Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 2, 1994 TAG: 9404020085
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN WILSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
When she was 2, she'll tell you with a smile, she was "the Kmart baby."
It was her picture the store ran each time it advertised one of its photo package promotions.
Thursday afternoon, Christi stood in the middle of a banquet room in the Sheraton Inn Roanoke Airport wearing not much more than a tiny bikini and a really great tan.
She was one of the women who turned out in response to a classified ad looking for "luscious lovelies" to act as ring "girls" for tonight's Slugfest '94 boxing extravaganza at the Roanoke Civic Center.
Don't know what a ring girl is?
Think "Rocky." They were the girls in bathing suits teetering around in high heels holding numbered cards high above their glossy faces and sky-high hair to let you know how many rounds Rocky and Apollo Creed had gone.
Bryant doesn't find the prospect of wolf whistles from thousands of boxing-frenzied men anything to worry about.
"If they whistle because they think I look good, then that makes me feel good," she explained after posing for Polaroid photos to go with her registration form.
"I mean, it's not like I'm going home with any of them or anything."
Bryant, Miss City of Salem, is a veteran of 13 beauty pageants - "and I placed in all but one."
Launching a modeling career in Roanoke can Bryant be discouraging. When a business called C&N Productions blew through town last year, Bryant modeled lingerie for what she was told was a lingerie catalog and sales video.
She also modeled lingerie at a car show at the Salem Civic Center.
"They promised us $70 in lingerie and $10 an hour," she recalled. "The next thing we knew, they'd left town, and we didn't get paid a cent."
Tonight, Bryant has her eye on the $500 prize for the top ring girl.
"I need to get my car fixed!"
So before tonight's match, she planned to hit Glamour Shots at Valley View Mall for the full glitz treatment.
Jay Lynch of Roanoke heads up New Age Enterprises, the group that promotes and sponsors the Slugfest and the ring girl competition.
"We just love boxing," he said. "And ring girls are just part of promoting it."
The preregistration session this week wasn't part of the competition. And it didn't really require that the women strip down to a bathing suit.
They could wear anything they liked. But winning in anything more than a tiny bikini is doubtful, even though the women were told "poise, attitude, charm and grace are the key prerequisites for a successful ring girl."
The actual competition takes place this evening during Slugfest, where the crowd will determine who gets the $500 top prize, $250 for second place, $150 for third and $50 each for fourth and fifth.
"I'm not going to sit here and tell a girl that she's not good-looking enough to do this," said John Hannabass, who photographed each woman who registered.
"The crowd will weed them out."
New Age Enterprises also offered an opportunity for the women to get together for a group photo so they could size up the competition. The assumption is that some women will see who they are up against and decide not to show up at the event.
Pam Rader - 5-foot-1 without the spike heels - was worried Rader about being too short.
"I am so nervous," she said to friend Stephanie Moore, who came along for moral support. "I get nervous when people look at me."
She seemed none too nervous wearing her black bikini for the Polaroid.
"I just think it'll be a wild experience," she said later.
The men who run New Age Enterprises don't think being a ring girl is cause for shame. On the registration form, women were asked to write if they considered it degrading.
"I don't think it's degrading at all," Rader declared. `'If you've got it, I say flaunt it. Women who think it's degrading probably just wish they had it."
Bryant agreed.
"If being a ring girl is degrading, then so would modeling," she said. "So would beauty pageants.
"I don't think Cindy Crawford feels degraded, do you?"
by CNB