Challenging Myths of Masculinity

Understanding Physical Cultures

Lee F. Monaghan, Michael Atkinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409435006
• eBook ISBN: 9781317168782
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Many myths surround male bodies and associated bodywork, especially when such bodywork is labelled culturally or socially atypical or 'problematic'. Bodybuilding, for example, has been explained in terms of gender inadequacy and an 'Adonis complex' akin to reverse anorexia, while men electing to undergo aesthetic cosmetic surgery are deemed 'too concerned' about their appearance and thus woman-like. Myths also discredit men and boys who do not engage in appropriate bodywork when this is expected. For instance, amidst public health concerns surrounding a so-called 'obesity epidemic', men and boys who resist physical activity and/or attempts to promote a 'healthy weight' are deemed ignorant, apathetic and in need of correction. Drawing on extensive field research conducted in North America and Britain over a twenty year period, this book challenges such masculine myth making. Mindful of a rich sociological tradition that seeks to understand the social world as lived and experienced, the authors provide insights that are likely to challenge common perceptions of various groups of men and boys, their diverse physical cultures, shared ways of being and identities. Presenting empirically grounded understandings of diverse bodily practices and discourses including bodybuilding, cosmetic surgery, dieting and nightclub security, Challenging Myths of Masculinity will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography and cultural studies, with interests in gender, embodiment and masculinities.

Chapter 1 ‘Postmodern’ Muscle: The Embodied Pleasures of Vibrant Physicality

Lee F. Monaghan

DOI: 10.4324/9781315571188-2

The positive symbolic meanings commonly ascribed to exercised and dieted physiques render fitness and aesthetic body work popular pursuits. Nonetheless, unflattering myths abound in relation to men (and women) who immerse themselves in bodybuilding and develop ‘excessive’ muscularity. Bodybuilders risk being stereotyped as ‘narcissistic, vacuous “muscle-hedz”’ (Richardson 2012: 23) or, amidst media moral panic, irresponsible and violent steroid abusers who wilfully abandon their own and other people's health and safety (Monaghan 2001, 2012a). Sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists often reproduce and reinforce such ‘stigma theories’ (Goffman 1963), especially in relation to male bodybuilders. In recent decades, commentators on male bodybuilding and drug-taking have proffered questionable narratives concerning a ‘masculinity-in-crisis’ (Klein 1993), and a putative ‘body image disorder’ termed ‘muscle dysmorphia’ or ‘the Adonis complex’ (Pope et al. 2000). This alleged disorder has also been connected to steroid addiction, a growing concern in nations such as the USA (Kanayama et al. 2009; for a critique, see Monaghan 2009). In such a context, Keane (2005: 191) observes that particular concern has been expressed in public health discourse about ‘[t]he recreational and amateur steroid user [who] is diagnosed largely in terms of psychopathology, his massive, hard and muscular body appearing as a symptom of underlying psychological vulnerability and psychic disturbance’.

Using data generated during qualitative research (see the methodological appendix), this chapter challenges discrediting myths where bodybuilding is viewed as symptomatic of an inadequate personality or problematic masculinity that must be diagnosed, targeted and treated. In line with symbolic interactionist research that makes sense of meaningful group life, this chapter considers aspects of bodybuilders’ shared worldview and constructive practices. Particular attention is focused on participants’ talk about ‘looking and feeling good’ or, to use more abstract academic prose, somatic representations of health and youth alongside pragmatic and experiential embodiment (Watson 2000). Accordingly, this chapter avoids lazy assumptions and complacent alliances with stigma theories that position bodybuilders as ‘dangerous individuals’ or ‘cultural victims’ (as with the idea of muscle dysmorphia) (Monaghan 2009). Restated, bodybuilding is understood as a meaningful activity rather than a collection of atavistic individuals suffering from psychological troubles or ‘large doses’ of gender insecurity (Klein 1993).

Particular emphasis will be given to ‘healthy bodies’ and, in so doing, this chapter also addresses a certain asymmetry within the sociology of health and illness. This is useful because, even among those medical sociologists interested in bodily matters, primary emphasis has largely been given to sickness, disability and death as opposed to vibrant physicality and associated embodied pleasures. Such emphasis is common, reflecting a general bias within medical sociology and public discussion of health issues. As Hart and Carter observe: ‘Although lip service is made to the notion of positive health status, and the need to avoid a pathologising bio-medical perspective, much writing on “health” is in fact concerned only with disease’ (2000: 249). Since Hart and Carter were writing sociologists have directed greater theoretical, if not empirical, attention towards health, the health role and the increasing cultural significance of fitness (e.g. Shilling 2008, Neville 2013). Yet, there remains a need to undertake empirical research among people as they pursue what they define as healthiness, wellbeing and vibrant physicality if we are to understand their (sometimes risky) practices. Accordingly, this chapter not only aims to contribute to academic knowledge but also health policy and practice by challenging myths that could unintentionally undermine harm minimization interventions directed at bodybuilders who take anabolic steroids and other physique enhancing drugs.

