Thanks to the rigors of my training, my hands were more ragged, callused and cut than any longshoreman’s. Thanks to the drugs and my diet, I couldn’t run for 20 yards without pulling up and gasping for air. My ass cheeks ached from innumerable steroid injections, my stomach whined for substance, my whole body throbbed from gym activities and enforced weight loss. Thanks to my competitive tan, my skin was breaking out everywhere. Vinnie and Nimrod explained that all this was perfectly normal… ‘Big Man, this is about looking good, not feeling good’.
(Fussell 1991: 193)
For critics of bodybuilding, this extreme practice is simply another form of control and masochism. Academics from various disciplines have concurred with this perspective and pointed out the low self-esteem and insecurity of the elite amateur and professional bodybuilder (Fisher 1997; Klein 1993; Pope et al. 2000; Roussel and Griffet 2000; White and Gillett 1994).
Hyperfemininity and the compulsory heterosexuality of the female
bodybuilder
Feminists who argue against the possibility that women can be liberated through bodybuilding highlight the destructive criteria of hyperfemininity and compulsory heterosexuality that is prominent within the bodybuilding subculture. Schulze (1990: 15), whilst acknowledging that the physically strong and muscular woman’s body is potentially dangerous, asserts that it is pulled back into the hegemonic system using ‘the markers of the patriarchal feminine’. These ‘markers’, as mentioned earlier in the chapter, often consist of dyeing hair blonde (suggesting innocence and vulnerability), elaborate hairstyles, hair and nail extensions,
breast implants (emphasizing a fetishized part of the female body)3 and wearing
Muscle is a feminist issue 47
high heels, corsets and often bondage outfits for photo shoots. Subsequently, Frueh (2001: 108) argues that they become ‘pin-ups in order to court stereotypical sexual fantasy’. Lisa Bavington, a professional female bodybuilder herself, explains this by arguing that patriarchal society over-sexualizes ‘women’s bodies in a concerted effort to diminish them from achieving any real power’, thus it is
‘much easier to accept a muscular woman if she is portrayed as overtly sexual’
(Bavington 2000). Pornographic representations thereby minimize female strength and act as a containment strategy. For example, photography shown in muscle magazines, pictures and on the internet is the main outlet for the representation of bodybuilders (and often provides a source of income; Heywood 1997); yet the female bodybuilder, in contrast to her male counterpart, is often portrayed in pornographic or ‘erotic’ ways for the ‘male gaze’ (Coles 1994; Heywood 1997; Mansfield and McGinn 1993; St Martin and Gavey 1996; Holmlund 1989). The lack of sponsorship money for female bodybuilders means some make their living through ‘schmoes’ who pay for private ‘muscle worship’ sessions, which may include posing, wrestling or more erotic acts (Ian 2001). Thus, in direct contrast to Tate’s body-project argument, the woman who builds her body becomes ‘a being-for-others rather than a being-for-self’ (Heywood 1997: 105). Muscle worship is
discussed further in Chapter 6.
In their research, Rich (1980) and Hargreaves (1994) both expose the compulsory nature of heterosexuality in sport as a form of social control, particularly in reference to women and sexuality. As female bodybuilding pushes the boundaries of gender more than any other sport, the woman who builds her body must be ‘anchored to heterosexuality; if she is not, she may slip through the cracks in the hegemonic system into an oppositional sexuality that would be irrecoverable’ (Schulze 1990: 11). Schulze claims that due to a complex combination of homophobia and patriarchy in society, the female bodybuilder is labelled as a lesbian and a ‘male-wannabe’. Consequently, Hargreaves (1994) believes that muscular women counteract this negative stigma by embodying images of hegemonic femininity based upon conventional heterosexual assumptions. Thus Heywood (1997: 182) argues that female bodybuilders’
self-determination is undercut by their desire to be (hetero)sexually appealing; indeed, she writes ironically, ‘femininity, it seems, is synonymous with sexuality’. Against this background, Heywood (1998: 113) believes that the sexual representation of female bodybuilders ‘effectively subverts any disruptive potential of this new version of the feminine form’.
