‘In Strong and Hard Women, Tanya Bunsell has delivered an outstanding ethnography of female bodybuilding. The book is a rich portrait of becoming, being, and having a muscular female body. By investigating the question of whether female bodybuilding can be an empowering transgression of hegemonic standards of feminine embodiment, Bunsell offers an important book that deserves to be widely read and debated.’
Brett Smith, Editor of Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health and Senior Lecturer at Loughborough University, UK.
‘As one of the first sustained ethnographic studies of the subculture of female bodybuilding, Bunsell’s energetic thesis focuses on the lived experience of female bodybuilding and the actual process of building and sculpting muscles during all those hours of dedication to the gym. This book will be an essential read for researchers of sport, exercise and the body, scholars of feminism and gender politics and anyone who has ever known the lure of the gym, its clang of metal weights and the exquisite pain of pumped muscles.’
Niall Richardson, Senior Lecturer in Media and Film, University of Sussex, UK.
‘This remarkably insightful ethnography examines the women who inhabit the subculture of bodybuilding, an activity which she presents as both transgressive and troubling. Bunsell’s approach is made all the more poignant by showcasing the lived experiences of not only the female bodybuilders whom she interviews, but also herself, hence offering an unusually intimate investigation of both research and researcher.’
Adam Locks, Programme Co-ordinator of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Chichester, UK.
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Strong and Hard Women
Females with large muscles evoke strong reactions from men and women, often involving disgust, discomfort, anger and threat. The controversial nature of female bodybuilding has caused significant rupture on feminist ground. Whilst proponents claim that female bodybuilding is a way of empowering and liberating women, others see it as a form of corporeal entrapment. This book investigates the controversy. Do women who pump iron resist physical restrictions of imposed femininity, or are they engaged in an ultimately oppressive quest for
‘perfect bodies’?
In an original two-year ethnographic study based in the South of England, Tanya Bunsell immersed herself in the world of female bodybuilders. By mapping these extraordinary women’s lives, the research illuminates the pivotal spaces and essential lived experiences that make up the female bodybuilder. Whilst the women appear to be embarking on an ‘empowering’ radical body project for themselves, the consequences of their activity remain culturally ambivalent. This research exposes the ‘Janus-faced’ nature of female bodybuilding, exploring the ways in which the women negotiate, accommodate and resist pressures to engage in more orthodox and feminine activities and appearances.
This book will be of interest to academics and students in the fields of gender studies, the sociology of sport, the body and research methodology.
Tanya Bunsell is a Lecturer in Sport Sociology at St Mary’s University College, Twickenham. She has been teaching since 2003 and was awarded her PhD in Sociology from the University of Kent in 2010.
Routledge Advances in Ethnography
Edited by Dick Hobbs
University of Essex
and
Geoffrey Pearson
Goldsmiths College, University of London
Ethnography is a celebrated, if contested, research methodology that offers unprecedented access to people’s intimate lives, their often hidden social worlds and the meanings they attach to these. The intensity of ethnographic fieldwork often makes considerable personal and emotional demands on the researcher, while the final product is a vivid human document with personal resonance impossible to recreate by the application of any other social science methodology. This series aims to highlight the best, most innovative ethnographic work available from both new and established scholars.
1. Holding Your Square
Masculinities, streetlife and violence
Christopher W. Mullins
2. Narratives of Neglect
Commonity, regeneration and the governance of security
Jacqui Karn
3. Families Shamed
The consequences of crime for relatives of serious offenders
Rachel Condry
4. Northern Soul
Music, drugs and subcultural identity
Andrew Wilson
5. Flashback
Drugs and dealing in the golden age of the London rave scene
Jennifer R. Ward
6. Dirty Dancing?
An ethnography of lap-dancing
Rachela Colosi
7. Crack Cocaine Users
High society and low life in South London
Daniel Briggs
8. Builders
Class, gender and ethnicity in the construction industry
Daniel Thiel
9. City, Street and Citizen
The measure of the ordinary
Suzanne Hall
10. Changing Lives, Changing Drug Journeys
Drug taking decisions from adolescence to adulthood
Lisa Williams
11. Sport, Difference and Belonging
Conceptions of human variation in British sport
James Rosbrook-Thompson
12. Boy Racer Culture
Youth, masculinity and deviance
Karen Lumsden
13. Strong and Hard Women
An ethnography of female bodybuilding
Tanya Bunsell
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Strong and Hard Women
An ethnography of female
bodybuilding
Tanya Bunsell
First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013 Tanya Bunsell
The right of Tanya Bunsell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bunsell, Tanya.
