It’s the best type of legwork.
On a sunny August Friday, choreographer/dancer/Jennifer Lopez ex Chris Judd is sitting before a stage at North Avenue Beach, gauging women’s gams. “I feel honored to travel around the country looking at legs,” he says of the Legs of a Goddess contest, a promotion for Gillette’s new Venus Divine razor. “Hey, someone has to do it.”
The Chicago leg of this competition has drawn 71 contestants–from teenyboppers to middle-age mothers. They wear shorts, miniskirts and bikinis. Some have modeling moves as they strut the catwalk, others just giggle. A few entrants are lifeguards, taking a break from saving lives to try to claim the $500 local prize. “Let’s hope nobody is drowning!” the emcee says.
Male spectators hold aloft video cameras and snap photos with cell phones.
Onstage, 21-year-old Carolyn Kaminski of Michigan City, Ind., is posing. She employs her mom, Janet, as hairdresser, makeup-checker and motivational speaker. But Kaminski’s legacy came from Dad. “His legs are better than mine,” Mom says.
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Ultimately Judd, along with a co-judge from the Karin modeling agency, selects Palatine’s Kirsten Kim, 19, as the winner to move on in the national competition. “That really skinny girl?” says one woman in the crowd. Kim’s tanned/toned legs are the result of running around campus at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she studies biology. Of course.