Alexandria, Va. ? Sonya Thomas may look like she “couldn’t eat a cup of cottage cheese,” but she’s a rock star in the world of competitive eating.

A wisp of a woman who weighs anywhere from 100 to 110 pounds depending on the contents of her stomach, she is ranked No. 2 in the world by the International Federation of Competitive Eating.

She is second only to Japan’s Takeru Kobayashi, who for the past three years has won the annual Fourth of July hot-dog eating contest at Coney Island, the Super Bowl of competitive eating.

Thomas, 36, has won roughly $30,000 in prize money since making her debut on the competitive-eating circuit just one year ago. She routinely outgorges men four times her size. She hopes to do the same today at Coney Island, where the contest will be televised live on ESPN.

When she started beating the 300-pound and 400-pound men who had dominated previous events, “at first they were so surprised. They feel like they lose their pride. … Now they know me.”

Highly competitive, she did not like being underestimated and dubbed herself “The Black Widow,” a kind of spider that gets its common name from the popular belief that the female devours the male after mating.

“In golf, in the other sports, the women have been trying to beat the men, but they haven’t been able,” she said. “I’m going to try to do it for the women. … I really want to bring the Mustard Yellow Belt (awarded to the winner of today’s contest) back to America.”

The records Thomas holds are astounding. Eleven pounds of cheesecake in nine minutes. Nine pounds of crawfish jambalaya in 10 minutes. Eight pounds of turducken (chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey) in 12 minutes. Forty-three soft tacos in 11 minutes. 167 chicken wings in 32 minutes.

Thomas, who came to the United States from South Korea in 1997, said she finally found the proper outlet for her hypercompetitive nature in competitive eating.

Event host George Shea, rear, entertains the crowd as participants, from left, Jack Qunitrall, Brian McMillen, Carlene LeFevre and Curly Young vie on June 5 in Tempe, Ariz., for a chance to compete in the July 4 Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. LeFevre won this round, qualifying for the finals at Nathan's Coney Island in New York, where her husband, Rich, also will be a competitor.

“Bowling, tennis, table tennis, I’m good at a lot of stuff,” she said, but not good enough to dominate. “If I’m bowling and I get second or third place, I feel terrible. I want to do it, but my body doesn’t go.”

Her body, though, seems to place no limitations on her ability to eat. Thomas said her doctors examined her and found that her stomach was only slightly larger than normal. But her slight, skinny build may be one of her biggest advantages.

The prevalent theory in the competitive eating world is the “Belt of Fat” theory, which postulates that skinny people’s stomachs can expand more easily because they are not corseted by the ring of fat that burdens the heavy eaters.

George Shea, one of the founders of the IFOCE, said the league even had researchers who had been trying to get a scientific paper published on the topic.

In Thomas’ case, her stomach expands to the point where she appears to be a little bit pregnant. Only rarely, though, does the massive eating make her sick.

The cheesecake was a problem, though. It went down so easily and smoothly that before she knew it, she had consumed 11 pounds.

“When you touched my stomach, it was so tight it almost hurts,” she said, wincing at the memory.