Philosophical Perspectives on Gender in Sport and Physical Activity by Davis Paul;Weaving Charlene;

Author:Davis, Paul;Weaving, Charlene;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2010-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Gender Confusion or the Limits on Becoming other

While the pure objectification of the body produces a becoming-other that occurs in both male and female bodybuilding, the two are fundamentally different in relation to challenging or reinforcing common sense about gender. Despite the unraveling of masculinity as it is stretched to its limit, male bodybuilding in current American culture also works in the service of maintaining gender roles by serving as the ideal for a very different masculine culture. Despite what I have detailed as the gay dynamics of bodybuilding, the auto-homo-desire, and the latency found in books and magazines, the male bodybuilder serves as a referent for a more mainstream, macho, patriarchal, heterosexist male culture.

Male bodybuilders, ironically, serve as the very nearly platonic form of manliness that gets expressed through a very different, very “straight” aesthetic in neighborhood gyms and health club franchises. The particulars of the form, the lifters who idolize these god-like men, are often hairy, fat, pale, and slovenly dressed.12 They come into the gym after a night of drinking beer, eating chicken wings, and watching football on big screen television. Unlike the pro bodybuilders whose bodies are temples, the common lifter’s body is more typically battered garrisons, some combination of muscle and fat, armor, thrown up to stand as a defense between the lifter and the world. It is the bulk that most of these lifters are after, unrestricted growth, accumulation, a wealth of flesh. The bodybuilder’s body is sacred. Consumption is a religion for pros counting calories, fat, protein, and carbohydrates. The common male lifter’s body is profane, his consumption gluttonous, unrestrained, unscrupulous. Both the sexually ambiguous male bodybuilder and the sexually “certain,” “straight” male weightlifter are visions of excess, models of successful reinvestment of labor back into the means of production. The bodybuilder, like the action hero, serves as the ideal “real man.” He is the promise, the advertisement, the seduction. But this common lifter is the real “real man.” And an American man doesn’t even have to lift weights to be him. He need only consume. If anything, he is the bigger whore.13 Although, as I have discussed, the “real man” is a fiction, this fiction wields tremendous cultural power. That is why when women become “real men,” it is thoroughly subversive. It reveals the fictive nature of the naturalization of gender.

While male bodybuilding has functioned primarily to solidify gender identification by resonating with popular conceptions of masculinity, female bodybuilding has worked primarily to break it down and commit gender confusion. As I have mentioned, at present there are really two competing versions of female bodybuilding. The February 1997 issue of Flex shows the smoother, rounder, less-inflated bodies of “fitness champs.” This is a new category attempting to appeal to those interested in looking at what they might find in fashion magazines or the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. However, tremendously muscled and defined bodybuilding champions such as Lenda Murray, Nikki Fuller, and Natalia Murnikoviene thoroughly upset the physicalized norms of femininity – gentility, softness, fragility, and smallness.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.