Kristin Kaye was a wide-eyed 23 year-old fresh out of drama school in 1993 when she responded to a classified ad that read: “administrative assistant wanted for exciting women’s project.” What she didn’t know at the time was that the project was a Broadway show entitled “The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World,” the brainchild of bodybuilder and writer Laurie Fierstein. Kaye ended up getting hired as the show’s director and had just six weeks to put it together. Iron Maidens is her funny, readable account of what followed: a regular girl’s journey into the world of women’s bodybuilding.

Although Kaye was a “Title IX baby” with what she calls “feminist tendencies”, she had never seen a female bodybuilder before she came face-to-face with the 4-foot-10, 162-pound Fierstein in a tiny New York apartment. But after hearing Fierstein’s vision for the show, which was supposed to showcase women’s physical and intellectual strength, Kaye was enthusiastic, feeling like she “had been chosen for this position to represent a new female voice, a voice that took the torch of feminism and carried it for a new generation,” and got to work.

Needless to say, the show turned out somewhat differently than Kaye expected. She alternates between telling the chaotic story of her struggle to co-ordinate 25 performers and egos, all with different, wacky ideas of what they want to do onstage, from lifting guys above their heads to stripping, and telling the history of female bodybuilding, from its beginnings in the late 1970s right through to last year’s IFBB ruling telling female bodybuilders, fitness and figure athletes to become 20% less muscular. There are also sections on steroids, sessions, and a great description of the 2003 Nationals in Miami Beach (“What a competition is like”), which brilliantly conveys the atmosphere at a big contest.

What makes this book unique is that Kaye writes from the perspective of an outsider seeing the world of women’s bodybuilding for the first time, but is also great at getting inside the heads of the competitors she encounters. In a great chapter called “What it’s like to be a Female Bodybuilder” that even fans of women’s bodybuilding will learn something from, the author follows national-level heavyweight Sheila Bleck through her contest prep. Describing the last week before the show, she writes: “During this time Sheila feels untouchable, as if she’s floating out of this world, and also as if she could cry. […] She’s in a weird twilight zone and is wired and sleepy all at the same time.”

In chapters like this, which were written several years after “The Celebration” is over, it’s obvious that Kaye has moved beyond her initial shock and bafflement at female bodybuilders, through fascination, to genuine admiration for them. Hopefully, a lot of readers will do too.

“Iron Maidens” is published September 13, 2005. To order from Amazon.com, click here.

More info at www.kristinkaye.com.