People can be so cruel… I’ve had people shout out their car window at me,
‘are you a geezer?’, or stop me in the street or when I’m out shopping and ask me ‘are you a man or a woman?’. People can be so extremely rude, harassing and hurtful… when I was younger some of the comments would upset me so much that I’d cry and Daniel [her husband] would say that if it upset me so much I should stop…
60 Identity, lifestyle and embodiment
Alice (a bodybuilder of 18 months) recalls an incident in a pub where a stranger walked straight up to her and wanted to arm-wrestle her. On another occasion, at a local nightclub, a man came up to her and grabbed her bicep, declaring in abject fascination that she had the biggest arms he had ever seen on a woman. In the public sphere, the female bodybuilder is then under constant interrogation from the ‘gaze’ (and actions) of others. There are, however, other gender interactions that are unintentionally damaging to the identity of the muscular woman (Devor 1989: 47–9). For instance, Sharon (a bodybuilder of 12 years) spoke with anger and exasperation of being refused money in a bank because the cashier did not believe she was a woman (her first name appeared on the debit card). Similarly, Christine (a bodybuilder of five years) told me:
People look at the size of me – they look at my height, my build… especially my back… and just assume that I’m a man. I get called ‘Sir’ all the time.
It really frustrates me… that’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to grow my hair long.
The assumption that a muscular body must be synonymous with manhood also affected Katie (a bodybuilder of six years) who has on several occasions had to deal with the embarrassment of being asked to get out of the women’s toilets.
Whilst some of the families became more accustomed to and accepting of the female bodybuilder’s lifestyle, showing either resignation or signs of support, for the majority this quest for muscularity continued to cause conflict and emotional distress. Amy (a bodybuilder of four years) mentioned how her sister became belligerent whenever the topic of bodybuilding was brought up. For example, she said to Amy: ‘your back is disgusting, really lumpy – you’ll look like a freak’.
This was by no means an unusual reaction: most family members felt they had a licence to censure and recriminate. As the following observation illustrates, the lifestyle choice of the female bodybuilder causes friction and strain on immediate relations:
Family meals and get-togethers have become a nightmare. I avoid them whenever I can… They expect me to eat the fatty foods that they prepare and feel rejected if I bring my own and yet I never lecture them to eat more healthily because they are overweight… they won’t accept my lifestyle choice at all – they seem to think I’d be happier if I got married, settled down and had children.
(Katie, bodybuilder of six years)
Against this background, further misunderstandings and fear are generated, as bodybuilding not only appears to be ‘gratuitous, dysfunctional and purposeless’
(Frueh 2001: 81), but also transgresses against gender roles and norms concerning how women are expected to spend their time. Traditionally, participation in sport has been seen as a form of escapism for men, a place where they can focus on activities purely for their own pleasure (Messner and Sabo 1990). In contrast,
Identity, lifestyle and embodiment 61
women have been expected to be selfless, caring and nurturing, focusing their attention on close relationships and starting a family of their own (Heywood 1998).
Even in families where parents have participated in the bodybuilding subculture themselves and have actively encouraged their daughter’s endeavour, there are still limits and borders that should not be crossed. Michelle (a bodybuilder of five years) described how her father used to be supportive of her training until, after much contemplation, she decided to take steroids: ‘Since I turned to the “dark side” [steroids], I’ve hardly been in contact with my dad… he doesn’t like what I’m doing now… there’s now this gulf between us’.
Some of the female bodybuilders spoke of the challenges and difficulties of not only trying to maintain intimate relationships with others, but also finding and dating heterosexual men who did not feel threatened or repulsed by their bodies. Alice (a bodybuilder of 18 months) illustrates this in a recent conversation in which a man told her: ‘You are an attractive woman, but your arms are just too big… They intimidate men’. Indeed, several of my single interviewees similarly spoke of the problems involved in trying to date ‘normal’ men, who treated them as ‘abnormal’ and unappealing on the assessment of their physique. Whilst being overlooked as suitable ‘dating material’, rejected as unattractive and even found disgusting by mainstream society can be potentially detrimental to the identity of the female bodybuilder, female muscle challenges the gender order so much that it can also actually break down serious long-term relationships.
