Life of Kellie Everts aka Rasa Von Werder & WIKIPEDIA
Kellie Everts was born on July 16, 1945 in Calw, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, as Rasa Sofija Jakstas, to Lithuanian parents, Stasys and Regina Jakstas, who had fled Stalin. They ended up in a displaced person’s camp and in 1949, boarded the Navy ship S.S. Heintzelman bound for the U.S.A.
Her parents were sponsored to an ethnic community in Newark, N. Jersey where Dad, a professor, created a Lithuanian school in the Church auditorium, (this on the heels of founding the first State Teacher’s College in Kaunas, Lithuania.)
None of them spoke English – but school, after seeing the drawings of Rasa, age 5, skipped her a grade forward, her drawings were put in a children’s gallery at a museum, & a Christmas card she drew age 6 was mimeographed by school staff and hundreds of copies distributed. She was considered a child prodigy.
But trouble brewed for Rasa. Her Mom cuckolded Dad with the organist in the Church – he was renting a room with the Jakstas family and the paternity of Regina Jakstas’ next child was disputed. There was a split. Rasa at eight found herself moving with Mom & the organist, Marius Bernotas, to a farm near Freehold, N.J. Dad was supposed to join them but never did, and at age ten Rasa put down her pencil & said ‘I will never draw again’ (but age 15 she picked up her water color brush & made a painting outside her bedroom window called ‘Water Tower’ – this won Second place within a major art contest inside a competition of five schools) and even said ‘Maybe there is no God.’ She was the only person in her family, then, besides Dad, destined to wear glasses and her eyes grew worse as Dad, refusing to take her to live with him, told her,
“the remedy {for your pain} is knowledge. You must study.”
Her Mom, at age ten, began a concerted and constant persecution of Rasa, hating her for loving Dad, and turned the rest of the family against her. Rasa’s morale broke down, she suffered at school and couldn’t concentrate, she broke rules and was expelled. Thereupon Dad had to take her in to finish school and she moved to Brooklyn with him.
But this didn’t last long. Within a year Rasa wanted to make her mark. She met a man from Hollywood – Andre De Dienes, a photographer who’d been close to Marilyn Monroe. Upon seeing her he told her to meet him the next morning at 6 AM at the ChelseaHotel,
“I’ll take you to Hollywood and make you a playmate of the month. You will be ‘Ms Hawaii.’
And so, at age 16, she was on her way by car with Mr De Dienes and days later, saw palm trees swaying in the wind. De Dienes plans for her crashed when Rasa resisted his advances. He gave her the bucks for modeling & dumped her on the street in Venice, CA.
With the money Rasa rented a room, bought a bottle of peroxide and bleached her hair blonde. She put on the second-hand pink checked cotton bikini and headed up the beach – to where she did not know – ending up on top the Santa Monica Pier, looking down at the Muscle Beach volleyball players. One of these men, Stanley Everts, a teacher, walked up to her, asked her on a date, and months later became her husband. She asked for a small loan so she could get her life started there but he refused and said,
“Either marry me or remain homeless.”
This liaison resulted in a daughter named Kellie, born June 20, 1964.
Soon Kellie Everts was offered modeling jobs and movie roles – the husband trashed her pictures & ridiculed the offers, refused to free her for show business work.
Kellie had sent her photo in to ‘Strength and Health’ and they picked her as ‘Ms Body Beautiful.’ This brought a letter from Mr Universe Vern Weaver, who was arriving to that area and wanted to take her to a body building show. Kellie went in spite of the husband’s objection and there met Bill McCardle, Mr Southern CA and his photographer. This resulted in an offer to be on the cover of “Strength & Health.” Kellie went, the photographer set her up by leaving her alone with McCardle who raped her – sick to her stomach a couple months later she discovers she’s pregnant. It was not her husband Stanley’s child because his recent operation for cancer left him sterile.
This disastrous pregnancy caused a major rift between Kellie and her husband. He did not believe she was raped and tried to strangle her. Somehow she escaped; the second time he knocked her down, sat on her chest & began to strangle her she got away, grabbed the baby & ran, took a cab to a Hollywood motel. This began a full-time modeling career, she joined an agency and was hired by dozens of photographers and movie makers, with images of her splashed all over the country and a few ‘body beautiful’ type movies.
Strangely enough, the Mother who hated her had convinced her she was ugly – she was not allowed to sit at the table with family at the farm – Mom said, ‘You’re not a pretty sight to look at.’ The treatment of her had been so brutal she gained an inferiority complex and suffered from PTSD for years. And yet, soon people would be paying to see her beautiful body, her name in lights at the biggest club in Hollywood – the Classic Cat.
