I'm flexi and I know it

At Carnival City recently, beautiful bodies were prepared and displayed in a loud, coiffed rendition of a cattle fair, writes Oliver Roberts

I once went to an agricultural fair in Pretoria where cattle were judged on a number of criteria - fat content, body shape etc - then sent off a day later to be slaughtered and have their carcasses assessed again for their naked, beefy perfection. Recently, I attended a very similar show, only this time it involved humans instead of cattle, and the humans, of course, would not be hauled off to an abattoir in bleak Cullinan a day later, they would merely be going back to gym.

The strapping specimens - male and female - were competitors in the World Beauty Fitness and Fashion contest (WBFF), held over two days at tawdry Carnival City in Brakpan. And it was as they stood in line, in the dark, awaiting their moment to walk onto the bright stage, that I noticed a striking resemblance to their bovine brothers and sisters. For not only were they being judged for similar standards - fat content, body shape, general all-round deliciousness - each contestant had a small disc with a number on it pinned to their shorts or bikini bottoms, just like the cattle had pinned to their ears. Numbers at a meat market, both.

The similarities ended there, but only because cattle have no sense of vanity, nor do they have the anatomical means to apply makeup, hairspray and tan-in-a-can. Because, in WBFF, the state of your face gives you an edge as much as the state of your body. That, apparently is the difference between this display of photo-shopped physiques and body building.

"You have to be good-looking," said Marco Petrowski, who had blond hair swept into a dramatic fringe and was covered in tattoos. When he came on stage in tight boxer shorts, the announcer declared him to be a "the epitome of the bad-boy look".

"It's about hair, face, posture, persona," Petrowski continued, "the energy that you're throwing out to everyone. It's aesthetics."

So the competitors who do best are the ones who put on a good show. And, from what I saw, this means perfecting your walk and displaying your muscles via a series of remarkable and absurd poses, while goading the sparse audience into whistles and whoops over the thump of techno music.

It's hard work, of course. Competitors spend up to 20 weeks training and eating unnatural amounts of broccoli, boiled chicken and rice to get their bodies primed for parade.

It's backstage. Over the whizz of hairdryers and the tropical pong of fake tan, the final preparations are made. Detailed fussing results in French manicures, elaborate cosmetics and completely - completely - hairless bodies.

In the minutes before they walk on to be scrutinised, the men, in a frantic effort to pump up their torsos for what could be the decisive extra bulge, perform press-ups and pull circa 1987 chest expanders.

The queuing women, on the other hand, ready themselves by posing brazenly for the Sunday Times's lensman, throwing each other furtive, bitchy stares.

"Girls tend to feel a bit more insecure than guys do, so when they see someone that's usually at the top, they get a bit scared," said Michelle Van Rooyen, a 23-year old blonde Amazon who is used to winning.

Her mother wanted her to enter Miss South Africa, but Michelle found this sort of competition more authentic. "Every girl loves to be admired, and it's lovely getting dressed up and strutting my stuff up on stage. But with this, I'm also getting acknowledged for putting hard work into it, not just for looking like a little poppie."

Male competitor Shermah Machacha, a lawyer, claims that girls go ''gaga" over his striated torso. However, when I asked one female competitor what she thinks of the colossal men on oily display, she told me, on condition of anonymity, that she doesn't like it. "Not at all," she said. "A lot of them work more on their bodies than on their minds."

An unfair appraisal, perhaps, but I doubt that any of the boys I saw using hair straighteners and glorifying themselves before a smudged mirror would give a damn.