Her training partner calls her "Duchess," but Bonny Priest is hoping to muscle her way to the throne as the queen of professional female bodybuilding.

Earlier this summer, Priest, 31, of San Angelo, Texas, won her professional tour card at a Las Vegas bodybuilding competition. Already, she has won several victories in amateur heavyweight and overall divisions in national and state competitions. She set the American and Texas record in the bench press and deadlift, respectively. Priest peaked again in Las Vegas and is now training for her professional debut.

"I was just hoping to place in the Top 5 and maybe take home some hardware," she said. "When they put me center stage that was a big clue that I had done well. Then they counted off the places 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and I was about to die."

Priest took home another first-place win in the women's heavyweight category. Pictures of her striking a pose make the moves look effortless, but victory never comes easy. Her path to bodybuilding championship is lined not only with hard work and dedication, but also with obstacles that remain today.

Priest's desire to pursue fitness began when she was in the sixth grade while flipping through a variety of muscle magazines that her mother bought her. She started to train casually, but really focused her efforts when she moved to San Angelo in 1996 and met her husband, Alan, who has more than 20 years experience in bodybuilding.

The couple owns, operates and trains at The Fitness Zone in San Angelo.

"I've always been into it, but it's something you never really think you'll get to do," Priest said.

"When I worked out in high school I would've had to pay for a gym membership with my allowance."

However, in Alan, Priest has more than any gym membership could provide. She credits her husband as not only her guide through the sport, but also as her inspiration and greatest motivator.

"He asked what my goals in fitness were and I told him I'd love to be a bodybuilder, but that I thought, 'No way,' " Priest said. "He said, 'You love it and you have the genetics for it.' The rest is history. He has a lot of experience so there was no experimenting. He knows exactly what I need to do."

Despite women's 20-year presence in the sport, Priest said the female bodybuilders don't get the respect they deserve from their male counterparts and promoters.

She said the total prize money for male bodybuilders in the Arnold Classic is $410,000, including a new Rolex watch, a new Hummer and $100,000 for the first-place winner. The prize money for women in the bodybuilding, fitness and figure categories combined totals $50,000.

"In the '80s and early '90s it was awesome. We could get sponsored, but as women kept getting bigger and bigger it wasn't a marketable look," Priest said. Female bodybuilding "isn't popular with the mainstream because some of these girls look like straight-up dudes. We're not popular and that's sad. We work just as hard, if not harder, than the men."

Female bodybuilders face just as much adversity off the stage in the form of stereotyping, Priest said.

"We're not well-liked and we get stared at for being different," she said. "It's mentally tough. People think you're a jerk just because some male bodybuilders are cocky, but it's a stereotype that we have to go above and beyond just to prove we're not jerks."

Female bodybuilders' struggle against the same arbitrary body-image ideal that other women face.

"They say the ideal woman wears a size 3 or 5," she said. "When I'm prepping for a contest I'm a still a size 9 or 10 and I'm very lean."

And having 15-inch biceps and a 352-pound bench press means Priest has to take extra steps to assert her femininity.

"You have to have a balance to be more normal in appearance," she said. "That means you have to wear a little more makeup. You have to fix your hair up a little more poofy. You have to carry yourself more like a woman so that people know, without a doubt, that you are a woman."

Nonetheless, Priest said the female bodybuilders who are lax in their appearance give the rest of the female participants a bad name.

"Judges are looking for the total package," she said. "They want full makeup, they want your hair done, a manicure. Sometimes a girl will walk up like a man without any makeup and messed up hair, like she just got out of bed. The public eye is focused on the bad. We're still trying to look like girls, but people always remember the creepy one.

"It's a hard stereotype to break."

Bill Dobbins, one of the premier bodybuilding photographers, wrote of Priest, "Talk about a complete, aesthetic package . . . It was no surprise that Bonny won the overall and it will come as no surprise if she turns out to be an immediate threat in the pro ranks."

She is one of only four professional female bodybuilders in Texas and the fifth woman from Texas to turn pro at the USA Bodybuilding Championships, beating out two previous heavyweight-class winners.

Priest said she is going to take her training one day at a time.

"I don't like to lose. You gotta work hard and do lots of praying to get through," she said. "When it hurts you just have to go through it.

"Who knows about the future? I'm ready for tomorrow."