# Doris Barrilleaux, female bodybuilding pioneer



## Curt James (Mar 18, 2011)

*Pioneer female bodybuilder still an iron maven at 79*

By Kim Wilmath, Times Staff Writer 
March 20, 2011

    Doris Barrilleaux can barely reach the steering wheel of her   champagne Honda anymore, not without one of those humiliating little   pillows.    She used to be 5 feet 4. Now she's 5-3. This seems to  irritate her far more than all the other reminders of her 79 years.     More than the silver tufts that were once bouncy curls or the  crinkles  around her eyes. More than her occasional forgetfulness and  even more  than the slight downgrade in the weight of her dumbbells.    These small  changes, she can handle.    But shrinking? Certainly not.    She is,  after all, the widely recognized godmother of female bodybuilding ??? a  woman deemed sexy by Arnold Schwarzenegger. 






Doris Barrilleaux gets a hug from Arnold Schwarzenegger 
in early March at her induction into the National Fitness 
Hall of Fame.

    Shrinking means growing old, feeble, weak.    Doris doesn't do "weak." 

Bodybuilding is a sport without a game, where you play for your team and against it. You compete with yourself.    
    For Doris, the battle began in 1955.    Birthing four babies had  made her slender, athletic frame alarmingly  cushy. So, following advice  in men's magazines, she picked up weight  training.    When she was  pregnant the fifth time, you didn't know it until she turned sideways.     

    In the years that followed, Doris, then working as a flight   attendant, entered photos of herself into fitness magazines. She   strutted on stage in fledgling female bodybuilding contests and in 1979   organized the first known competition for women, the Ms. Brandon   Physique.    

    With a couple of friends, she founded the Superior Physique   Association and put out a magazine to foster the budding women's   industry. 





Doris Barrilleaux strikes a pose after winning her first 
bodybuilding  competition in the 1970s. Before then, the 
competitions for women had  been basically beauty contests. 
Barrilleaux had been weight training  since the 1950s.

    She published a few books, appeared on TV and traveled around the   world photographing and judging professional competitions. Back then,   female bodybuilders were more sleek and toned than today's brawny   competitors. "In my day the women looked like women," Doris explains.     

    Local fitness promoter and professional bodybuilding judge Tim   Gardner calls Doris his second mom. "She is the main reason why we have   female bodybuilding," he said. "She's legendary."    

    "She was a mentor to us," said former competitor Deborah Diana, now   an art teacher in Pennsylvania. "I hate to say motherly, but she did   take care of the girls, made sure they were in a good place."    

    "It's kind of sad. Sometimes the person who starts it all never gets   the just reward," said former bodybuilder John Schleicher, now a   Chamberlain High School teacher, noting that Doris' vision grew into a   multimillion-dollar industry. "There's nothing they can give her that's   undeserved." 

    Just this month, Doris was inducted into the National Fitness Hall  of  Fame along with eight-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney, jump-roping   world-record breaker Mark Rothstein, fitness video guru Cathe Friedrich   and the late floor-exercise pioneer Joseph Pilates.    "(Doris) was  able to elevate the whole fitness industry to include  this whole  untapped population," said Hall of Fame director John  Figarelli.    

    "Don't tell me I can't do something," said Doris. 

When Doris hit her 50s, her body amped up the offense. Skin drooped in places; she noticed lines in her face.    
    Those hurdles were the manageable ones.    

    Outside her personal competition, her husband of 37 years ??? her high school sweetheart ??? wanted a divorce.     
    Her son, Gary, was killed in a motorcycle accident.    Another son,  Jerry, died of AIDS.     Then her mother "just dropped dead." Doctors  suspected a stroke.    Wondering why wouldn't do any good.    Doris went  out to the barn-turned-weight room beside her house and cranked out  lateral pulls and calf raises. 

    If you know Doris, you know she doesn't dwell on the tough stuff.     Oh, she'll talk about it ??? sit there in her gold velour sweat pants   and offer you a sugar-free tropical punch as she lists the tragedies   like bullet points. But a few minutes into the conversation she'll be   showing you a photo of herself with Lou Ferrigno and complimenting your   calves.    

