Strong Woman inspires after stumbling into superpower
Credit to Author: Matt Robinson| Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2019 23:33:47 +0000
It was while crushing an apple with her bicep in Seattle that strong woman Mama Lou realized the true extent of her superpower.
The Texan, who is slated to perform at the PNE three times a day for the next week, knew she was stronger than average people from an early age. She packed on muscle fast and could do things during aerial training that others could not, like climb a rope using only her hands, no feet.
But in Seattle, after performing feats of strength for an audience, Mama Lou figuratively crushed a group of muscle-bound guys who figured if she could do it, surely they could too. One at a time, the men placed an apple in the crook of their elbows, and one at a time they failed to squash it. So Mama Lou took over.
“I took it and I just smashed it in front of everybody. That was really, truly the moment I realized, oh, I am different,” she said.
Until that moment, Mama Lou thought of what she did as a show. But there is — or certainly appears to be — no behind-the-scenes trickery to what she accomplishes on stage, like rolling up solid steel pans into cylinders or ripping phone books in half.
The latter feat is awe-inspiring, as Mama Lou demonstrated on a busy stretch of the PNE grounds before a show Sunday.
As she gripped the pages of a Greater Austin phone book — she had to ship them in because the PNE couldn’t find enough local ones — and began to slowly rip the book in half, she attracted a semicircle of onlookers who watched with gaping eyes and dropped jaws.
“That was amazing,” one man said, with a wide grin, after the book was cleaved in two.
Strong Woman Mama Lou among the remnants of a bunch of Austin telephone books that she ripped up. Arlen Redekop/Postmedia
Mama Lou said it is hard to train for feats of strength on your own.
“Half of what I believe my superpower comes from is telling people I’m going to do this amazing thing, and then I’m like, oh crap, now I have to do it. I’m not going to get off the hook. And so being in front of the audience really makes me go about 20 per cent harder.”
Mama Lou has performed for audiences around the world, and said she has found the character she plays in her shows to be empowering for kids. One of the things she realized in stumbling onto her strength “is that sometimes it’s the thing that makes you different that actually is your superpower.”
“I could easily look at it like, I’m such a weird strong girl. I’m not flexible and bendy and it’s not easy for me to join Cirque du Soleil. I could easily feel bad about that,” she said. “But by embracing the thing that makes me different and special, I actually found this place where I get to shine and inspire other people, and really bring that magic to them.”
Just don’t let Mama Lou get close to her personal ‘kryptonite’: green apples. She said she tried to squish one during a show one time and had to resort to switching the subject and hoping people forgot about the attempt. Green apples are just too hard, even for her to crack.