Strong and hard women: an ethnography of female bodybuilding /
Tanya Bunsell.
pages cm. – (Routledge advances in ethnography)
1. Bodybuilding for women. 2. Bodybuilding for women–Social
aspects. 3. Femininity. 4. Self-perception in women. I. Title.
GV546.6.W64B86 2013
796.41082–dc23
2012040233
ISBN: 978-0-415-62441-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-82437-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-10475-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Paignton, UK
Contents
Acknowledgements
xii
Preface: Alice down the rabbit hole: my research journey
through the fascinating world of female bodybuilders
xiii
1 Introduction
1
Storying
myself
1
The
context
4
Female bodybuilders: the scope and aims of the research 6
Chapter
outlines
9
2 Researching female bodybuilders
10
Fleshing out the theory 10
Why
ethnography?
12
Overview of the study: research sites, access, sample, interviews,
profile of the women 13
Confessing the ‘ethnographic self’ 16
Negotiating the field: body work and blending in 17
Relationships in the field 19
Conclusion
24
3 The history of female bodybuilding
26
The birth of female bodybuilding 27
The 1980s: the golden era of female bodybuilding 29
Contentious issues in the 1990s: inconsistencies
and contradictions in placing 30
More controversy and changes in 2000 31
The British scene 32
The decline of female bodybuilding?: Fitness, Figure and
Bikini
competitions
34
Conclusion
38
x Contents
4 Muscle is a feminist issue
39
Feminist reactions: the female bodybuilder as a feminist icon 39
Feminist reactions: female bodybuilding as another form of
control over women 44
Conclusion
48
SARAH’S STORY: PART I
The beginning: becoming a female bodybuilder
51
5 The identity, lifestyle and embodiment of the female
bodybuilder
54
The interaction order 54
The stereotypes, stigma and marginalization of the female
bodybuilder
57
The pursuit of female muscle as deviant 58
Paying the price for defying the gendered social interaction order 59
The quest for muscularity: motivations, embodied pleasures
and
identity
61
Body projects and feminine identity 65
Body dissatisfaction: the price paid for investing too much in the
body’s
appearance
67
Conclusion
73
6 The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding
74
Part 1: muscle worship 74
Part 2: steroids 85
Conclusion
96
CONFESSION OF A MUSCLE SLAVE
98
7 Exploring the ‘empowerment’ of female bodybuilders
through concepts of space
101
Sexed space: building gendered bodies 102
Gendered
noise/sound
105
The penalties paid for crossing into male territory 107
Bodies on display: looks and comments act as censorship for
spatial
transgressions
108
The hospitable back region of the gym 111
Body in space 111
Postures
113
Conclusion
114
Contents xi
8 Ripped, shredded and cut: reworking notions of ‘pain and
violence’ in female bodybuilding
117
Pain and violence in bodybuilding 118
Injuries: being hard enough 120
Reading and interpreting the bodybuilder’s pain 121
Female bodybuilders’ phenomenological experiences 123
Erotics of the gym: new bodies, new pleasures? 127
Conclusion
130
9 Competitions: a heroic journey
131
The competition as the ‘holy grail’ of bodybuilding 132
Feminist perspectives on the consequence of the competition 133
The start of the journey 135
The hard times 138
The final stretch: creating the elusive body 140
The day of the competition (the ritual) 143
Conclusion
149
SARAH’S STORY: PART II
The future
151
10 Conclusion
153
Summary and analysis of my empirical findings 154
Research
conclusions
160
What does the future hold for these women? 161
Concluding
comments
162
Notes
164
References
167
Index
181
Acknowledgements
My most important debt of gratitude goes to Professor Chris Shilling. I have been blessed by his enthusiasm, encouragement, knowledge and inspiration.
