KEY POINTS:
NEW YORK - By day Sandra Martinez works at a New York law firm but by night she throws off her conservative image and becomes "Sandra Claws" - an amateur female jello wrestler.
At a live music bar on New York's Lower East Side, she joined 11 other women to do battle in a blue, blow-up kiddie pool filled with warm, clear clumps of an unflavoured version of the gelatin dessert.
"It lets us do things we probably want to do to women sometimes that we dislike, but we have a forum where we can express it in a fun and safe way," said Martinez, a 27-year-old business development specialist.
Her competitors, with day jobs including nanny and marketing manager, introduce one another by stage names - Tinsel the Bohemian Christmas Fairy, Parcel of Power, Chocolate Thunder and Backhand Betty.
"The show is done for the girls, put together by girls, as something that's a fun, friendly competition," said Dana Sterling, 31, who has organised the competition once a month for the past three years.
"It's really hard to explain to my mother," said Sterling, who by day works as a lighting designer. "It really is a sport, it's a satire sport."
Wearing a glittering gold swimsuit, black satin ruffle skirt and white curly wig, Herricane - who by day is 33-year-old marketing manager Mickie King - takes to the stage punching the air, shouting: "I'm ready, I have got wind, I'm ready."
The crowd gathers around the pool, which sits on top of four old mattresses roped together. Jello flecks the audience as the fighters roll around, attempting to pin each other to the ground for three seconds.
Several competing women said the concept of female jello wrestling conjured an image of sleazy men watching naked women roll around but that Sterling's event was far from that.
"We work hard to promote it as a feminist thing and the night is really like a community night in that it is really what the women make of it," said Annie Rock, 26, one of the organisers.
"It's definitely aggression release."
- REUTERS
