Despite the disappointing finish, Jackie had no reason to be ashamed. She was prodigious. She was the first of the six contestants to require use of a tape measure longer than the five-foot one provided by the show; her behind was 63 inches in circumference. In the second part of the three-part contest, Lewis and Floorwax determined that Jackie enjoyed nine inches of cheek overhang on each side of a standard toilet seat.
Jackie seemed to be having a swell time, too. "Hey, this is cool," she told her hosts after receiving her consolation prize. Then she punned, "You guys really crack me up!"
"Jackie? She was great," recalls David Rodriguez, who produced the show for the Fox. "She was confident, amusing--a great sense of humor."
Maybe she developed it recently. Last May, Jackie--her full name is Jacqueline Reuteler--filed a harassment complaint with Denver police. Her workplace at the U.S. Postal Service's 20th Street station, she alleged, had become demeaning and intolerable because of the conduct of two men with whom she worked.
"I overheard both Garland Lewis and Billy Mullins making lewd, filthy remarks regarding my female anatomy," she explained in the report.
As a result of Reuteler's complaint (and some filed by other female employees), Mullins has been criminally charged with harassment. He was placed on paid leave from the post office three days after Reuteler's complaint was filed, and will remain on leave until his trial, which is set for October. If convicted, he could face six months in jail and a $750 fine.
Reuteler declines to discuss why comments about her body humiliated her at work but not on the radio. "I have no comment about that," she says. "None whatsoever."
But she may have to discuss it later. Barbara Jensen, Mullins's attorney, says she "absolutely" intends to make an issue of Reuteler's seemingly selective sensitivity should her client's case go to trial. "Why you would subject yourself to [the Biggest Butt contest] if you're so sensitive and dignified, I don't know," says Jensen.
Mullins, too, is perplexed. "If I don't like to be called fat," he says, "I sure wouldn't enter a fat man contest."
The butt contest is only the tail end of a long string of grade-school quarrels between employees of the downtown postal station. Last spring a group of women there began tattling to James Rock, a Denver police detective assigned to the post office to investigate mail fraud ("Handle With Care," May 17).
Since then, an exasperated Rock has filed several criminal charges against Lewis and Mullins. Most involve observations the two men allegedly made about the women's bodies. For instance, "There's a big black cow in here. Moo, moo, smell the stockyards," Lewis was reported to have said on one occasion.
Lewis also used the words "roly-poly ass" to describe another woman, a statement for which he was found guilty of harassment last spring. Lewis is appealing that verdict. In another instance, he was charged with disturbing the peace after he called a colleague a "wackadoo." The case was dismissed after the city prosecutor misidentified the date of the alleged wackadoo incident.
Reuteler joined the chorus of complaints on May 9. The statement she prepared for Detective Rock that day describes the verbal attacks she endured. "On one occasion," she recalled, "I was particularly offended when Lewis and Mullins stood in the aisle discussing the wet spot on my shorts (sweat), my vaginal discharge, what I was doing about it."
She also told Rock the men had harassed her before, although the details apparently eluded her. "I am sure I have been the victim of less overt abuse by both of these individuals, although no situations stick out as being as offensive as described above," she wrote. Reuteler concluded, "I have been present when Mr. Mullins has sung `I like the young girls,' at which time several of us were cutting incoming mail. This has occurred several times."
The third part of the Fox's Biggest Butt contest was called "jiggle and presentation." It was a sort of swimsuit competition set to music. While Lewis and Floorwax played bass-heavy dance music, each contestant shook her rear end and the hosts judged her aloud. It was the only subjective part of the Biggest Butt contest.
"Here ya go, that's some nice shaking! That was a power shake there!" Floorwax said during Jackie's performance.
"We should call Golden. The earthquake center might want to be warned we're doing this," Lewis said.
There was to be a fourth part of the competition in which the women used a cow thermometer from Robinson's Dairy to measure the heat of their rear ends. A higher temperature would have been worth more points. But after some discussion, the women found that offensive and declined.
The winner earned $100 and a pair of green polyester stretch pants from the Ample Duds store. Robinson's Dairy also donated large-curd cottage cheese for the women. Jacqueline Reuteler won $25.
