Strong and Hard Women

by Tanya Bunsell

  Bodies are always constructed within a cultural context and can never be disentangled from the discourse in which the body operates. In this way, I argue that there can never be a body that can simply ‘transcend’ society and ‘free’ women from ‘patriarchy’. Furthermore, I support Grimshaw’s related argument that ‘the body can never be a wholly unproblematic something, which one can be “happy”

  with, in a simple, stable or permanent way’ (Grimshaw 1999: 115). She argues that when Bordo and Lloyd talk about ‘being happy with oneself’, they slip into an almost essentialist feminist perspective that believes an authentic, real ‘relationship with one’s body’ is possible, ‘free of cultural norms and pressures’ (ibid.).

  A more ‘fluid’ understanding, then, becomes useful in interpreting the body dissatisfaction expressed by the female bodybuilders. ‘Doing looks’ (Frost 1999) might be better viewed as an ongoing conversation, which can be the cause sometimes of despair and at other times of pleasure (as demonstrated by the apparently contradictory comments made by the women in relation to their body image within this chapter).

  On the basis of the complexities and contradictions revealed in my ethnography thus far, I find myself becoming increasingly sceptical of second-wave feminist claims that there is ‘a female body’ which can be ‘reclaimed’ from ‘patriarchal’

  society. Rather, I would prefer to take forward my study by adopting Grimshaw’s

  Identity, lifestyle and embodiment 73

  (1999: 99) perspective that there can never be a resistant ‘female body outside of discourse, or a resistant body that can stand as a simple exception to forces of normalisation or domination’. For this reason I am doubtful that female bodybuilding can provide any form of ‘pure’ empowerment, but I think it is equally simplistic to reduce this activity to an act of patriarchal domination. Consequently I am drawn to the following position cited by Grimshaw:

  There can be no guarantees that any practice is free of normalising pressures; no assumption of ideological ‘purity’ in any motivation; no clear dividing line between what is internally or externally imposed. And no body practice, in all its manifestations, can be understood wholly in terms of subjection or capitulation to normalizing pressures.

  (Grimshaw 1999: 100)

  Conclusion

  This chapter has explored the daily lifestyle and interactions of the female bodybuilder, a ‘gender outlaw’ who is heavily penalized for transgressing normative gender roles and consequently battles against stigmatization in both her private and public life. However, her identity is under constant attack not just from ‘normals’ but also from her own internalized, self-policing gaze. It is this inner critic (creating negative body image, obsession and insecurities) which has caused opponents such as Bordo (1990) to argue that women’s bodybuilding, far from empowering them, merely produces differently feminized bodies imprinted with the gendered meanings of culture. However, there are two related problems with this argument. Firstly, it would be wrong to treat bodybuilding merely as a site of ‘femininity’s recuperation’ (St Martin and Gavey 1996: 54). If this recuperation actually occurred, how do we explain the continued hostility that female bodybuilders experience in the interaction order? Instead, the choices, appearances and behaviours of these women place them firmly outside the bounds of respectable interaction. Secondly, critics have failed to engage with the ‘biographical agency’ (Davis 1995) of these women by ignoring the complex motivations and vitalistic satisfactions they gain from this activity. In the next chapter, I continue this exploration by turning to the most deviant aspects of female bodybuilding – muscle worship and steroid use.

  6 The ‘dark side’ of female

  bodybuilding

  In the last chapter I explored not only the lifestyle and motivations of female bodybuilders, but also how they managed to maintain a positive sense of self in such a gendered and hostile world. This chapter follows on from that theme to explore, through a more empirical and ‘fleshed-out account’, the most deviant, yet underexplored, aspects of female bodybuilding. The first part of the chapter reveals the vocabularies of motive for, and provides accounts of, female bodybuilding muscle worship activities through the voices of the participants themselves. These narratives expose the complexity of the situation, which fits neither femininity’s ‘resistance’ nor ‘recuperation’. In the second part of the chapter, the phenomenology of drug taking (particularly steroids) is explored, focusing on how female bodybuilders maintain their sense of identity as female in light of the masculinizing effects of the drugs.

