Rasa von Werder

Rasa Von Werder (also known as Kellie Everts; born Rasa Sofija Jakštaitė or Jakstas, July 16, 1945) is a German-born author, former stripper, female bodybuilder, photographer, and spiritual leader.

Personal life

Rasa Von Werder, née Rasa Sofija Jakstaite or Jakstas, was born on July 16, 1945, in Calw, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. She is of Lithuanian, Russian and Mongolian descent. Her parents, Stasys and Regina Jakstas, had fled from Lithuania (then part of the Soviet Union) under Stalin. They briefly lived in a displaced persons camp before travelling to the USA aboard naval ship USS Heintzelman.

Von Werder's family settled in a Lithuanian community in Newark, New Jersey, where her father helped to found a Lithuanian school.

At sixteen she moved (with one of Marilyn Monroe's photographers) to Hollywood, California, where she began a career in show business. She married Stanley Everts in 1963 and had a daughter named Kellie. Stanley Everts died in 1966.

After ten years of living in California, she returned to Williamsburg, where she spent 17 years. She started a successful business and acquired $200,000 in savings, which she used to buy a house in Upstate New York, where she has lived ever since.

She married Richard Allan Von Werder in 2000 after being engaged since 1986, and they remained married until his 2002 death. During her engagement and marriage, Rasa/Kellie maintained her celibacy, as their relationship was platonic, which Richard Von Werder understood was for the sake of God.

Career

Female bodybuilding and strip dancing

Everts helped popularise female bodybuilding. She began competing in beauty/fitness contests in New York City in 1972. Due to her work, which included a six-page layout in Esquire magazine in July 1975, television appearances on To Tell the Truth, The Mike Douglas Show and The Stanley Siegel Show, and inaugurating female bodybuilding in the May 1977 of Playboy magazine, serious female fitness and bodybuilding contests got started - the first of which occurred six months after her Playboy spread, "Humping Iron". She had apparently presented the article to Playboy many months before they used it, and they were uncertain if the idea of female body building would be acceptable. But when the film Pumping Iron came out, they parodied it. Kellie then asked Jean-Paul Goude to produce it and present it to Playboy - as he had done with his successful "Muscle and Grit - Religion and Tit - That's What Kellie Everts is Made of" article in Esquire - the first such appearance worldwide. To them it was a lark, tongue in cheek, but the public was apparently mesmerized and great attention was given it. Many interviews and TV shows thus followed, including a tour in Washington, D.C. When the furor had died down by 1976, Kellie had then suggested to Goude that they should do the same subject for Playboy. He predicted that Playboy would reject it, and suggested instead Oui magazine, but Kellie insisted on Playboy. Playboy had agreed to pay half and, in case they used it, the other half, and there it was in May 1977. Six months later, in November 1977, the first muscle contest for women was held. Henry McGhee of the Canton, Ohio YMCA could have seen the Playboy article stating "To the Barbells, Girls!" and held a serious muscle contest for women. Then they began; female bodybuilding shows here and there - some not so big, got bigger when the IFBB associates staged them. There was the IFBB Miss Fitness 1979, IFBB Ms. Olympia 1980. More shows followed and they were promoted in the Joe Weider publications, and hundreds, later thousands, of women began to train and compete. Kellie Everts elaborated on this in one of her many books, The Origin & Decline of Female Body Building (2011), and also in a 2019 interview with David Robson.

Everts had also apparently modeled for famed photographers Irving Penn and Helmut Newton as well. The first for Vogue magazine, 1980, featured her arm flexing a bicep pose, which was used in Vogue and the New York Times advertising the article. Helmut Newton photographed her in a layout for Oui, doing exercises in a white bikini and a white mink coat, but the article was not used because a male model in the spread - Jimmy the Greek - threatened to sue. He apparently said "the guys won't like it - you don't know these guys" and he threatened to punch Helmut Newton out.

