Mimi Jabalee

It's a reaction that is typical of Mimi, a 36 year-old chiropractor from Marietta, Ga. Soft-spoken and thoughtful and yet exuding confidence, Mimi has been competing in bodybuilding for 10 years, but in that time she has done a total of only six shows, reflecting her belief that, in bodybuilding as in life, patience is all-important. "That’s what it takes to improve yourself, especially as a woman," she says. "You can't rush it. Time is such a valuable commodity."

Before the 2003 Nationals, Mimi had only competed at Nationals once before, placing eighth in the heavyweights in Atlanta in 2001. But as soon as the heavyweights – all 38 of them – stepped onstage for the pre-judging at the Jackie Gleason Theater, it was clear Mimi was in the top three. At just under 5-foot-7 and 156 pounds, Mimi was not the biggest woman onstage, but her spectacular delts and stunning v-taper made her look almost as if she was, especially when she hit a back double biceps shot. She was in phenomenal condition, with deep cuts everywhere and unreal legs (just check out the cross-striations in her quads in the photos accompanying this article). Mimi's placing was especially impressive since Annie Rivieccio, the eventual heavyweight and overall winner, had been competing at the national level for a decade. At Nationals in Dallas next year, all eyes will be on Mimi. "I'll look just as good, if not better," she says.

Mimi Jabalee, whose family is of Lebanese origin, grew up in Michigan as the youngest of six siblings – "the baby of the family," as she puts it. At the age of six, she was diagnosed with ITP, an autoimmune disease that causes sudden uncontrollable bleeding. After being hospitalised for six weeks, she was about to undergo chemotherapy, when the disease suddenly disappeared. To Mimi and her family, it was a small miracle, and one that had a profound effect on them. "I think they saw a magic in me," she says. "I was going to do something special."

As a teenager, Mimi was a star athlete, excelling at various sports including basketball and fast-pitch softball. She was all set to get a softball scholarship to college when, in the second game of the season in her senior year at high school, she broke her fibula as she slid to second base. The injury ended her softball career and forced her to abandon her plans for her future. "It was so devastating and unexpected," she says. "I think at that point in time, it was a whole transformation process beginning that I wasn't quite aware of," she says.

Mimi had always been fascinated by the human body and was intrigued by bodybuilding. When she was in high school she had flipped through bodybuilding magazines and looked in awe at women like Rachel McLish. Then, in her senior year in high school, she got a job working on the front desk of a gym and started, as she puts it, "playing around" with the equipment. "I remember flexing my quads in the mirror at the gym and seeing the separations," she laughs. "It was just from my athletics and my genetics. I wasn't working out - I was just doing it because people in the gym were doing - but I was kind of enthralled that I could just flex my legs and there it was. Of course it was a skinny leg but it was there!"

Mimi decided she wanted to become a chiropractor, and after attending the local community college for a couple of years, she moved to Georgia to start pre-req classes before attending Life chiropractic college in Marietta. Soon afterwards, aged 20, she joined the local Gold's (where, coincidentally, she met Annie Rivieccio, who was also a member there) and got hooked on training. "I fell absolutely in love with it," she says.

Mimi soon switched to Coffee's gym, a hardcore gym in Marietta, where Colleen Colley, an Olympic lifter, took her under her wing. And that's when Mimi began to pack on the size. "I started eating like mad," she says. "As soon as I picked up the weights, my appetite grew, my mental appetite grew, and I think I jumped up to 140 pounds within a couple of months. It was purely carbohydrates. I was eating protein and carbohydrates every two hours. I ate the crap out of pasta, and it put the weight on me!"

As Mimi grew and realized her potential for bodybuilding, her competitive spirit re-awakened. "When I found something I enjoyed doing, I wanted to do it a lot and I wanted to do it well," she says. In 1992 she graduated from chiropractic college and in the same month did her first bodybuilding show, the NPC Georgia, taking second place in the middleweights.

For the next five years, as she focused on establishing her chiropractic practice, Mimi carried on hitting the weights hard and eating, but didn't compete. Gradually, however, the urge built up again. In 1997, with a lot more muscle on her frame, she did the Georgia and again took second place in the middleweights. Meanwhile her 19 year-old nephew Doug Jabalee, who like Mimi had moved to Marietta to attend Life chiropractic college, had also begun competing. Mimi and Doug fuelled each other's passion for bodybuilding, and as they both developed they began to see remarkable similarities in their physiques. (Doug is now also a national-level bodybuilder.) After doing the Georgia again in 1999, this time as a heavyweight (and again placing second), she won the NPC Eastern Seaboard in 2001, qualifying her for the Nationals.

This year, Mimi plans to refine her physique and promises to look even better at Nationals in Dallas in 2004 than she did in Miami. She says she does not plan to get much bigger – "I feel like I don't need it " – but will work on refining her shape to give the illusion of size. "I'll appear larger this time, in the all the right places," she laughs.

"A small waist, broad shoulders, nice quad sweep, and proportionate calves" is how Mimi describes how she wants to look. Her goal is to create "something very fluid and balanced and pleasing to the eye, even to the eye of someone who doesn't know anything about it." In fact, she says, what makes her most proud is when even people who know nothing about bodybuilding compliment her on her body. "People come to me - people that don't know how to judge a bodybuilder's physique - but for some reason, they say, 'You know what, it looks right. It just looks right.'"

Whether or not she gets her pro card in the future, Mimi hopes she can inspire other women to pursue their dreams just as she has pursued hers. "There are probably a lot of women and even younger girls out there that would like to lift weights but have this pre-conceived notion that they're not going to get accepted, whether it's by family, by the general public or even by the male population," Mimi says. "Bodybuilding is not for everyone. But for those that have a love and a passion for it, I would hate for them to miss out on experiencing that part of their being just because of a fear – of rejection or of anything else."

Mimi herself got over those fears a long time ago. Now, when people stare at her or make dumb comments, she is pretty relaxed about it. "I understand it," she says. "People go though a whole mix of thoughts and emotions at times when they look at someone like me. They don't know what they should think, and that makes them feel uncomfortable. They don't know if they should think that I'm trying to intimidate them, or if they should think they should like what they see, or that they think shouldn't like what they see. I just brush it off and try to keep my perspective in check and in balance on a positive level, because it's very easy not to in this world we live in."

The following evening, I get to see first hand what she means. As she sits down at a sushi restaurant in Miami Beach with a group of friends, she overhears a woman at a table nearby saying to her boyfriend, "Is that a man or a woman?" Mimi puts her bag down, walks to the woman's table and leans over to her, and calmly says, "Honey, I'm a woman."