But Kellie’s husband found her and let her known he was given six months to live – the cancer had returned. She pitied him and went back to nurse him, which she did until his death in April 1966.
What a dark day when she discovered that out of revenge, Stanley Everts had cancelled his life insurance and left his child and wife penniless.
The day after his funeral, with one buck in her pocket, Kellie got a job at a private men’s club in Santa Monica, “The Ball”, dancing topless. It was survival.
A long and colorful career started in show business as well as religion & the academic field. Life for Kellie had just begun.
She’d lived in many places – Germany, cities like Newark and Brooklyn, worked hard on a farm for seven years and now, in middle age, she started a video business, earning the most money she’d ever had. She parlayed it to buy a wilderness near the Catskill Mountains complete with riverfront, five acre island, a swamp, a pond and a creek outside the kitchen door.
But Kellie was not alone for long, someone loved her in true love, Richard Von Werder. After 14 years of betrothal, Kellie finally married him on Oct 28, 2000, but he had a bad heart which he succumbed to on July 7, 2002.
Their love had been spiritual and true – Kellie was celibate since May 27, 1978 & remained so for another eight years {31 yrs total}. In the year 2004 she began to use the money Richard left her to build the internet ‘University of Mother God Church’ with the flagship site ‘Woman Thou Art God.’ She’s been expanding that theme ever since – She believes that females should run the family and the world.
Her plans for the future are to leave her resources toward building a Temple to Mother God, a convent and Sisterhood of Matriarchal women – a new kind of convent that allows females sexual freedom.
She will bequeath her work to the Sisterhood with guidelines to carry on. There are good prospects for funding this movement, they have found gas and oil under Kellie’s property, “The Marcellus Shale.”
Career: Body Building
How female body building got started. It took a while for Kellie Everts to get the credit she deserved, officially, for being the instigator of modern competitive female bodybuilding.
In 2005 she built her Kellie Everts biographical website which included the account of what she did for female body building. There was no such thing as ‘female body building’ when Kellie Everts entered her first contest, ‘Ms Americana,’ in 1972 – an affair put on by the IFBB in tandem with a major event for men.
Kellie took part in several contests of that sort by the IFBB (International Federation of Body Building) and the WBBG (World Body Building Guild) and did well in all of them. The first one she won 2nd place and BEST BODY. In 1973 she won two trophies, one in New York, 2nd place Ms Body Beautiful U.S.A. & in CA, run by Reg and Shari Lewis, ‘Most Voluptuous’ the IFBB Ms Americana contest. The following year, 1974, she won trophies in two contests, one the title in the WBBG Ms Body Beautiful U.S.A., FIRST place, and the IFBB Mr Olympia event held their Ms Americana on the same stage – the Felt Forum – where Kellie won 2nd place and as usual, BEST BODY.
What perturbed Kellie as she participated in these contests is the treatment of women compared to men. The men were held as greater value, with much respect and prize money. The women were considered secondary, a ‘side show’ with no prize money. She wished she could remedy the situation where women who lifted weights – such as she did – could flex, be considered body builders, be given respect and prize money. The opportunity to promote these ideas was about to present itself.
Dan Lurie asked Kellie to pose for a female body building shoot in a gym for his magazine, Muscle Training Illustrated, she complied – it was 1974.
Soon thereafter the art editor of Esquire, Jean-Paul Goude, decided to do a pictorial on an ‘Amazonian’ type woman – strong, fit and muscular – for Esquire.
He called every gym in New York & was told they knew no such woman. He called Dan Lurie asking if he knew any female body builders. Dan told him there was only one – Kellie Everts. He asked what does she look like? Dan said to pick up his magazine on the stand, she was there. Goude did and liked what he saw, Kellie was hired.
This was the first spark that spearheaded the revolution. No one had heard of this before – female body building, and here it was in a reputable magazine, Esquire.
A plethora of attention followed – radio and TV interviews, more magazine articles. Esquire sent Kellie to Wash DC to do the AM Wash show and other shows – the Esquire pictorial was repeated in Holland.
She appeared on the national “Mike Douglas” show re the article and “To Tell the Truth” asking which is the woman minister who is also a body builder? When the panel finished Kellie did bench presses. The shock-type host Stanley Siegel had her on three times, there were other shows. When the furor died down about a year had gone by. Kellie wanted to keep the attention going.