    "It happened, and you can't change it," she said. "You can't lie  down and die, too, you know?"    She seems to live in the present almost  to a fault, flitting between  unfinished sentences and continually  leaping from her chair to find some  document or picture.    

    Somebody once called her a hummingbird, which she liked. Somebody   else once suggested she "age gracefully," which she did not like.      Doris still rides her bike at least 5 miles a day, does nearly all  her  own home repairs and lifts 10-pound dumbbells while she watches   television. 





Doris Barrilleaux, 79, one of the country???s first female 
bodybuilders,  does curls while watching TV. She has been 
inducted into the National  Fitness Hall of Fame.

    Her diet is simple: cereal, soup, chicken pot pies from the freezer,  a  good many salads, a fistful of vitamins. She allows herself  chocolate  in moderation, but abstains if she begins to exceed 124  pounds.    

    She won't say if she's had any cosmetic surgery*, besides the permanent lipstick and eyeliner tattooed on her face.    
    She says her doctor loves her.    "I always feel good," Doris said. "How can I feel old?"    

    An issue of _Parade_ magazine sits on her coffee table, the cover story promising "the secrets to a long life."    
    Doris hasn't had a chance to read it.    

    Age is one of those things that settles in slowly, like tarnish on a  shiny trophy.    You don't see it until one day you do.    On Doris'  70th birthday she tried too hard to start a weed trimmer  and tore a  piece of her right biceps. Five years later her rotator cuff  ripped as  she tried to pedal her bike through a particularly thick hunk  of grass.     

    At 77 she woke up with a weird aching in her left arm and went home from the hospital with a stent in her heart.    
    It's not easy to accept. Not with so much left to do. "Well, I've  got to pressure-wash the roof, paint that side of the  house. I want to  work on my flower beds," Doris explains.    

    And then there's the book.    

    For the past five years, just about all day, every day, Doris has  sat  at the computer in her cluttered home office working on an   autobiography titled _And I Did_, which she'll release on DVD to accommodate photos and videos.    
    All over the walls, shelves and in five bulky filing cabinets are   awards, magazines, negatives and newspaper clippings. An old poster of   an impossibly strong Tarzan hangs nearby.    

    "I'm the oldest in my family," Doris said. "If I don't write the  book, all this will be lost."    She's just about finished with the last  chapter, and thank goodness.    Sometimes she'll start telling a story,  then forget what she was  saying. She swears it doesn't bother her,  though ??? it happens to her  10-year-old grandson, too.    

    When it happened the other day, she hurried over to the computer to   scroll through pages and pages of memories, hitting "Save" when she was   through. 





The steely senior shows her good form against a backdrop 
of items that  she collected in her travels at bodybuilding
 competitions and as a  flight attendant. She still rides her 
bike at least 5 miles a day and  lifts dumbbells.

From *Pioneer female bodybuilder still an iron maven at 79 - St. Petersburg Times*

###

*Regarding cosmetic surgery, Barrilleux and her then  husband documented their facelift surgery in the pages of either  Strength & Health or Muscular Development years ago. Perhaps the  readers of the St. Petersburg Times aren't familiar with bodybuilding  history, but I recall that article which offered actual pics of the  procedure the husband and wife underwent way back when.


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## niki (Mar 18, 2011)

Wow.....I am printing her picture and putting it on my wall of inspiration......She is amazing!  To think that body had FIVE babies..... What an incredible person.


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## sassy69 (Mar 18, 2011)

Doris was the "official show photographer" at my first BB competition in S. Florida in 2000. Little did I know that this older lady w/ the camera, was probably one of the people who made it possible for me to even be on that stage.

She took her photos in black & white and I love them. 

Doris is truly an inspiration and a trailblazer for women's BB.


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## JerseyDevil (Mar 21, 2011)

Very nice story. What an awesome woman.


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## Gena Marie (Mar 22, 2011)

What an amazing woman and an inspiring story.  Curt, thanks


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## Curt James (Mar 23, 2011)




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## iron_rs (May 9, 2011)

I didn't know about her.  She is awesome!!!!!


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## GRIZZLY56 (May 9, 2011)

I've liked female bodybuilders since I was old enough to buy my first muscle mag.


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