Monica’s (a bodybuilder of two years) decision to break up with her cohabitant boyfriend exemplifies this: after trying to persuade her not to train and to lose weight for many months, the situation came to a head when he told her: ‘I don’t want you to train anymore… Having sex with you from [behind] is like having sex with a man’.
These previous examples show just how truly deviant female muscle is considered by society, and demonstrate the high price that is paid, both in the public and the private sphere, by the women who decide to become female bodybuilders.
The quest for muscularity: motivations, embodied pleasures
and identity
In light of the stigma and reactions by ‘normals’ to the transgressions of female bodybuilders, many questions are raised: why would a woman choose to take up bodybuilding in the first place? What motivates these women and spurs them to subvert societal gender norms? How do female bodybuilders seek to maintain a positive sense of identity in such a hostile world? As Webber (2007: 139) posits, it is only by exploring ‘the lived reality of transgression’, including the desires, motivations and pleasures of these extraordinary women, that we can begin to understand their devotion to an interactional order based upon the pursuit of muscle rather than the cultivation and reflection of gendered ideals.
In the same way that these individual women come from very diverse backgrounds, the motivations that propelled these women into bodybuilding were
62 Identity, lifestyle and embodiment
equally heterogeneous. For some women, the slide into the ‘ministry of muscle’
came about simply as an extension to their training, a sport they realized that they both enjoyed and excelled at. Others, such as Amy (a bodybuilder of four years),
‘got hooked’ after using weight training as a prescribed form of rehabilitation from other sports-related injuries. In some cases, my interviewees spoke of the lure of intense weight training as a consequence of a particular event in their lives.
Lucie (a bodybuilder of eight years), for instance, spoke of her desire to regain control of her body after giving birth to her son:
I remember standing in front of the mirror and being horrified by what I saw in front of me… I saw what I had become and wanted to do something about it… I’d always been active in the past but somehow I’d let myself get out of shape. I didn’t want this to be ‘it’, if you see what I mean? I didn’t want to be defined for the rest of my life as just a mother. I guess I wanted to take control of my body and my life again and say ‘this is me!’
Resonating with Victoria Pitts’ (2003) body modifiers, other women spoke of their involvement in bodybuilding as a form of healing. Katie (a bodybuilder of six years) believes that her immersion in the bodybuilding lifestyle literally saved her from a reliance on alcohol:
Instead of drinking every night – and, let’s face it, most of the day too! – I put all my time and energy into the gym. I started to look after myself more and have more respect for my body… it wasn’t easy… and I relapsed a few times – but you can’t drink and build muscle, it was one or the other�
��
Rachel (a bodybuilder of two years) and Mary (a bodybuilder of 12 years) also spoke of the cathartic and therapeutic power of extreme weight training, but this time as a route of recovery from anorexia. In a society where women are preoccupied with slimming and losing weight, female bodybuilders defy convention by eating a high-calorie, high-protein diet in order to increase their body mass.
Rachel explains how her negative and destructive relationship with food changed as a direct result of becoming more involved in bodybuilding:
I used to see food as the enemy and would use loads of different avoidance strategies… [such as] drinking loads of coffee and diet coke, eating foods with as few calories as possible, eating fibre tablets and so on… I’d exercise for hours if I’d overeaten and even force myself to be sick at times…
I tried to eat only one meal a day… but now I’m no longer afraid of food as I know I need it to build a bigger and healthier body. I no longer avoid fats for example and I make sure I eat protein every couple of hours…
I exercise less and rest more. I feel so much better for it, both mentally and physically.
Identity, lifestyle and embodiment 63
Similarly, Mary spoke of the remedial properties of embracing the bodybuilding world:
I took up bodybuilding because I didn’t want to be weak anymore… I wanted to be in control of my life but in a powerful and positive way… I used to hate my body, but now because of bodybuilding I have learnt to really appreciate it.