She knew that John Paul Goude was an influential art director, she called him and said let’s get this story into Playboy. He said ‘we can’t’ – they won’t do it. I might be able to get it into Oui {a Playboy publication at the time}. But Kellie said ‘It has to be Playboy, their influence is what I’m after.’
And so, John Paul Goude produced the article which Playboy dubbed ‘Humping Iron.’ They looked at the piece and weren’t sure. They said
‘We’ll pay you half, and if we use it, the other half.’
And luck did strike soon after – as the movie ‘Pumping Iron’ came out. Here they had this article in their hands, which they called ‘Humping Iron.’ We had it made.
This article, promulgated by Playboy, did the trick. It was not as sensational as Esquire as people heard of female body building by now – but Playboy gave it its imprimatur, the Seal of Approval. They declared that a female with muscles was sexy and beautiful so the public now had permission to ‘move on with the show’ – ‘To the Barbells, Girls,’ the cried out.
Soon after this – within months, someone organized a body building show for women. It wasn’t IFBB or WBBG, it was a strange egg from an eccentric man. Then Sports Illustrated ran a big article – 1979 –Miss Well, WHAT?
And it was then that the IFBB held its first body building contest, called Ms Fitness and the year after that, 1980, began the official start of female Body Building Contests, the Ms Olympia. And that is how modern female competitive body building got started.
The IFBB continued promoting female body building for some years but Dan Lurie went into semi retirement. Everyone was busy with the new ladies, Kellie Everts was ignored. But in 2006 Kellie heard about Doug Going and Dan Lurie resurrecting the WBBG. She put together all her material proving her case – that she was the Progenitor -– and distributed them to the bodybuilding world.
Soon they would have a WBBG shindig in Providence, R.I., invite all the great old stars and give awards and induct people into their Hall of Fame (Sergio Olivia, Harold Poole). Kellie was invited, and the WBBG, after hearing her case, declared her to be the ‘Progenitor’ of female body building – gave her a plaque and recognition – that was February, 2007.
Controversies and Objections to Female Body Building,
present Issues re Drugs
It is always the new thing that gathers scandal, raises objections, because the ‘old thing’ is in the heads of people. Indeed, the male body builders of the first days were not warmly met – they were an anomaly and made fun of. The average man might have felt intimidated when a ‘freaky muscle monster’ appeared. But within the discipline itself, among their peers, the ‘biggest & the best’ were looked up to.
There were also norms for female bodies & with it behavior. An ideal woman was Jayne Mansfield, the character she played; in the skin of a perfectly thin, shapely body was a ditsy Marilyn Monroe. Women were not supposed to be smart, aggressive, or dominant toward men. The rules echoed through the 50’s and 60’s everywhere: Laugh at men’s jokes, don’t contradict them, don’t be smarter than them, don’t beat them in sports – if your 60 year old boss {you’re 20} wants a date, DON’T tell him you only see him as your father! What was the bottom line? SUBMISSION.
The teaching was obey these rules OR ELSE. Or else what? Your boyfriend will leave you, you won’t get a husband, you will not be a harmonious member of our society. If you step out of line you will not succeed with snagging men, holding and keeping JOBS. Men and jobs were almost ‘synonymous’ because in the Patriarchal system, unjust laws & practices kept women paid less for the same work and many jobs were forbidden. Women could not get ‘men’s’ jobs like police, firefighting, construction workers, or truck drivers.
It went farther. If you look at the classical orchestras prior to the feminist uprising of the 60’s – there are NO WOMEN playing instruments. Why? Did women not want to play music? No – the male conductors would not hire them. Of course, all these anathemas toward women had EXCUSES like they weren’t strong enough to be police or firemen – construction could be dangerous and women had no penchant in those areas and women did not LIKE to drive trucks. They did not ask the women what they wanted – they TOLD THEM what they could or could not do.
Even in the tax-paid schools where boy and girl were supposed to be equal: Boys sports were funded heavily but girls not. Why? We were told girls did not like to play football or any contact sports. They weren’t ‘into’ sports as they were not AGGRESSIVE {meanwhile we were being told it was forbidden to be aggressive!} Females were not ASKED they were TOLD what they wanted. The school inequity resulted in a law called “Title IX” where it was illegal to spend more money on boy sports than girls. {But later, some schools would work around it.}
Women were also deprived to some degree from HIGHER EDUCATION. The Ivy League schools did not begin to admit them until 1976! Higher education means MORE EARNING CAPACITY – this is well known.