Competitions as controlling the female bodybuilder
Many sociologists have focused on Physique Women’s Contests as a detrimental force for the liberation and empowerment of women (Aoki 1996; Mansfield and McGinn 1993; St Martin and Gavey 1996). As was demonstrated in Chapter 3,
in contrast to men’s competitions, female contestants have been judged on the basis of symmetry and ‘feminine presentation’ (including appearance, posture, posing, mannerisms, display, make-up and skin tone) more than on muscularity.
48 Muscle is a feminist issue
This ‘femininity’ factor has continuously changed over the years, depending on what is deemed to be the ideal feminine muscular physique of the time. As Lisa Bavington (2000) points out, ‘femininity’ is not a ‘natural’, inherent condition but a social construction that cannot be defined objectively; ‘rather, it is open to a wide degree of interpretation and subjective criticism’. According to Lowe (1998), confusion regarding the ambiguous ‘feminine’ quality causes conflict and disparity between female contestants, who are never sure exactly what the judges are looking for and what will be considered ‘feminine’. One conclusion to be drawn from this is that the competitive female bodybuilder is argued to be controlled by hegemonic markers of femininity, which undermine the potential to create a liberated female form.
Klein (1993) claims that bodybuilding is, ultimately, a subculture almost entirely run by men for men, as a predominately capitalist enterprise. Maria Lowe expands upon this irony:
Bodybuilding with its almost monopolistic power hierarchy, creates an opportunity for a new physically strong look for women, yet at the same time is run by a handful of men [officials, judges, promoters and sponsors] who have the power to determine the ‘appropriate’ images of women’s bodies.
(Lowe 1998: 73)
These ‘appropriate’ images, according to Lowe, change periodically in order to include a wider commercial audience. She concludes, in her American study of elite female bodybuilders, that
although, at first glance, female bodybuilders appear to embody an empowering image of women – one that exudes physical strength and emphasizes impressive musculature – when placed in the patriarchal and capitalist context of … bodybuilding organizations; their strength and power are tempered significantly.
(Lowe 1998: 159)
If Lowe’s study is to be believed then, despite changes over time, female bodybuilding is still dominated by men who ultimately dictate how far the sport – and women’s bodies – should be allowed to evolve.
Conclusion
As it presently stands, there appear to be two viable and strong critically opposing arguments concerning women’s potential liberation through bodybuilding. On the one hand, it is claimed that women who pump iron resist physical restrictions of imposed femininity. On the other, critics argue that female bodybuilders are engaged in an ultimately oppressive quest for perfect bodies of another kind. So far, no suitable empirical work exists that would allow us to properly adjudicate between these views. I argue that without further investigation into the daily lives
Muscle is a feminist issue 49
and experiences of the female bodybuilder, it is impossible to assess whether female bodybuilding can empower and emancipate women by disrupting ‘habitual practices of femininity’ (Bordo 1992: 167). However, before I present the findings of my study and invite the reader into the fascinating world of British female bodybuilders, there is another critical point to make here. Despite the fact that these perspectives are diametrically opposed, both claim to have a monopoly on the truth. Moreover, both present their arguments in a simplistic fashion – either claiming that female bodybuilding is empowering or th
at it is disempowering – and suggest that there can be no room for manoeuvre between the two perspectives. Without more attention to the potential complexities and contradictions that may characterize the life world of the female bodybuilder, this seems a premature conclusion. Rather than simply joining one side or the other of this argument about female bodybuilding, then, I want to allow for the possibilities of a more nuanced understanding of this activity by recognizing that power is never a simple possession, but is constituted through multiple and shifting practices and discourses (Foucault 1980; Rich 2002). Such an approach can help us embark upon a more ‘open’ method of enquiry, allowing us insight into the nexus of subjectivities open to the female bodybuilder in relation to fluctuating relations of power – which renders them ‘at one moment powerful and at another powerless’ (Walkerdine 1981: 14).
Despite a small but increasing corpus of academic work centred on this research area, the majority of studies have frequently neglected the actual practices and daily experiences of the female bodybuilder, focusing instead on the textual meanings and symbolic representations of these women’s bodies.