  Part 1: muscle worship

  Congratulations, slave, you are here because you need me. The seed of my female superiority had been planted the minute you entered into my private chambers. You have often fantasized about someone like me dominating you, overpowering you, enslaving you and forcing you to do my bidding.

  You yearn to reveal your true self, explore your fantasies, shed your inhibi-tions and expose your most intimate yet intoxicating details of your darkest desires.

  (http://www.mistresstreasure.net/servitude.htm, accessed 8 July 2012)

  The deviant world of muscle worship sprang into the limelight ten years ago through TV documentaries such as ‘Muscle Worship – Hidden Lives’, ‘Super-Size She’ and Louis Theroux’s ‘Weird Weekends’. At the same time, the subculture has flourished on the internet through blogs and websites dedicated to muscle goddesses, picture and DVD sales and webcams, and is argued to provide female bodybuilders with the necessary income to survive – yet very little scholarly activity has been conducted in this area, other than Nicholas Chare’s (2012) and Niall Richardson’s (2008) fascinating textual analyses of ‘female muscle

  The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding 75

  worship’. Richardson’s (2008: 289) pioneering article highlights that rather than female bodybuilding being simply feminist resistance or erotic spectacle, its nature depends on the context and how it is coded within the representation. My research builds on this analysis by focusing on the experiences and interpretations of the participants themselves. Chare (2012) argues that female muscle worship is formed through mutual dependence/co-existence between the muscular women who need financial support to aid their lifestyle and the men who need the female bodybuilders to satisfy their sexual preferences. In the work that follows, I explore this relationship further. Are female bodybuilders simply sexual commodities for the satisfaction of male fantasies, or, can muscle worship celebrations be positive self-affirmations for these women, which at the same time subvert traditional notions of gender? Before we can explore these questions, it is necessary to briefly explain the unusual phenomenon of muscle worship.

  Eroticism, fetishism and muscle worship

  A useful definition of ‘muscle worship’ comes from the entry for wrestling in The Encyclopaedia of Unusual Sex Practices, which lists sthenolagnia (‘sexual arousal from displaying strength or muscle’) and cratolagnia (‘arousal from strength’) as paraphilias associated with the practice of wrestling for erotic purpose. It is perhaps unsurprising that a female muscle fetish would be located at the bottom of Rubin’s (1984: 281) hierarchy of sexual value/desire and that muscle worship has often been portrayed as a seedy and dangerous underworld of domination and submission (see Arnoldi 2002). Female muscle worship is described by Richardson (2008: 290) as no different to any other sexual fetish, in the sense that it is about ‘the adoration of the fetish object itself rather than copulation’. However, what is even more subversive here is that the muscular woman’s body becomes eroticized – a ‘deviant body’

  which rebels against hegemonic norms. Fetishes are often pathologized and labelled obscene and disgusting by mainstream society. Whilst popular psychological theories, in particular Freudian perspectives, focus on the fear of castration and parental relationships as being the cause of these ‘abnormal’ physical desires (see Richardson 2008), sociological explanations look at the social context in which these fetishes be
come labelled deviant and at subcultural understandings of the phenomena. Weber (1948 [1915a]: 345) perceives eroticism as a sensual and creative force which, through the ‘boundless giving of oneself’, culminates in a heightened physical state of ‘unique meaning’. For Weber, eroticism is a direct response to the hardness and mundanity of modern rational society, allowing transcendence through sensation and desire. The self becomes lost in/obliterated by the all-consuming carnal sensations of the moment, providing an escape from reality. These feelings of heightened euphoria are captured by one female muscle worshipper who claims that ‘muscular women can literally make me lose my ability for rational thought… [I become]

  intoxicated’ (‘6ft1Swell’, interview).

