Women of Steel

In the third round of a fight for the Women's Bantamweight Boxing Championship of the World, Graciela Casillas--lean, compact, her dark eyes spitting fire--caught Debra Wright with a right cross to the jaw. Wright went down hard, her head bobbing on the sweaty canvas in the Tucson Auto Auction Building.

"I think of myself as a warrior when I step into the ring, an honorable warrior," Graciela says later. "I never want to hurt anybody. If I were into hurting people, I could go out and pick a fight and just be a rowdy individual. But at the moment a knockout happens, it's very ... exciting. There's a rush when you hit somebody with a clean, solid punch. You know your whole body clicked."

It was nine minutes before Wright got off the canvas. Graciela, the only athlete to hold world titles in both boxing and full-contact karate, had defended one of (text concluded on page 144)Women of Steel(continued from page 111) her titles again.

In a Los Angeles branch of the May Company one day last year, security agent Roberta Vasquez spotted a woman who was stuffing her oversize fur jacket with expensive Polo shirts. "Those shirts are $32.50 apiece," says Roberta, "and she was just slapping them in her jacket, completely goin' for it!"

Roberta, like Graciela a black belt in karate, followed the woman outside. A carload of men (a low-budget polo team?) waited at the curb. When Roberta grabbed the woman's sleeve, one of them unfolded his legs and rose from the car.

"This guy was about 6'5", 225--I mean, huge. So there I was in the parking lot, pulling on this woman's jacket, pulling her hair, trying to get her back in the store, and her boyfriend starts kicking me and beating on my back. I had to let go of her and start hitting him."

Back and forth they went as a crowd gathered to gawk. Roberta tugged the woman a few steps toward the store. The boyfriend pinned her arms and smacked her on the head. She elbowed him and went for the woman. The boyfriend wrestled her to the sidewalk. She kicked him and reached for the woman.

"It went on and on, until eventually she jumped into the car. She dove right through the window. But I was still pulling on her jacket. It came off, and all the polo shirts fell out, and her blouse came off, too. She wasn't wearing a bra or anything--that gave all the people something to look at. Then the guy jumped in the car and they drove off. But I got a handful of his hair. And I got all the polo shirts back."

Then there was the night she chased a drug-addled transvestite up a flight of concrete steps, only to have him punch her out and drag her back down. Thump, thump, thump went her head, but at the bottom she got up and held him until help came. "They gave me the next day off to spend at the beach," Roberta recalls with the smile of a native Angeleno.

Pamela O'Neill, formerly a Bunny in the Buffalo Playboy Club, is currently a Buffalo Jill, a cheerleader for the N.F.L.'s Buffalo Bills. She's also a bodyguard for highly paid executives whose bodies are, presumably, more valuable but less attractive than hers. Not long ago, Pam won the Women's Bodyguard Contest in Buffalo. She can bench-press 150 pounds, run an 11-second 100-yard dash and dash the hopes of much larger opponents in any wrist-wrestling competition. "Bodybuilding and the martial arts are my hobbies," she says. "I'm a bodyguard and a financial consultant, but one of these days, I'd like to be a Broadway dancer."

Bodybuilder Anita Gandol strolled into a Pontiac, Michigan, spa three years ago and noticed she was "starting to get flabby." She stopped that right away, working out with free weights. "First, I just watched the men's bodybuilding contests, since that was about all there was. I like men's bodies. But I've been in seven women's contests since then."

Three of those ended in victories for Anita. She was Miss Detroit 1981 and Miss Midwest 1981 and 1982. "My last contest was the Ms. Olympia in Warrington, Pennsylvania. It's the most important bodybuilding competition for women, and I was in the best shape of my life. I ended up placing eleventh. There's a lot of politics...."

What do these four well-defined young women have in common, other than an uncommon beauty and a rare dedication to their crafts? For one thing, they are all concerned that in the world's narrow view they seem somehow ... well, butch.

Maybe the world should look again. While these four women are stronger than the next guy, they are no less feminine than the next Cosmo cover girl.

Graciela, the boxer, disdains boxing trunks for their everlasting formlessness. She designed the world's first boxing skirt, complete with sequins and chiffon. "Just because I step into the ring doesn't mean I lose my femininity," she jabs. "That skirt is my trademark. It's symbolic."

Anita, the bodybuilder, makes eyes pop when her muscles bulge, but otherwise she's a pleasant, occasionally giggly young Michigander. "Some people come to contests and say bodybuilding is unfeminine," she admits, "but they usually don't say it when they look at me."

Roberta, the security agent, has to tape her bust when she's on duty to keep the men she collars from getting the wrong idea. Still, she refuses to play the shrinking violet for anybody. "I like strong men," Roberta says, "but does that mean I shouldn't be able to take care of myself?"

Pam, as she breaks seven bricks with one karate chop, has an even sharper retort for those who presume to question her femininity. "I don't like rude people," she tells them.

Graciela, highest profile of the four, has a twice-broken nose that only adds character to the face that's slipped a thousand fists. She holds a master's degree in psychology from California Lutheran, has studied acting under Stella Adler and is one of the staunchest defenders of women's right to compete as women.

"The point is not to prove that we're better than men or that we can beat men," says the only woman ever to hold concurrent titles in two sports. "Men and women are different." She emphasizes her words with hand gestures that are almost too fast to follow; the listener has trouble deciding whether to watch the lightning in the hands or the lightning in the eyes. "Conditions in boxing are better for women now, but we're still far behind the men. That's not so new. Women have had to face that in every aspect of society, in every profession."

She faced it early in her career even when it came to fighting other women. She calls her signing for a 1979 fight with world champion Karen Bennett a "freak accident." It would be the first boxing match Graciela had ever fought.

"Bennett was going to defend her title two weeks later, and she needed an easy tune-up match," the current champ recalls. "I'd just been rejected for a match by the state of Texas as an 'inferior opponent.' So when Bennett needed an opponent, we had to doctor my record up. I would have done anything to get an opportunity to fight her, to be known. It wasn't even supposed to be a title fight, but I went in the ring and beat her so badly she announced her retirement that night. After that, they were really in a bind for the title fight two weeks later. They said I might as well go. I fought Ginger Kaufman, the number-two contender, and beat her in a unanimous decision. But it was a war."

Having won her boxing title and full-contact crown in 1979, and having held both ever since, Graciela is just about ready to retire from the wars. She studies acting harder than ever now, though she still trains every day, and would like to take on a few martial-arts films. Somewhere down the road, she would like to make Hollywood her corner. There's no reason to doubt her determination. Or her ambition.

"I've been in the martial-arts world for ten years now. It's been a real struggle, and I feel to this point I haven't gotten the recognition I should have. It was a surprise and an honor that Playboy thought I was beautiful enough to be in the magazine, and I'm trying at this point to develop a very visible career. I've accomplished more than most male athletes. I hold two world titles in two sports. So why not go big, so the whole world will eventually know who I am?

"Men are stronger than women," she says, getting up to leave for a flight to Los Angeles, where she was to spar with men that afternoon and kick-box with them that night. "But women have other natural gifts. One of them is endurance."

As ought to be obvious by now, endurance is not the only one.

" 'Some people say bodybuilding is unfeminine, but they usually don't say it when they look at me."