Despite having been the catalyst for female bodybuilding and training hard for the event, she was barred from entering the 1981 Caesars Palace Boardwalk Regency IFBB in Atlantic City, apparently due to her controversial "Stripping for God" around that time. She had called the lady who was put in charge by phone to ask admittance to the contest, but the latter apparently rambled about other women and did not invite her, no reason given (likely instructions from the IFBB). However, by then, Everts had already accomplished her goal, which was changing the Overton Window for female body building. Encyclopædia Britannica names Abye "Pudgy" Stockton of the 1940s-1950s as the first female body builder, but she did not change the Overton Window. That is, she did not appear in national/international venues for the sport; she thus remained in the "underground". Universal female muscle shows did not follow her lead. No established body building organization except the WBBG has awarded any female body builder the title of 'first' except that which was bestowed on Everts.

Everts won the titles of Miss Nude Universe in July 1967, by strutting and bouncing around totally nude in front of a totally nude audience, Miss Americana 2nd place and Best Body in 1972 (on the same stage as Arnold Schwarzenegger), Miss Body Beautiful 2nd place in 1973, first place Miss Body Beautiful U.S.A. in 1974, and Miss Americana 2nd place & Best Body 1974 (the same stage as Arnold Schwarzenegger again). At the end of this show all the male winners posed on an elevated platform - Kellie had two trophies - Second place Miss Americana and Miss Americana Best Body so she felt she deserved to be there. She hopped onto the platform and posed with Arnold, but he maneuvered and moved closer and closer to her until she had to hop off the stage.

She had made nine appearances in Playboy, and was the first female bodybuilder to do so, in the "Humping Iron" edition, May 1977 (predating Lisa Lyon's appearance by three years). Later, she appeared in a three-page spread titled "Stripping for God". Previous to these, she had a six-page spread for the 'Miss Nude Universe Contest' as the winner, in February 1968. She also predated body builder Laura Combes, 1979, when she lifted weights on the Real People show. Maria Shriver produced the documentary on Kellie Everts in 1979 where she Stripped for God (preached and danced) at Harlow's Club in New York City and lifted weights at the Mid City Gym. Local TV shows where she presented female body building were AM New York, AM Washington, and the Stanley Seigel Show - prior to all other female body builders, the dates were 1975 to 1980.

In 1979 Maria Shriver, the future wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger, produced a nine-minute documentary on Kellie Everts, which featured her praying in a church, training in a gym, and preaching/strip teasing at a club. It was the most popular presentation of that month at the station in Baltimore, Maryland.

Of Kellie's many books, there are three (all noted in the Bibliography section) that cover her bodybuilding days. They are:

1) The Man Whisperer (2024 page 110 with rare photos) – which gives a time table of her career. 2) I Strip for God part 9 – The Life in my Men (2022 page 124). It documents the relationships of Kellie Everts which were Mr. Universe, Mr. Americas: Mickey Hargitay, Vern Weaver, Harold Poole, Franco Columbu, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dennis Tinerino, Boyer Coe, Chris Dickerson and Reg Lewis. 3) The Origin and Decline of Female Body Building (2009)

The latter book explains how the genre of female bodybuilding, from that time when it did not exist, how it got started, flourished, and began to decline after the year 2000, when men got frightened by Kim Chizevsky and changed the rules. Then when Weider sold out to AMI in 2003 it was relegated down to a subculture.

Everts' dancing career went national from March 1966 to August 1987 and also included numerous shows in Canada. She quit to focus on producing dancing and female domination videos. She made enough money to purchase a 50-acre property in Upstate New York - a watery wilderness with a wide expanse of riverfront and a five-acre island with thirty trees she named "The Island of Mirth".

On February 2, 2007, the World Bodybuilding Guild (WBBG) named her "Progenitor" of Female Bodybuilding - "the Woman responsible for Modern Competitive Female Body Building" and, in August 2007, inducted her into their Hall of Fame.

Dan Lurie and Everts – the beginning

(From Dan Lurie's Book Heart of Steel Dan Lurie with Dave Robson, Author House 2009 – Page 313): "A young lady with a great physique, Kellie was as motivated to compete as any male bodybuilder I had worked with. I would promote her to the world and in doing this become the first publisher to profile a female bodybuilder."