  A plethora of ‘female muscle worship’ information is readily available on the internet, from blogs and chat rooms which hail and celebrate the muscular female

  form (such as femalemuscleslave.com and Saradas.org) to sites selling DVDs and

  76 The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding

  photographs (wpwmax.com), to female bodybuilders providing webcam services

  at a price. Websites such as Wb70, Ironbelles and The Valkyries will also promote wrestling and muscle worship sessions with individual women. Sessions may include the following services: muscle worship (may include flexing or licking and touching the muscle), shirt ripping, strip tease, light domination, posing, submission, video production, lifts/carries, personal training, massage, lingerie posing/modelling and wrestling (wrestling might include fantasy wrestling, oil wrestling, competitive wrestling, headlocks, head scissors, body scissors, grapevine leg holds and so on –

  see Kaye 2005 for further information). Some sessions also provide a dual act where two female bodybuilders will act out the fantasy of the muscle fan.

  For many men who are female muscle worshippers (as yet, no women muscle worshippers who pay for sessions have been identified), there appears to be a masochistic drive, with the desire to be dominated or controlled. As Mary expresses (quoted in Kaye 2005: 117) ‘they are just in awe… some want to be picked up and carried around or squeezed really hard or held like a baby. They want to feel your power, feel your strength. They want to be overpowered or dominated’. However, this understanding cannot be accepted uncritically. As ‘6ft1Swell’ explains in the following quote, muscle worship means different things to different people: Regarding muscle worship and S&M, I think that for some female muscle fans it is pretty much the same thing and for others it’s completely different. I’ve had contact with some guys for whom the whole attraction of muscle women is their ability to dominate. These guys’ idea of heaven is having the crap beaten out of them, or being choked into unconsciousness between a pair of muscular thighs etc. There are some who want to be dominated on a wrestling mat, forced to submit and then worship, others more into the Robert Crumb lift and carry thing. For me, it’s never been about this. In my fantasies about female bodybuilders (and actual experience with muscular non-FBBs), muscle worship is like the foreplay. Not that I would object to (nor have I objected to) a bit of flexing during sex (or before, or after for that matter!). But I have no interest in being battered, dominated or ‘forced’ to do anything that would be classified as S&M, and I’d rather see a woman demonstrate her strength in the gym than on me… it all depends on what each person’s version of muscle worship is.

  Muscle worship is a lucrative business for female bodybuilders and can be an option to sustain the women’s lifestyle and enable their financial independence and economic empowerment. Sessions in the UK usually cost £300–£325 per hour (although discounts may be offered to repeat customers). Whilst there may be some element of a sliding-scale cost depending on how famous the female bodybuilder is and the kind of session required, costs can range from £200–£500

  an hour. Likewise, the price of webcam sessions depends on the desired session and female bodybuilder. One muscle worshipper explains this in more detail: Most performers will begin in free chat, then you request a private show. Just flexing is around $2 a minute, but some women don’t do anything for free,

  The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding 77

  so they start in what they call premium chat, which can go up to $5, and is basically a way of getting you to pay just to see the performer. Many of the women also have fantasy (i.e. fully nude) chat, which can be up to a few dollars on top of that, while others require you to request what they call one-on-one before they go fully nude, but it’s usually a similar price, and may also involve more overtly sexual displays.

  Thus webcam sessions can cost £50–£70 for a ten-minute fantasy session with a famous female bodybuilder. Some websites, which are often run by the female bodybuilder themselves, will charge £35 a month for worshippers to view new pictures and clips, allowing some women to make up to £45,000 per annum from the website alone. It is important to point out, however, that not all femalemuscle fans engage in sessions and in sexual transactions. Some may simply wish to sponsor female bodybuilders in their sporting endeavours. Others may wish to sponsor muscular women in exchange for their time or friendship, or indeed for training with them. As Corina (a bodybuilder of four years) states,

  ‘some just want to discuss training with you and see a bit of flexing’.

