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The strength makes you self-assured. The grace makes you more feminine." At 5 ft. 7½ in. and 143 lbs., Navratilova is a Maillol sculpture with a ferocious court sense.
"I was born with this body," she says.
"When I was two years old, I already had little biceps. As a kid in Czechoslovakia, I felt out of place. But the attitude toward women's bodies has changed, and I grew into my body. Now I wouldn't change it for anything."
Across the world from Czechoslova kia, in Toronto, Olinekova had felt the same childhood alienation: "I was a me somorphic woman growing up in an endomorphic world. That look — fleshy and round with curves in all the right places — was a product of genes. You were born with it or you weren't. Today's beauty is heaven sent but earth improved. Women are making themselves stronger and appreciating it in other women. Two years ago, when I'd run down the street in my bikini, it was the men who'd be crashing their cars into telephone poles. Now the women look and go crazy. 'Look at those legs!' they shout. 'Way to go!' " It is the way those aristocrats of physical culture, the modern and ballet dancers, have always gone. Says Impresario Paul Taylor: "The dancer's body is superb as a functioning instrument to accomplish physical feats." Deb bie Allen, who plays a dance teacher and serves as choreographer on the NBC-TV series Fame, sees dancing as "a precision art. Doing the things your body might not want to do keeps your mind alert and elevated." And, as Choreographer Patricia Birch (Grease) notes, "other people are admiring dancers' bodies to the point of emulating them. Muscles have become the status symbol of fitness."
As a symbol of status, health or sex appeal, the strong body is a sensible goal — and not only for those women whose livelihoods depend on the rigorous care and feeding of their bodies. Jane Doe, as as well well as Jane Fonda, is making a good habit out of exercise, sport and weight lifting, and has the new body to prove it. Lisa Yeager, 23, is a secretary at an Atlanta bank and a cheerleader for the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. "A well-toned body shows me that a woman cares enough about herself to improve herself. I exercise because it makes me feel good, not because of how men react to it." Says Gail Eisen, 40, a producer at CBS News in New York and co-author of The Pilates Method of Physical and Mental Conditioning: "Just being thin isn't pretty any more. Now beauty is the vibrancy of someone who's got blood rushing through her body from exercise. To be beautiful you have to be healthy. And to be healthy you have to exercise."
That is just what the physically active woman is doing, while maintaining a full-time successful career. Dr. Frances Conley, 42, is a Palo Alto, Calif., brain surgeon who trades in her scalpel for a javelin once a week. Beth Edens, 31, is usually on the move as a sales representative for a Houston printing company but still finds time to keep in shape with aerobic-exercise classes. "It's mental health," she says. "If it helps me physically, fine. But most of all it's a release."