Looking Good and Feeling Good, or ‘Fit for Postmodern Selfhood’

Body theorists such as Williams and Bendelow (1998) and Watson (2000) usefully conceptualize bodies as socially constructed and experienced, objective and subjective, specular and sentient (also, Featherstone 1991, Leder 1990, Wachter 1984). Viewed from this perspective there is an intertwining of the body, self and culture: bodies have social meanings conferred upon them and bodies confer meanings that are constitutive of selfhood in contemporary culture. Such theorizing resonates with Cooley's (1902) idea of the ‘looking-glass self’ where social actors co-construct images and imaginings of themselves by assuming the perspective of other people. The looking-glass self ‘is no longer a mere metaphor’ (Bloor et al. 1998: 41) in commodified consumer cultures, populated by what Waskul and Vannini (2006) term ‘the looking-glass body’. They explain this ‘body is not a direct reflection of other's judgements – it is an imagined reflection built of cues gleaned from others’ (p. 5, emphasis in original). Yet, as these interactionists indicate, such theorizing leaves us with ‘unanswered questions’ (p. 6).

If we focus on the micro-interactional construction of looking-glass bodies we might ask questions such as: what are the means by which such reflections are constructed? Furthermore, while this concept has been usefully applied to frail bodies experiencing chronic illness and disability (Charmaz and Rosenfeld 2006), what representational and discursive elements enable social actors in different circumstances to view themselves in a positive light? It is here that the everyday embodiment of fitness – or ‘being in shape’ (Watson 2000; also, see Chapter 5 on the obesity myth and Chapter 6 on schoolboy masculinities) – has formal relevance, regardless of the specificities of any particular sport or activity. There is, as Shilling (2008: 107) observes, an ‘unprecedented’ emphasis today on people ‘looking, feeling and being at their best [in] a social milieu in which health is prized, expected and, increasingly, demanded’. Physical fitness and health are not coterminous (an elite athlete, for instance, may have cancer), but in Western society numerous overlapping, conflated and complementary meanings are typically ascribed to exercised and dieted fe/male bodies, such as: health, youth, social status and sexual attractiveness. This, I would add, is in a world of ‘immanent surfaces’ as discussed further in Chapter 2 on men and cosmetic surgery – a gender blurring practice that is irreducible to ‘the fatalistic chase for hegemonic masculine perfection’. The embodied meanings of muscle, as with fitness more generally, thus demands sociological attention. It is here that I would take further inspiration from symbolic interactionist writing.

In discussing the symbolism of the fit-looking body, Glassner (1990) claims exercise has become a postmodern activity, a pastiche borrowing from diverse imagery, styles and traditions. Within postmodern culture the fit-looking body, cultivated through ascetic training and dietetic regimens, is not simply a common resource for judging the adequacy of self and others. Rather, the strong-looking, fat-free and active body is ‘a mosaic of physical, economic, and aesthetic transformations, a pastiche of ends and means’ (p. 233). Glassner illustrates this argument when discussing ‘working out’ with Nautilus machines, with the ‘post-dualistic self’ blurring modernist divisions such as leisure and work. Accordingly, when reflecting on the popularity of fitness pursuits, weight-control and dieting he rejects the explanatory power of a ‘biosocial realist account’, i.e. the ‘truth’ that fit bodies are simply superior and citizens are ‘merely accepting the well confirmed scientific evidence’ on the matter (p. 221). Rather, the situation is more complex but, as well appreciated by various sociologists (e.g. Atkinson 2008, Smith Maguire 2008), it is also amenable to empirical investigation.