In contrast to this superficiality, Schulze (1990) acknowledges that in order to appreciate and thoroughly examine the life of the female bodybuilder, we must engage with and submerge ourselves within the subculture itself, instead of trying to analyse and explain it from the outside. This is the downfall of Maria Lowe’s interesting study of professional female bodybuilders in America, which does not appear to entail immersion into the subculture itself. The work of Leslie Heywood and Anne Bolin, as female bodybuilders themselves, has made vital contributions in this area, using the authors’ own experiences as reflexive participant observation. However, as yet, there exists no comprehensive ethnographic study of female bodybuilders in the UK. In particular, there is a dearth of investigation into those phenomenological issues involving either the lived experience of how the female bodybuilder’s physique is constructed, or how their ‘assault’ on conventional norms of feminine appearance is received both inside and outside of the gym.
Against this background, there is a strong argument for suggesting that it is only through detailed ethnographic work and researching the subculture from the
‘inside out’ that we can begin to answer and assess the question of whether female bodybuilding can be empowering for women. The purpose of the following chapters is, subsequently, to try and rectify this absence of adequate empirical work by providing an insight into the lives of these extraordinary women, uncovering the answers to mysteries such as: what precisely do these women do? How do they
50 Muscle is a feminist issue
construct their identities? What social relations do they enter into? How do they experience and feel the reciprocal jostling that exists between their bodies and machines/weights? What does it mean and feel like to compete? It is only after examining issues such as these, I suggest, that we can construct more adequate answers to questions regarding the liberatory or oppressive character of female bodybuilding. In the next chapter I begin my exploration and presentation of my findings by focusing on the identity and daily lives of female bodybuilders outside the gym environment.
Sarah’s story: part I
The beginning: becoming a female
bodybuilder
There’s no one reason as to how it all started. I was brought up on bodybuilding in some respects. My parents weren’t into bodybuilding so much as training, but the gym where they trained was what you would call a ‘spit and sawdust’ gym – there were some ‘hardcore’ bodybuilders at the gym, and I guess what was going on in my mind subconsciously, that I was picking up on this bodybuilding thing and I really liked the look of the girls in the 80s such as Tonya Knight. As a family we were very fitness orientated – Dad had his protein powders around and we would eat well. Dad would have me up before school training, or running and after school – and so that lifestyle to me was always a normal way of being. I was just destined to take things to the extremes.
I started training from the age of 12 and by the age of 16 I knew I wanted to compete. By that point Dad had started running one of the natural bodybuilding shows, so for me it was always like a normal thing, whereas to most people it’s kind of like an odd or strange thing to do. I competed at 18 and 21, back then I didn’t really know what I was doing, and then I didn’t compete again until 2006
(age 27?) – although my (weight) training was always like my anchor…
However, I don’t think my parents ever wanted me to look like I do now, it wasn’t their vision. As far as they were concerned they were encouraging me into a health and fitness lifestyle… but me being me, I have this kind of in built thing of ‘how far can I push my body?’ ‘How much can it take?’ ‘Where are its limits?’
and it’s all or nothing – just a fascination with what it can do. If you do it, then you give it everything. If it wasn’t bodybuilding then it would just be something else.
I remember being 14/15 and I was home on my own and it was absolutely belting it down outside, absolutely chucking it down… This is where I think I have this mental toughness thing – ‘do I have what it takes to mentally make myself physically do something difficult?’… I remember putting on my jogging bottoms, my t-shirt, my Walkman; I was listening to Bon Jovi. I jogged to the end of the road where there was a playing field with a small running track. Jumped over the fence to see if I could make myself do ten laps of the running track in this absolutely pelting down rain, freezing cold – and I did it. I felt so good after that I’d done it and that I hadn’t stopped or given in. The first time I felt that I really connected with someone, was when I heard Bev Francis [female bodybuilder] on the film ‘Pumping Iron II’ say that when she was a kid she would set challenges
52 Sarah’s story: part I
for herself such as how long she could hold her head under water. And I remember thinking that’s me. I get that.
