Empowered

My husband gave me a sledgehammer for my birthday. Yes, a sledgehammer. Turns out, it was exactly what I needed

- By Eva Layton Lux

The contest was called Battle of Texas. More than 500 competitors. Fifteen hundred fans. A crew ready to slather contestants with tanning oil and body glaze.

I was backstage at the Irving Convention Center, near Dallas. Stage lights blazed on the other side of the curtain. DJ music thumped. The crowd roared for favorite competitors.

I stood at the head of a line to go onstage, wearing an outfit I wouldn’t be caught dead in anywhere else: a ridiculously small bikini, clear plastic platform heels, hair sprayed stiff, skin brown and shiny with glaze.

I was competing in my first ever bodybuilding contest. I was so anxious, I could hardly stand up.

In just a few minutes, someone would call my number. I would walk upstairs to the stage and flex my muscles in a series of required poses. Lights would blind me. I wouldn’t be able to see my husband and the rest of my family in the audience. Seven judges would scrutinize me from head to toe.

Why had I ever decided to do this? I was 48 years old. A twice-divorced mother of two grown kids and a grandmother of three, whose previous weight-lifting experience consisted of lifting groceries out of the trunk of my car. I looked nothing like the toned, sculpted competitors around me. A year ago, I’d been a flabby 190 pounds. I’m just shy of five-foot-three, by the way.