuilding, the originator of the fit, athletic, and muscular female form as a marketable and highly desirable health and fitness commodity. A month after finishing high school she ran away with the famous photographer of Marilyn Monroe, to Hollywood, CA, where she began her career in show business. Right now there are less females of employable age than there are males, and yet, females hold down more jobs. Another stripper, Yvette Paris, a Marilyn Monroe look-alike, said she appeared on the same show to plug her book 'Dancing the Hard Way,' for which she is seeking a publisher.

Throughout female bodybuilding's decline Kellie Everts has been a strong proponent of handing the reins of power to women bodybuilders, to let them to choose their own destiny and rebuild the sport back to where it was at its peak and then some. It could be said that the overly muscular female became unmarketable and the physical development needed to win at the highest level was both unattainable and impractical for people new to the sport.At the time she was living in relative obscurity in the wilds of upstate New York (actually, in the southern tier college town of Binghamton), trying to find disciples for her church while producing and starring in explicit fetish and porn videos to make a living. It's an exchange of positive energy; you recharge one another's batteries, providing you have the right partner. Males were promoting the muscularity of females, but sooner or later, it was a case of when they feel "threatened" they will back down—and so they did.

Paris, mother of two children, said she became so disgusted with the treatment accorded her by Downey that she walked off the set 10 minutes before the show ended. In late 1976, when we sent in the "Humping Iron" article to Playboy, it was so "out there" they paid us half and were not going to use it. Everts traveled in the United States and Canada, giving over 1,000 sermons in burlesque theaters and nightclubs. In her later years, after 30 years of celibacy for spiritual purposes, beginning age 63 in 2008 (according to her, God told her to stop suffering, quit celibacy and have fun – thus it was "the Will of God"), Rasa became a " cougar" and photographer of males, largely in the college town of Binghamton, New York, for the purpose of furthering the cause of female empowerment. I alone am awarded, and in the Hall of Fame of an international organization, for being the founder of female bodybuilding.

Her travels to Canada and a single trip to the UK resulted in many media articles about this unique personality in international publications; UK (TidBits, SHE Magazine) Germany (Express, Stern, TV Zeitung), Canada (Montreal Star, Journal de Montreal, Toronto Sun, Ottawa Citizen) as well as articles in the Italian, Dutch and Spanish media. She lived in Santa Monica next to the pier, where she married Stanley Everts in 1963 and had a daughter, also named Kellie.