I used to be into every sport. Running, football, roller skating. I used to just go out on my bike – normal everyday activities. I wanted to do rugby, rather than football, but I wasn’t allowed. I found football a bit cliquey and I wasn’t very good at it… I always preferred the solitary stuff like running or doing weights in the garage… I didn’t like team sports, although I was competitive.
I first competed when I was 18, in the old NAB natural show. My family loved it, they thought it was great – I was bang into sport anyway. I don’t remember much about the day, only that I loved it on stage and didn’t want to leave. I remember thinking prior to it, that if I enjoyed it then I would do it again – if not I’d just continue training for my own pleasure. But that was it, I was bitten. I didn’t want to get off that stage. And that’s all I remember.
See when I was a baby (although of course I don’t remember much of it), from the age of four having had my hernia, I was told that I had to do sit-ups every day and I used to do up to 20 a day. I was a very sickly child; I would wake up in the middle of the night and be sick for no reason. And my poor mum had to change all my bedding – and I hated it and I didn’t want to be this weak kid.
And my Dad doesn’t tolerate weakness. My brother was quite a soft-natured child and my Dad couldn’t deal with it. He always said that me and my brother should have been born the other way round and he wanted Jack to be this rufty, tufty kid. Whereas I felt that I was that kid but he wanted me to be, you know, kind of his little girl, but also that. He didn’t really know how to deal with me.
To be fair to my parents they didn’t mollycoddle me – that’s probably why I am the way I am with my health, because I potentially could have had a colostomy bag, and there’s no way I would have been training now. Fortunately, surgery second time round worked… so there was a massive side of my life which was really privileged by what my parents gave to me and my brother… the way they made us. They were very much ‘go out there’, ‘get on with it’, ‘if it hurts then push through it, it will make you stronger’. ‘If
you fall over you get up and you carry on’.
I didn’t want to be this weak, sickly kid. I wanted to be strong and fit and able to, like, take care of myself and not have to be reliant on anybody, but there was a side of my Dad that was… he was terrifying, aggressive – we lived in fear of him…
for example, we were driving back from somewhere, me and Jack were kids sitting in the back, Mum was in the passenger seat and the next thing we knew the wind-screen had shattered. Dad had punched it. Just an outburst. And you never knew when it was coming. My brother took the brunt of it really badly. He bullied my brother. He really beat him, and I felt bad and felt guilty that Jack got the brunt of it. I think Dad was wary of me because of my health, he wasn’t quite sure… If me and my brother were acting up then he would bang our heads together and I’d get an awful nose bleed and blood would be pouring out of my mouth… that’s not an unnatural thing for parents to do… but I think my Dad was a little bit frightened of how fragile I was… Once I was older he was more verbally aggressive towards me – I think a lot of [my desire] to be strong came from my Dad’s behaviour. It
Sarah’s story: part I 53
was about protection, but I think it’s also that nature/ nurture thing though. As he was re-enacting his Dad’s behaviour. So, I think it’s partly in my genes. My Dad won’t remember – a combination of brain damage from an accident and alcohol has made him forget. My parents never talked about things and were never open about things. They always kept everything in. And I guess that’s why they have ended up where they are now (Mum dead and Dad an alcoholic).
Despite everything, Dad always knew me in a way that Mum didn’t. He always knew that I wouldn’t fit into the mould, that I was going to be different. I don’t think he anticipated how I would be. It’s hard. It hurts a bit. Because at the end of the day, they set this ball rolling, they surrounded me in this environment and set me up in this environment and they probably didn’t do themselves any favours in the respect that they didn’t educate me on steroids. But they rammed down my throat natural bodybuilding, and they rammed down my throat about everything negative about steroids. So of course, when I started to learn for myself, when I realised that I wasn’t going to get what I wanted naturally, I discovered that everything they were saying to me wasn’t true. And I guess it’s just one of those things, isn’t it? You tell a child not to do anything… ‘you created me, you inspired me in this environment, you told me to be different, you told me to push myself to the max, to always do my best’ – they must have been times when it must have crossed his mind that I would come to a T junction of ‘do I or don’t’ I?’ – but he never spoke to me about it. And now he wouldn’t be able to talk to me about it anyway.
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