Strong and Hard Women

An ethnography of female bodybuilding

Tanya Bunsell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136250859
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Sociología

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 a 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 into 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 remains 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.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780203104750-1

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.

Storying myself

There are multiple motivations that propel interest into particular research areas. The very beginning of my research into female bodybuilders had its roots in my childhood. Indeed, ‘seeds’ of thought around the subject matter were planted through defining moments and epiphanies. These ideas and perspectives on the world grew and developed as they were nourished by academic studies. Thus the idea to embark on research into this area evolved through numerous experiences embedded within my own biography. In this section of the chapter, I try to utilize the ‘sociological imagination’ (Mills 1959) by investigating how memories of my encounters with social norms and social scripts in the past influenced my self-identity and have consequently impacted on the construction of the book (Douglas 2009). This is commensurate with Cain’s (1990: 139) suggestion that ‘[t]he theory we produce should account for our own knowledge as well as that of those we investigate… [This] does not imply a smooth or continuous theoretical totalization but… allows for contradictions and discontinuities’.

‘Unveiling’ the self can, of course, be an uncomfortable experience that leaves me, the researcher, open and vulnerable to criticism. However, as feminists argue, I believe there needs to be transparency in our research, and that the ‘personal’ is indeed the ‘political’. It should be noted here, before I ‘story myself’ (Douglas 2009), that all biographies are partial, complex and fragmented. Nevertheless, I have tried to account for some of the personal motivations that led me to explore this fascinating research area. According to Gordon (2008), all sociologists are storytellers, so this is my story:

My first encounter with a female bodybuilder (scenario 1, aged 8)

I wanted to learn to dance and act, so here I was, at Hilda Barrett’s School of Dancing (set in the incongruous location of an Old People’s home) having an elocution lesson. ‘A, E, I, O, U’, I pronounced out a loud – as slowly as I could, trying to clearly articulate the vowels. ‘No, no, no’, the old, retired dancer shouted at me, waving her walking stick in the air. ‘It’s ‘I’, not ‘I’ – push the letter forward through to the front of your mouth’. I tried again a few times and failed to win her approval. She sighed and turned her attention to the pupil standing next to me. My mind began to drift. I looked up and saw a woman doing a gymnastic routine on the muted television screen. I watched her do the splits, one armed press-ups and even a back flip. I was awestruck, not so much by the routine, but by the combination of her skills and her appearance. I had never seen a woman look like that before. She was wearing a shiny bikini, displaying her tanned, muscular body. She had lots of make-up on and styled ‘big’ hair. She looked so happy, independent, strong and carefree.

I know now that the woman performing the routine was a ‘Fitness competitor’ (see Chapter 3). Unlike the majority of people, who immediately react with repulsion at the mere sight of a muscular woman, I immediately found her appearance, demeanour and capabilities appealing. Even at that young age I was drawn to and fascinated by a woman so apparently possessed of herself.

Gendered sports (scenario 2, aged 10)

We didn’t have playing fields at my primary school. So every week, during games lessons, we boarded a coach that took us to a local secondary school to use their facilities. As usual, the girls, wearing their short, pleated, blue PE skirts, got off the coach and headed over to the netball courts, whilst the boys, in shorts or tracksuit bottoms, ran over to the far field to play football. I turned to my female PE teacher and questioned: ‘But why? Why can’t I play football with the boys?’

I had grown up as a ‘tomboy’ – a word rarely used now, but defined by the American Heritage dictionary (Morris 2009) as ‘a girl considered boyish or masculine in behaviour or manner… who acts or dresses in a boyish way, liking rough outdoor activities’. From a very young age I didn’t understand why females and males were treated so differently. I couldn’t understand why gender was so important, nor why it prevented me from joining in boys’ activities and sports.

Body image (scenario 3, aged 18)

I swam far out to sea, embracing the coolness of the water after the heat of the scorching sun. I stopped to catch my breath, keeping myself buoyant with my legs and the occasional swish of my hands under the water. I turned to look back at the beach, situated on the Grecian island of Samos. I could immediately locate my best friend. Unlike the other bronzed bodies stretched out on the beach, she was sitting by herself, covered from head to toe in dark baggy clothes. Not because she feared the damage the sun might do but because she despised her body so much.

During my secondary school years, I had three close female friends, and two of them had severe body image issues. One went through a short period of anorexia, another through a longer period of bulimia. Only one of my friends remained unaffected; the rest of us had low self-esteem which we, at least at the time, attributed to our imperfect bodies.

Injury and the obsession with weights (scenario 4, aged 18)

It hurt so much. I couldn’t move without a pain shooting down my neck, trapezius and upper back. Just breathing was painful. I felt sick. I was in hospital being checked over for any spinal injuries. The doctor did a series of tests, checking that my body was fully functioning and that my bodily sensations were responding normally. The X-ray had shown that my neck (the seventh cervical) was broken and that my trapezius (traps) were badly damaged. To the fascination of the medical staff, my injury was the result of performing squats with a 100kg barbell. My muscles had adapted quickly to my new, intense heavy training regime, but unfortunately my bones had not. My traps had literally torn the bone apart under the pressure of the weight.