And because of this discrimination in educational DEVELOPMENT / physical skills starting from grammar school – because of being BARRED from many higher-paying jobs even in the working class, because of being PAID LESS than men when they did finally do the same work – all this rendered women seeking men for subsidies / support in order to live their lives – including lives that had dependents – children.
If women had an equal share of the societal resources with men, they could even raise families by themselves, as they could hire other women to help care for children. But lacking equal jobs or pay it was arduous for women to both work and raise children – thereby rendering them dependent on men, thereby modifying their behavior to obey standards men imposed –the standards already mentioned; laughing at their jokes, deferring to them, being passive, and giving in to sexual demands.
Now put all this aside and take a look at a woman now, breaking the barrier to lift weights. A woman enters beauty contests because she’s ‘got what it takes.’ She wins and uses these titles to further her career. Meanwhile she notices the disparities between the men’s and women’s contests. Men treated like heroes – they get money – women treated like subordinates, no money, and they aren’t even recognized for what they have to do to look good – some of them lift weights – certainly Kellie Everts exercised and lifted weights 45 mins each day. But this is not noted. She’s looked upon as ‘beautiful’ & has a great body, but no woman in these contests flexes or ‘shows off’ or poses in any way to demonstrate muscles – later, after the idea is promoted, a lady named Laura Combes does a double bicep pose {1979} at a contest in Warminster, Pa, and she is reprimanded by the contest promoter, George Snyder.
But we’re not there yet. Jump back years when Kellie Everts enters the scene. She’s training age 19 but not doing anything public. That’s 1964 and she’s pregnant. She doesn’t want to lose her figure and buys weights – except the IFBB salesman in Santa Monica won’t sell her anything above 2.5 lbs because he notices her belly and says he’s afraid she might hurt herself – she buys 5 lb barbells elsewhere, but still, they aren’t heavy enough and she uses her husband’s weights. But skip all that. Jump to the strong public promotion starting with Kellie’s 1975 Esquire article {Muscle & Grit, Religion & Tit, that’s what Kellie Everts is made of} and culminating in the 1977 Playboy ‘Humping Iron.’
She’s doing articles & TV for body building. What is the public objection, sometimes critical comment?
Questions: “Why would a woman want to lift weights? Why does she want to look muscular? Why does she want to look like a man? Only lesbians would want to look like men. What is the purpose of this?”
The idea of a muscular, strong or aggressive woman was then a threat to men, including some men who promoted male body building. In their eyes, they saw men as Gods dominant over women. Pictures on covers featured males with bikini clad, shapely females ‘draped’ over them like they were statues of Power, but women clung to their bodies – they were subordinate. It was demeaning. It was another dimension of male domination over women.
Jump ahead now to 1980 and beyond. The women in the contest to the shock and horror of some – are using testosterone {or its derivatives, what they call anabolic steroids and later growth hormone}. One lady is heard complaining she has to shave every day. They are already beginning to look like men – a feature Kellie Everts and Lisa Lyon insisted was impossible, they would never look like men from training because they lack testosterone. But they can look like men if they take testosterone. Yes, the men are taking drugs. And there, Kellie heard them complain at the contest that women are taking ‘male’ hormones. OK, if you have male hormones, then why are you men taking them? And if you are, why can’t the women? Gander and goose.
But things go awry. Indeed, men and women have the right to do whatever they wish with their bodies. They also have the right to smoke. They also have the right to kill themselves.
But the world of body building has gone awry. What was once representative of health is now a freak show. Men have become monsters at their own peril, and the promoters were the biggest hypocrites. They knew these men and some women were taking dangerous drugs – the ones who were the most muscular won yet the promoters were saying they disapproved of drugs.
Most of these people in the contests lost, there would be few winners – but they all had to risk themselves with the drugs – Russian Roulette. Who were the biggest winners? The promoters, those who made money whoever won or lost.
The body builders were the slaves, most of them made no money. The promoters always made money because they sold images, supplements and weight training equipment. They pretended their supplements & systems made these guys & gals what they were – it was fraud – the illegal drugs made them that way, which the body builders paid for themselves. Very few of them made money. Ronnie Coleman, for instance. But look at him now.
He became the biggest and the best through drugs, he made big money. But he spent two million on operations trying to put his skeleton back together. He’s not sure he’ll ever walk right again, so in the end, he lost. His X rays show screws throughout his back and hips.
Some of the women who were the biggest and the best fell apart, like rags of their former selves, looking like aliens for the drugs. The drugs puffed them up for a while, but after quitting all they had left was the cornrow teeth {the drugs expanded their jaws} and tufts of facial hair – Pitiful and pathetic shadows of their former selves. This was the result of excesses, which the promoters mostly, not the body builders, profited from. It’s a sad testament to excess and a thing that was positive in the beginning but ended up wrong.
Alright, body building was a business. In spite of where it went wrong, the idea of women’s muscles – prowess – fitness – freedom did leak into the entire world, and the image of women as well as behavior changed forever. Although the body building world and their contests for women have mostly collapsed {since 2015 the main events are not even held—there is one by new people that pays 50k} women universally have caught on and it’s OK for women to lift weights and be muscular, even aggressive. It has changed the world for women, indeed & dispelled the notion that they have to be passive toward men. So the work of Kellie Everts was accomplished in spite of the contests getting twisted by drugs.
The Stripper for God[edit]
Initially, Rasa had won the titles of Miss Nude Universe in July, 1967, Miss Americana 2nd place and Best Body in 1972 (on the same stage with Arnold Schwarzenegger), Miss Body Beautiful 2nd place in 1973, Miss Body Beautiful U.S.A. first place in 1974, and Miss Americana 2nd place & Best Body 1974 (the same stage with Arnold Schwarzenegger again). She made nine appearances in Playboy. She first appeared as Miss Nude Universe, hers was the first female body builder as “Humping Iron”, May 1977, predating Lisa Lyon‘s appearance by three years.[6] She had two pages of pictures on her “Stripping for God” in Playboy. Her dancing career went from March 1966 to August 1987, dancing coast to coast and all over Canada as well. She then quit to become a producer of her dancing and female domination videos, making enough money to purchase a large property with island in Upstate New York in 1989, where she has lived ever since.
Ministry[edit]
In Sept. 1973, Everts gave her first spiritual talk (prior to dancing) at the Melody Theater in Times Square as a religious minister. The combination of stripper and evangelical religious conviction led to the creation of what the press called the “Stripper for God”.[7][8][9]
The “Stripping for God” created an obvious controversy about the idea of being both sexual and spiritual at the same time, as oppose to only one or the other, due to the prevailing social norms and constructs. Likewise, by extension the related concept of being both a person of God and also in the adult trade at the same time was controversial as well.
Everts traveled in the United States and Canada, giving over 1,000 sermons in burlesque theaters and nightclubs.[10][page needed][11][page needed][12][page needed][13]
She also travelled several times to Canada, and made one trip to the United Kingdom[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] In 1988, she appeared on The Morton Downey, Jr. Show.[23]
Everts later changed the emphasis of her mission to the return of matriarchy and the feminine divine. On June 16, 1978 she preached on the message of Our Lady of Fátima in front of the White House, with the aim of bringing about the conversion of Russia and, by extension, preventing a potential nuclear World War III. The gist of the message was, “Pray the Rosary for the conversion of Russia, or nations will be annihilated.”[24]
Since shifting her focus, she then founded her own church, The University of Mother God Church, which later evolved further into a new religion specifically for women.
As a Guru of the new religious movement she founded, many of her followers believe she is an Avatar, or an incarnation of God, much like Ramakrishna.
Her spiritual beliefs are that she was sent by God to help humanity, primarily via female empowerment and then ultimately matriarchy, which she believes is the only hope for humanity and solving the world’s problems. Her goal is to restore the worship of God as Mother, and female leadership in all areas of life including spirituality, in order to attain a world of biophilia, that is, life and love.
Author[edit]
On May 24, 2004, Everts, under her present name Rasa von Werder or Guru Rasa of the Church of MotherGod, started the Woman Thou Art God Website.[25] She has since continued publishing online on her religious beliefs, and has thirty-six (and counting) books published on female empowerment, her biography, matriarchy spirituality and various other subjects, many available on both Amazon and Lulu. Since 2014, Rasa has also had another main website as well, Embodiment of God, that further builds upon the first one. [26] She has also collaborated with other authors as well, most notably including William Bond, who is also featured on that site.
Later Years[edit]
In her later years, after 30 years of celibacy, beginning age 63 in 2008 {God told her to stop suffering, quit celibacy & have fun – it was ‘the Will of God}, she became a “cougar” and photographer of males, largely in the college town of Binghamton, New York, for the purpose of furthering the cause of female empowerment. At Binghamton University, she was a big hit overall, featured several times on the front page of their student newspaper. She has written about this experience in several books (see Bibliography section).
Rasa has also further expanded upon her new matriarchal religion for women, writing the book Woman, Thou Art God: The New Religion for Women in 2019-2020, and is currently working on several other books.[27]
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