My thanks go to all those who participated in this study, especially the female bodybuilders who gave so willingly in terms of their time, commitment and friendship.
I also wish to thank those people who supported me in the writing of this book – you know who you are.
Preface
Alice down the rabbit hole: my research
journey through the fascinating world
of female bodybuilders
A journey entails endings and beginnings, loss and retrieval. It offers a chance of change and renewal, but also a risk of disorientation and displacement.
Researchers as voyagers, travel from familiar inner and outer landscapes into unknown territories with new horizons…The ‘voyage’ tenders experimental possibilities for alternative understandings of who they are, who they could be and what they know. It opens up transitional spaces for the formation of a new sense of identity.
(Batchelor and Di Napoli 2006:13).
The idea that research may be described as a ‘journey’ usefully highlights how events and relationships unfold during fieldwork in a manner that can change both the field under scrutiny and the individual researcher. The metaphor also evokes a sense of personal growth and perpetual waves of transformation that can occur as the adventurer negotiates their surroundings in a pursuit to position themselves and make sense of the world around them. Within this book lies multiple narratives, stories and journeys – not only of the muscular women themselves who embark on their own ‘heroic’ travels, but of my own journey of discovery which has undoubtedly changed my viewpoint on the world. Indeed I am not the same person who I was when I began this research journey. In Chapter 2, I detail the
ways in which I am (ontologically and epistemologically) inextricably entwined in the research project and how this inevitably impacted upon the findings and presentation of this book. However, it is only now, as this project draws to a close that I can reflect back and see just how far I have personally travelled; thus demonstrating just how momentous and life changing the research experience really is.
It has been argued that researchers develop a new habitus as a result of their work, and I would suggest that this is especially relevant to the corporeal ethnographic undertakings of researching female bodybuilders. As I became physically and emotionally immersed in the field and ‘moved’ through the research process, my interpretations of the world have evolved and transformed. My ways of ‘looking’ at what was occurring around me were thus changed by my shifting ways of ‘being in the world’. My body became ‘an instrument of research’ (Patton 2002:45), in which lived experiences mediated my initial theoretical commitments. These ‘practical
xiv Preface
lessons in the interaction between theory and experience’ led me to question my starting assumptions (Blaxter 2009:765). By ‘acting as my own informant’
(Rapport 1995:
269), I have become drawn to and aware of a more complex and contradictory understanding of women’s empowerment and ‘reclaimative’
discourse than I had previously anticipated. Indeed my ethnographic analysis of the life world of the female bodybuilder revealed a picture of complexity and subjective difference beyond what I ever expected to discover. Subsequently, my narratives (of self and research thesis), driven by continual moments of interpretive recursivity, have changed as they have given way to new perspectives and new ways of seeing the world. This has not being a straightforward linear process, but one of unease, struggle, vulnerability and insecurity, as I fluctuated between certainty and uncertainty, trying to piece together conflicting evidence in relation to my ideological beliefs and my findings.
Throughout this work, I invite the reader to glimpse some of the rich and complex detail that makes up the lives and experiences of female bodybuilders, but I ask that you remain aware of my own ‘shadow’ presence as a researcher as I present these women in and through my writing. In so doing, you will not just be following the lives of these female bodybuilders, but my own walk through the fascinating subculture of female bodybuilding. Before the reader’s journey through the book begins, I kindly request you to participate in this reflexive voyage of discovery – to question and interrogate your own understanding of female bodybuilders and to be open to other possible pathways of interpretation.
1 Introduction
As Gelsthorpe and Morris (1990: 88) argue, ‘one of the essential ingredients of feminist approaches is that theorizing has to begin with the researcher’s own experiences. There is no other knowable place to begin’. For this reason, my introduction begins by providing some biographical details in order to illustrate some of the influences and processes that have informed this study.
Strong and Hard Women Page 1