  Views from the women

  Despite the burgeoning trade in muscle worship, very little is known about how female bodybuilders experience these events. Do they participate in these sessions purely for money or are there other motivations and pleasures to be found? The community of female bodybuilders is divided on this topic between those who believe it is debasing and damaging to the sport, those who believe that it is a legit-imate way to make a living due to the limited opportunities available to them in

  the sport (see Chapter 9) and those who engage in sessions for individual pleasure

  and sexual satisfaction. Charlie (a bodybuilder of four years) points out that due to the high financial costs of female bodybuilders’ lifestyles, it is difficult to survive without supplementing their income with muscle worship: ‘the pros can’t really have a regular job… the male bodybuilders also do it but that’s even more taboo’.1

  Although female participants claim that a high proportion of female bodybuilders do it, it is impossible to find numbers due to the secrecy commonly involved in any form of sex work. Kaye (2005) estimates, very broadly, that between 20 and 80 per cent of competitors are involved in muscle worship sessions in America –

  demonstrating how little is known about this activity. However, it is not difficult to find female bodybuilders in the UK who do sessions, as they either have their own website or are listed on others.

  Some female bodybuilders are horrified by the commercialization of female muscle and the financial transactions of muscle worship. Barbara (a bodybuilder of seven years) states: ‘I just think it’s disgusting, it’s bad for the sport; it’s no different to prostitution really’. A leading figure in the world of female bodybuilding, and a UK judge, has also spoken out against these sessions, arguing that they degrade the women and bring the sport into disrepute. These opinions correspond with the feminist argument (see Chapter 4) that despite female

  78 The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding

  bodybuilders creating a body which defies hegemonic norms of femininity, the women are recuperated once again into patriarchal society by becoming erotic spectacles for the pleasure of men. However, Lisa Cross (winner of the UKBFF

  2010) retaliates:

  Some people argue that it’s bringing bodybuilding into disrepute. As far as I’m concerned, it’s putting bodybuilding on a pedestal, making it available to people who would never consider attending an actual show. It’s a huge industry in the US, and it allows me to spend 99 per cent of my time totally focussed on my career. The federation would probably have less of a problem with it if they were making money from it themselves.

  (Shahrad 2010)

  Another female bodybuilder stated that she ‘did
it for cash pure and simple’.

  Rather than the women being coerced in any way, there is a suggestion of choice and free will and feelings of being in control:

  We get £210 for muscle worship, compared to the regular girls who only get

  £100 (£40 taken for commission) and have to sleep with them… Depends on the client and what we decide… it leaves the ball in our court. There’s no pressure to do what we don’t want to do… There’s really no assumptions there, which surprised me at first because of the way things are portrayed –

  the hardcore muscle worshippers are simply that – hardcore worship fans…

  some want the ‘girlfriend experience’, others just want you to flex, sometimes there’s no sexual stuff at all. It’s really up to the woman herself and what she wants to do.

  (Danielle, bodybuilder of five years)

  Thus the female bodybuilders have agency and are not passive dupes, but are complicit in the performances. In addition to the financial incentives, for some female bodybuilders, there was pleasure to be found in both the recognition of their hard work and the dedication that it had taken to create their physique, and the worshipper’s admiration:

  If someone wants to make money out of something for what they’ve done, and what they’ve achieved – then why not? You spend so long being slated for what you do and having to put up with negative press… And then someone comes along and offers you £200 to say how fantastic you are for an hour – then who’s going to turn that down? Regardless of what they do?… I just think that if you can make money out of it and provide a stable financial way of living and stuff…then I don’t think that’s a bad thing… for people to tell me I’m great.

  (Mary, bodybuilder of 12 years)

  The ‘dark side’ of female bodybuilding 79

  As Erin (a bodybuilder of seven years) articulates,

  [E]very human being appreciates and desires recognition for something and thoroughly enjoys having the opportunity to feel sexy and wanted. If a female bodybuilder gets that from her muscles, how is it wrong or different from other women being desired for their chest size or pretty face?