Echoing the narratives of other female body modifiers (see Pitts 2003), female bodybuilders emphasize the importance of taking back ‘control’ over their bodies in a beneficial manner. As Barbara (a bodybuilder of seven years) articulates: Control is central to it all, control of my body means control of my life… If things are getting out of control in your life, the one thing you can control is yourself; when you train, how you train, when you eat, etc.
This emphasis on control over the body can be read as a way of ‘anchoring the self’
(Sweetman 1999c) in the context of an increasingly unstable and uncertain society – a time when individuals are experiencing a sense of loss and disorientation
in the whirl and confusion of postmodern life (see Introduction and Chapter 1).
As Polhemus and Randall (1998: 38) explain, ‘in an age which increasingly shows signs of being out of control, the most fundamental sphere of control is re-employed: mastery over one’s own body’.
Despite the diversity of motivations to become female bodybuilders, all these woman realized that they were different, or at least desired to be different, from hegemonic norms of femininity. For some, this incompatibility with dominant gender norms became apparent at a young age:
I’ve always felt I was different from other females. Even as a girl… I was a real tomboy… and since I was little I’ve always gone ‘feel my arms’.
(Corina, bodybuilder of four years)
For other female bodybuilders it was more of an epiphanic moment: I was reading through my boyfriend’s Muscle and Fitness magazine when I saw a picture of a Fitness girl, and I thought I want to look like that… She looked amazing, strong, independent and beautiful, like she could do anything.
(Danielle, bodybuilder of five years)
I became interested in bodybuilding when I was 17. I was exceptionally tall for a woman and very thin, weighing under nine stone. People used to tease me… One day I saw a picture of a female bodybuilder… and decided that I wanted my body to look like that. I wanted to be big and strong.
(Emma, bodybuilder of 19 years)
64 Identity, lifestyle and embodiment
Such reflections illustrate how these women not only felt distanced from at least one element of the gendered norms associated with the interaction order, but also became committed to identities and actions placing them outside of the respectable boundaries of interaction. This is evidenced further in their reactions to the changes wrought in their own bodies. Whilst the significance placed on visual
display (especially in competitions – see Chapter 9) has obvious affinities with the feminine concern with appearance, it is accompanied here by an emphasis on physical empowerment focused on the dominance of space and enjoyment of self, rather than with passivity (Young 2005). This is illustrated by the delight expressed by both Christine and Amy:
I love looking like I do when I’m cut [defined] and at my peak. I feel so strong, like I could do anything and nothing could stand in my way.
(Christine, bodybuilder of five years)
It’s really exciting when… you suddenly notice the definition and striations in the muscle group… I love it. I think it looks really beautiful.
(Amy, bodybuilder of four years)
These findings coincide with comments in other interviews with female bodybuilders:
Thanks to bodybuilding… I feel powerful, emotionally and physically. I feel strong and in tune with my body. And I feel more alive and sexy than ever before.
(Skye Ryland, cited in Dobbins 1995: 125)
When I look in the mirror I see someone who’s finding herself, who has said once and for all it doesn’t really matter what role society said I should play. I can do anything I want to and feel proud about doing it.
(Irma Martinez, cited in Rosen 1983: 72)
The focus on muscular aesthetics for these women thus becomes a somatic representation, symbolic of strength, power, control, mastery and independence.
The women derive a sense of achievement through activity shaping their bodies for themselves. Furthermore, as Monaghan (2001: 351) points out, there is an intimate connection between bodybuilders’ physical appearance and their sense
‘of physical and emotional wellbeing’. Within this context, Williams’ (1998: 451) notion that ‘transgression is pleasurable’ becomes especially applicable to female bodybuilders, whose transmogrification becomes not just a visual display but an embodied union of empowerment and pleasure. The desired textual appearance of muscularity at its most positive becomes intricately woven with the motivations and pleasures of the female bodybuilder, resulting, at its best, in an amalgamation of the mind and sensuous embodiment.