The doctor told me that I was incredibly lucky and that with plenty of rest and time I would heal. He said I must be very careful in the future and I would have to wear a neck-brace for the next few weeks.

‘When can I get back to work?’ I asked. I knew if I wanted to train, I had to get back to my job as a fitness instructor. I was already desperate, knowing that I had only a window of ten days before my muscles (which were not visible at the time) would begin to decrease.

My debut as a serious weight-trainer was over almost before it had begun. I recall the immense pain of the incident (which caused problems for several years afterwards), but equally I can remember the overwhelming frustration of not being able to train and the consequent realization that I had become ‘addicted’ to exercise. This incident made me question both the power and the restrictions of this lifestyle. Although I continued to work and train in gyms, it was not until I began this research project that I once more began to use heavy weights.

My interest in weight training began around my fifteenth birthday, when I asked for a set of dumbbells. The following year, on my sixteenth birthday, I was given membership of a local gym. I remember the feelings of excitement and anticipation as I entered this underground gym – with dimmed lights and loud music, reminiscent of a nightclub atmosphere. It became my home, my refuge, my release. I embraced the endorphin highs and enjoyed the workouts, which consisted of a variety of activities such as using cardiovascular machines, running, aerobics, boxercise and circuits, as well as resistance weights and limited free weights exercises. It was not until I left college at 18 and became a full-time, qualified gym instructor that I became more involved in weight training rather than ‘keep-fit’, encouraged by two women who regularly trained with weights. I loved how I felt in the gym – both the atmosphere and the experience of the workouts themselves. I also wanted to embody traits of power, independence and a controversial beauty.

These social moments are just a selection of those that helped shape and define my identity and influenced the way in which I now see and interpret the world. Perhaps, in light of my enjoyment of physical sports and weight training, my questioning of natural gender roles and my peer group’s poor body image, it is not so surprising that I came to study female bodybuilders. I wanted to discover whether an alternate body project and way of being could provide a body of ‘content’, ‘substance’ and existential solidity in today’s society. These ‘experiential episodes’ also serve to introduce the key themes of this book: sports and gender, gendered space, gendered attitudes (feminism), weight training, exercise, obsession, pain, injury, self-identity, body image and self-esteem.

The context

My desire to sculpt (using weights) a body symbolic of my desired self-identity was not as unique as I may have believed at the time. Indeed, over the past 30 years there has been a propensity to treat the body as a self-reflexive entity, a ‘project which should be worked at and accomplished as part of an individual’s self-identity’ (Shilling 1993: 5). Bodies, in this sense, are viewed as ‘corporeal surfaces on which the engraving inscription or “graffiti” are etched’ (Grosz 1994: 63), as canvases that reflect the ‘soul’. Individual ‘body projects’ are situated within the context of an increasingly ‘body-focused’ and ‘body-conscious’ Western society. Every day we are relentlessly bombarded with information about our bodies through the media, consumer culture, government, science and new technologies. Evidence for this is provided by the plethora of advertisements and articles in magazines, newspapers and television programmes concerned with the health, shape, size and appearance of the body and by the invention of an ever-increasing array of products and technologies designed to modify the body. In addition, there has been an unprecedented visibility of the body both in and outside of consumer culture.

This unabashed display of the body has occurred for several reasons, such as changing social attitudes to the body, the type of clothing worn, the environment (central heating/leisurewear), advertising, Hollywood, television and other modes of visual display (Featherstone 1991). Furthermore, self-reflexive ‘body projects’ have flourished at a fragile time in history in ‘post-modernity’; an era characterized by uncertainty, a fragmentation of social life and a volatile economic environment. In this way, body projects can be seen as a form of control in an ‘unstable’ world. As Roseneil and Seymour (1999: 4) suggest, they can be seen as an attempt to ‘anchor our sense of self in this maelstrom of social life, to create ontological security in a world of rapid social change’.

At the same time as this new-found emphasis on the individualization of the body, social theorists have pointed out that unprecedented societal value has been placed ‘on the youthful, trim and sensual body’ (Shilling 1993: 3). This is demonstrated by Foucault’s (1980: 57) statement about bodily freedom: ‘get undressed, but be slimmed, good-looking, tanned!’ In this way, the physical appearance of the body, including its size and shape, has not only become increasingly important to an individual’s sense of self, but has also come under increasing scrutiny from others. More than ever, people’s bodies have become central to judgements associated with their social identity, sexual worth and even moral standing. Indeed, there is now wide consensus in sociological literature that the pressures to ‘look good’ have never been so strong (see for example Bordo 2004; Grogan 2004; Cash 2004; Brace-Govan 2002; Featherstone 1991; Jeffreys 2005; Shilling 2003; Rodin 1992; Sullivan 2004; Arthurs and Grimshaw 1999). Under this societal pressure of bodily conformity, individuals are required to participate in habitual body maintenance regimes to ‘improve’ their appearance and health. