Muscular and gorgeous, Cathey was a fixture in the mainstream muscle media during her short but glorious career, and without doubt one of my favourite bodybuilders from the early days of my female muscle lovin’ life.
I remember this issue of Flex very clearly, Cathey’s beautiful body screaming out at me from the cover. And inside, pages of her to drool over. Kind of makes you nostalgic for the days when muscle magazines did feature female bodybuilders, doesn’t it? Days when the female side of the sport wasn’t under the kind of fire it has to put up with now.
Or was it? It’s easy to look back on the late 80s and early 90s as ‘The Golden Years’, to wish that it could be now as it was then. But beware. The IFBB have been dictating what a female bodybuilder should be since before Cathey’s time. The scan above is from an article in an old issue of Musclemag, presumably from between 1985 and 1988 because that was when Cathey was active. It begins: ‘With the IFBB encouraging breast augmentation…’
Fortunately, Cathey was having none of it. It continues: ‘… many women bodybuilders are resorting to implants, but Cathey Palyo, for one, feels implants are not for her. Here she outlines her chest training program and encourages all women to get a big chest the old-fashioned way – earn it!’
And she was as good as her word on that front.
As I said, I’d never forgotten Cathey, but researching this post led me to find how much more there was to admire about her than the perfect body and the perfect face. Her stance on the breast augmentation issue is only one of a number of discoveries that have made me wonder whether my admiration for her, and other women of the era, might have been even greater than it already was if I had spent more time actually reading the articles that accompanied the pictures.
But, in my defence…
Cathey’s win at the Ms International in 1988 was the pinnacle of her brief but stellar career. She started competing in 1985 and just a year later won pretty much everything she entered. The NPC Tournament of Champions was followed by the NPC contest in her home state of California. Then she won the NPC USA and IFBB World Amateur titles, finishing 1986 as NPC National champion.
After just one appearance on stage in 1987 at the Ms Olympia, where she finished 14th, she competed three more times, all in 1988. Her win at the Ms International was by far the highlight, seeing off the likes of Sandy Riddell, Jackie Paisley and Della Wagnon. After a 4th place at the Pro World Championship and a 16th at the Ms Olympia, Cathey put an end to her competitive career.
According to an article about the (then) forthcoming Ms Olympia in the Los Angeles Times in 1988, Cathey did it all for the love of training, freely admitting ‘I know I’m a freak’. Perhaps she decided that earning such little prize money as a pro was scant reward for her efforts. Although she was reportedly the third highest earner in the sport in 1988, she had made just $7,500. Perhaps she saw the signs of what was happening in the sport and wasn’t prepared to put up with the way the IFBB liked to dictate their own vision of a female bodybuilder onto the sport. Perhaps I’m way off and it had nothing to do with any of this.
Nevertheless, I’m glad she did have her moment in the female muscle sun.
I’ll leave you with this, my personal favourite quote of hers, from an interview in an issue of Musclemag…
When people ask me if I lift weights, I tell them “No, I just play a LOT of tennis.”
Celebrate the Ms International some more with us tomorrow...
But don't forget to sign the petition!