Identity, lifestyle and embodiment 65
Body projects and feminine identity
Female bodybuilders get intense pleasure out of constructing a body to their own design. They become the architects of their own body projects (Shilling 1993). As Charlie (a bodybuilder of four years) comments: ‘Isn’t the beauty of the human body the opportunity to mould it into whatever we want it to be?
We are doing this so that we can feel good about ourselves’. Female bodybuilders are well aware that their corporeal self-expressions are not perceived as beautiful or even acceptable by mainstream society. Despite the animosity received from ‘normals’, many of these women declared that they did not care about other people’s views of their appearance. This is illustrated by Danielle (a bodybuilder of five years):
It doesn’t bother me at all… because I’m proud, I do it for myself, you know, I do it because of how I want to look… to me that appeals… I prefer that; a fit body, to me that looks like she’s working at it, meaning she takes care of herself, not that she’s just done it naturally.
Similarly, Corina (a bodybuilder of four years) acknowledged that whilst perhaps some men found her body unattractive (or even repulsive), ‘it’s not the male view that counts, is it? It’s your own personal view of your body’. In this way, female bodybuilders confront and challenge conventional notions of women as docile, erotic spectacles for the enjoyment of men (Bartky 1988). Instead, they reclaim power from the objectification of women in patriarchal society, by carving out a territory for themselves in which they can revel in their own definitions of beauty and pleasure. Their bodies become signatures and self-authorships of their own desires (Tate 1999: 50).
Fierstein (2000: 17) declares that ‘the hypermuscular woman is a woman…
who wants and has big muscles and
who identifies herself as female and squarely within the parameters of feminine identity’. How then, in the context of subverting all societal understandings of femininity, do female bodybuilders not only see themselves as possessed of their ‘feminine identity’, but also manage to sustain it?
Comparable to Lowe’s (1998) and Tate’s (1999) studies, each female bodybuilder in my study has her own interpretation of ‘femininity’ and her own aesthetic boundaries that should not be crossed in order to maintain it. One professional competitor (and UK female judge), for example, expressed this view when commenting on the issues involved in balancing femininity and muscularity: I think I look like a woman – though I know other people don’t always perceive me in this way. Femininity is very important – your skin tone, the way you look, walk, your posture, the way you act. Make-up, hair, nails (even the way you pose on stage needs to be feminine). Femininity can be destroyed if people abuse drugs rather than use them – go overboard and develop masculine characteristics.
66 Identity, lifestyle and embodiment
However, when I asked the same UK judge if male bodybuilding competitors were judged on a ‘masculinity’ factor, her reaction was one of confusion. It appears that masculinity is perceived as ‘non-performative’ and innate, compared to femininity, which is perceived to be more fluid and transferable (Halberstam 1995). In contrast, for Michelle (a bodybuilder of five years), femininity takes on a different meaning:
I think many female bodybuilders misinterpret femininity and they do this
– over the top femininity thing, you know, which I don’t necessarily think means femininity. I think men and women can be feminine in other ways, without it having to be the whole hair, make-up and big boobs, if you see what I mean…
Other female bodybuilders also actively interpret their definition of ‘femininity’, as illustrated by Corina: ‘Femininity is whatever I decide it to be. I would love to be huge’. Debbie (a bodybuilder of seven and a half years), when reflecting on this issue, recognized the constricting oppression of contemporary gender norms: Girls can be feminine with or without muscles. Do people ever criticize men for being unmasculine because they don’t work out and have no… muscle definition or size… a girl can come across masculine because of attitude and you don’t need muscles for that… on the other hand people confuse the confidence that being strong and in good shape gives you for masculinity because women are ‘supposed to be weak and incapable’… I am a girl, I like being a girl, and yes I would love to get a lot bigger and more muscular… and I am very feminine.
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