In constituting a rich and complex mosaic, fitness inevitably has multiple meanings. Indeed, in her study on US consumer fitness culture, Smith Maguire (2008) begins with qualitative data on the diverse ‘lived definitions’ of fitness (visual, medical, functional etc). I would add that considerable indeterminacy not only surrounds physical fitness but also bodies defined as ‘fit’ in one setting but not another (Monaghan 2006a). Restated, the meanings ascribed to, co-constructed and imagined by looking-glass bodies vary enormously in time and place. One need only consider how women's fatness (which may otherwise be medicalized as obesity) has and continues to be equated with beauty and fertility – and thus reproductive fitness – in some societies and fat activist communities. Corporeal indeterminacy extends to bodybuilders’ physiques which vary in their size, condition and vascularity (prominence of veins). What we have here are ‘ways of looking’ (bodily forms) that also entail ways of looking at (perceiving, evaluating) physiques according to specific subcultural or ethnophysiological criteria. Sizeably muscular and exceptionally lean bodybuilding physiques certainly transgress the normative features of fit-looking or athletically muscular/toned bodies (Monaghan 2001). This observation persists, with elite competitors becoming ever more ‘extreme’, ‘shredded’, ‘massive’ and ‘freaky’ – what Locks (2012) refers to as the ‘Post-Classic’ aesthetic that contradicts bodybuilding's Apollonian heritage. Nevertheless, bodybuilders’ (variable) subcultural somatic standards arise out of wider cultural values and dispositions even if at some juncture they become different values. A corollary is that bodybuilders may locate their own and other gym members’ muscular bodies within culturally familiar discursive, representational and imagined space. Indeed, participants may account for their body projects by merging perceptions of ‘outlandish’ bodybuilding physiques with culturally idealized fit-looking bodies without there necessarily being any subjectively experienced logical inconsistencies within their belief systems. Additionally, because most bodybuilders are not usually in competition shape and, when attired, appear more or less acceptable/impressive/desirable to non-gym members, it may be relatively easy for them to maintain their supportive beliefs. In so doing, bodybuilders ‘reconstruct the self (and, in particular the self-body relationship) in a manner that is more felicitous to life in contemporary culture’ (Glassner 1990: 218).

Analytically, then, I will extend Glassner's (1990) postmodernist analysis of the ‘fit-looking body’ to the symbolism of the abstracted and homogenized ‘muscular body’. Before doing this, however, I will further qualify my position. Postmodernism – with its emphasis on indeterminacy, appearances, playfulness, the ephemeral and so forth – is critiqued by medical sociologists who stress the enduring salience of modernity (Williams et al. 2000). Such a view is similarly articulated in disciplines such as human geography, comprising analyses of exploitative capitalist relations, crisis tendencies and body processes (Harvey 2000). As part of my ongoing sociological work I also remain concerned about the impact of modernist divisions on health and how obfuscating ideologies detract attention from consequential social structures that constrain life chances, impact bodies and do violence to politicized accounts (Monaghan 2013b). Rather than simply celebrating multiple points of view in line with the relativizing twists and turns of postmodern theory, I recognize that aspects of my interviewees’ talk could be critiqued for relying on ideological norms governing the individualized, self-reliant and responsible (neoliberal) citizen who aspires to be ‘healthy’ through ‘lifestyle choices’. Sociologists, including symbolic interactionists who critique health fascism, likely have various concerns here. They may wish to scrutinize moralizing ‘narrative accounts’, described by Edgley (2006: 232) as a pervasive feature of the ‘postmodern world of body consumerism’ – narratives that lament the poor physical shape and health of the ‘larger’ population. Neville (2013) summarizes critical thinking with reference to ‘the problematic of fitness’ and how this ‘field is set up in such a way that the burden of socially borne health risks are now directed towards the individual, and that these individuals are directed towards the market for their relief’ (pp. 481–2). While such concerns are important and should be debated, I want to stress that my more specific and modest aim in this chapter is to understand bodybuilders’ ‘discursive practices’ or ‘the communicative means by which the self is constructed’ (Edgley 2006: 232).

There are additional reasons for taking a qualified stance. Alongside many steroid-using bodybuilders’ faith in biomedicine as a scientifically valid and useful (modernist) practice (Monaghan 1999), there is, contra Glassner's (1990) interpretation of fitness, much about bodybuilding subculture that reinforces rather than dissolves principle dualities such as male and female. Hence I am not claiming that the masculinist meanings of muscle and gym culture are irrelevant (see also Chapter 3 on burly ‘bouncers’ and bodily capital). For instance, the eroticization of lifting weights may be discursively equated with the embodied pleasures of active heterosexual masculinity (see also Bailey and Gillett 2012). However, my main argument here is that the postmodern imagery of muscle is a possible idea-element that renders (chemical) bodybuilding visibly-rational-and-reportable-for-all-practical-purposes. In contrast to studies dismissing possible postmodernist interpretations, I argue that appeals to health and youth are permissible even among bodybuilders engaged in ‘physiologically detrimental practices’ (Klein 1993: 148). The crucial point of overlap between bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts in general is a shared attempt to embody and display a sense of empowerment and self-mastery.

