Anatomy of a Contest: The Week Prior

I don't mean the anatomy of the competitors.  They pretty much speak for themselves.

But the actual contests are a thing unlike any other I’ve been a part of.  Really, where else can you ogle a group of mostly naked people and have comments like, “Check out those glutes!” be not only appropriate, but expected?

 Generally, the process goes something like this:

The Week Prior:

The week before the contest is a busy one for the competitors.  Many of them change their diets during this week to be as lean as they can be on contest day.  Bodybuilder Hubby used to cut back significantly on his water intake so that his skin would “shrink-wrap” around his muscles so the veins and muscle fibers (“striations”) would be more visible.  Kind of gross, I know.

During that week the competitors have a scheduled appointment for a polygraph (lie detector) test.   For the NGA contests, competitors have to be drug-free (basically no steroids or growth hormones or other banned substances) for seven years to be allowed to compete.   The polygraph test is the first step in determining if each competitor is drug free.  (The Pro competitors and a random selection of amateurs also do a urinalysis on the day of the show.  And yes, unfortunately there have been times when a competitor didn’t make it through this process.)  Every year I’m tempted to show up during Bodybuilder Hubby’s polygraph test to ask some questions of my own: “Do you like my hair better when it’s long?” “Do you think I’m a good mother to our kids?” “Do these pants make my butt look big?” 

A couple days before the contest, Bodybuilder Hubby starts painting himself.  There are several different tanning products on the market; he usually uses a combination of two or three.  My job is to paint his back, since he can’t see it (or reach it) to do it all himself.  For a few years he used this stuff that would brush on with one of those foam paint brushes.  One year I left a long scratch up the length of his back from the metal edge of the paint brush base.  Oops.

Then for a while, he used a spray-on tanning stuff that he basically air brushed over his entire self.  I hated that stuff.  It smelled awful - this horrible alcohol, chemical kind of smell - that would hang in the air for days.  And every surface in that bathroom would end up coated in this orange mist.  As soon as he left in the morning the day of the contest, I would scrub the bathroom within an inch of its life to get the color and smell out.  Ugh.

The stuff that he uses most often now is called Dream Tan, a thick, slick paste that he pats on with his fingertips.  Swipe in the jar, then pat, pat, pat onto the skin.  When he’s all painted up, Bodybuilder Hubby looks a lot like a life-size Academy Awards Oscar statue.

Up close, the tan color on the competitors looks bizarre: dirty and freakishly orange.  But it totally makes a difference on stage.  Once they get under those bright lights, the guys who went light on the tanning stuff (or the one guy I’ve seen who didn’t use any at all) look sickly and puffy.  More Pillsbury Doughboy than Oscar statue.

Beware accidentally brushing against a competitor in the aisle, or forgetting one is covered in sticky goo as you give an innocent congratulatory hug.  Your clothes will never be the same.