Chyna doll

>> Joanie Laurer on being all woman and making it in a man's world

by GENEVIEVE PAIEMENT

To watch Chyna, "The 9th Wonder of the World," née Joanie Laurer, in the ring, throwing 200-pound muscle men around like so many pieces of lint, you'd think she'd have a real bulldozer of a personality. But this hard-bodied female wrestler once referred to herself in an interview as "just a vulnerable, feminine music box playing the Titanic theme song." Seems she isn't afraid to be a girlie-girl in a man's world after all. Sitting across from me in a sunny Ste-Catherine Street Indian restaurant, Laurer looks like an all-American TV glamourpuss.

She sits drinking coffee in a tight, cleavage-bearing denim pant suit and high-heeled, open-toe denim and rhinestone shoes. "Chyna is the feminist superheroine and Joanie is what lies beneath this super-fox. Although I have this strong shell--and I am strong--behind the character, I'm still a human being and a woman who likes very womanly things." And this has been the secret of her success: the combination of Xena, Princess-Warrior-style strength enough to kick a man's ass, and sexiness that infers she may choose to go to bed with him later. But the balance has been difficult to maintain.

"I'm in a very physical, male-dominated, chauvinistic, macho profession--it's not conducive to home and family life or relationships," Laurer ventures. "It's like self-abuse." And yet this very "self-abuse" is what has made Laurer into a millionaire, a superstar and a best-selling author--her autobiography Chyna: If They Only Knew has been on the New York Times best seller list for weeks.

The book tells of the difficulties Laurer has overcome on her journey from being Joanie, a big, funny-looking girl with a con-man for a dad and a mentally unstable thrice-married mom, to becoming Chyna, the toughest chick in America, adored by millions. The book, which comes in very large print with photos every two pages, travels back and forth in time in a slangy, stream-of-consciousness tone. She flip-flops between tales of family feuds, the car accident that nearly killed her, her relationship with co-wrestler Triple H, how she almost became a Secret Service agent, her Playboy pictorials, the dirty looks Diane Keaton once gave her on a talk show, and so on.

About her eventual conquest of the WWF, she says, "It was as empowering as it was difficult. That's what the book is all about--a series of events and the way people reacted to me. At one point I realized that there will always be people who don't like what I do, how I look or what I stand for, and it doesn't matter anymore. Now I'm a really happy person and I like who I am. The book is very much about replacing insecurity with strength and self-acceptance."

And along with self-acceptance, comes a chance for Laurer to explore non-wrestling hobbies. When not pumping iron or signing autographs on book tours, Chyna can be found reading, listening to classical music or playing the cello. She hasn't been home since the week after Christmas, since wrestling and promoting her book have kept her a travellin' gal. "I've been thinking about my cello sitting there in my room gathering dust," she says wistfully. "I'm very anxious to get back to it and start sweeping those strings."

Chyna: If They Only Knew by Joanie Laurer and Michael Angeli, HarperCollins, hc, 325pp, $39.50