In constituting a postmodern pastiche, the various representational features of muscle discussed below are conjoined, hybrid and ambiguous. Bodybuilders’ postmodern body configurations, as expressed by Bolin (1992: 87), represent the ‘polysemic’ nature of cultural texts, the blending and blurring of various insignia. As an organizing principle, however, representations of health and youth are discussed under separate sections. This is a heuristic since, in the semantics of postmodernity, ‘looking healthy’ is synonymous with ‘looking young’ and, one may add, ‘looking sexy’. In reading the ‘normative’ features of muscle, the following provides an embodied (non-dualistic) understanding of the external representation of the physical body. Accordingly, the objectified body is understood as one manner in which the ‘lived body’ shows itself. As might be inferred, then, when referring to the social meanings of the sensible body (object of perception), data pertaining to the sentient body (perceiving subject) emerge in members’ accounts. Just as Watson's (2000) respondents linked health as physical appearance to health as wellbeing, my contacts often associated ‘looking good’ with ‘feeling good’. However, while understanding the sensuality of bodybuilding is central in elucidating its ongoing appeal, teasing out the ‘objective’ significance of exercised and dieted bodies also serves a useful analytic purpose. This facilitates critical engagement with academic studies that explain bodybuilding in terms of a perceived masculinity-in-crisis and an anxiety-riddled quest to embody the physical trappings of ‘hegemonic’ masculinity (Klein 1993). Centrally, I will maintain that (i) masculinity is not the only meaning that may be ascribed to the muscular body's surface, and (ii) particular meanings attached to muscle partially as opposed to exhaustively account for the ongoing appeal of bodybuilding.

The partiality of constructivist analyses, which accord central significance to the external, representational, socially inscribed masculine body, is underscored in the latter part of the chapter. Here data are presented on the sensuous bodily experiences of ‘pumping iron’, which bodybuilders learn to enjoy, and the perceived benefits for everyday ‘pragmatic embodiment’ (Watson 2000), i.e. the body that functions in the world according to various role obligations and demands (see also Robertson 2006, Robertson et al. 2010). While such aspects cannot be divorced from the gender order and crisis may play a part in some men's biographies (understandable given the vicissitudes of class inequities in neoliberal Britain which underlie harmful practices ranging from cigarette smoking to heroin use), I will argue that theories explaining (drug-assisted) bodybuilding in terms of antecedent inadequacies are not sufficient and perhaps not even necessary (similarly, see Becker 1963). The embodied pleasures of strenuous anaerobic exercise, alongside the postmodern imagery of muscle, may be more directly relevant in sustaining the ongoing consumption of (risky) bodybuilding technologies.

Fit-looking Bodies and the Somatic Representation of Health

The thing is about bodybuilding is that you can look fit even if you’re not. That's the thing about bodybuilders. They look tremendous (Interview 12, female bodybuilder).

There has been widespread interest in fitness since the early 1980s (Glassner 1990), and this trend has continued judging by the profitability of the leisure industry (Neville 2013). Exercise, or more specifically cardiovascular exercise such as running, cycling and swimming, is often touted as healthful where ‘health’ and ‘fitness’ have become synonymous in everyday usage (Glassner 1990: 216). According to Klein (1993: 147), a crucial factor in the increasing public acceptance of bodybuilding during this period has been its connection to the contemporary health movement. No doubt, the common valorization of nutrition and exercise constitutes a pervasive cultural theme that renders bodybuilding appealing to many ‘health conscious’ people. A male bodybuilder, who also reported experimenting with steroids and had aspirations to compete, said: ‘It's a healthy lifestyle, working out regularly as opposed to sitting in front of the telly eating bags of crisp and drinking cans of beer all the time’ (Interview 16). Such words accord with Smith Maguire's (2008: 2) statement that ‘[t]he contemporary value conferred on the fit body cannot be separated from the rise in the West of a largely sedentary way of life’. As with commonly recycled concerns about the obesity epidemic, what we see here is a concern to exorcise ‘the deficiencies of the modern era’ with bodybuilding ‘sold as an escape route from the characteristic ills of modern culture’ (Glassner 1990: 220).

Although bodybuilders have been touted as proponents of a healthy lifestyle, bodybuilding requires relatively little cardiovascular fitness, i.e. the type of fitness which health promoters consider important for biomedical health and reducing mortality and morbidity risk. Indeed, the primary goal of bodybuilding is ‘the look’ – to change one's bodily appearance so that it more or less approximates idealized images of hea...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Seriespage
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: From Myths to Empirically Grounded Understandings: Researching Men’s and Boys’ Physical Cultures
• 1 ‘Postmodern’ Muscle: The Embodied Pleasures of Vibrant Physicality
• 2 Cosmetic Surgery: Men Who Walk/Erase the Gender Line
• 3 Burly ‘Bouncers’, Cardboard Cutouts and Physical Violence: An Ethnography of Nightclub Security Work
• 4 Masculinity on the Menu: Body Slimming and Self-Starvation as Physical Culture
• 5 Challenging the Obesity Myth: Men’s Critical Understandings of the Body Mass Index
• 6 Schoolboys, Physical Education and Bullying: ‘Hey, Leave Those Kids Alone!’
• Methodological Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index