Beginning of Essay
"Yo, Yo, Yo -- go girl!" "Hey, over here -- We here for you, girl!" "You look good! REAL GOOD!" This is family and neighborhood pride at stake on the stage tonight. Sisters, mothers, boyfriends, husbands, cousins, and friends from the outer boroughs, Jersey, Phill ....

Middle of Essay
.... only one third of the bodies on stage tonight are black.1 Bodybuilding is a "sport of plastic form"2 judged entirely subjectively, aesthetically. There is no tape to burst through, no millisecond record to shatter. Even though this display is both celebratory and voluntary, for the black women on some level the stakes are the same as those placed on the bodies of the African women, our ancestors, who survived the Middle Passage3 only to be corralled and sold to the highest bidder upon their arrival. We have all been taught: Whenever you so much as step outside your house, you are representing the race. Black females have historically not been in the ....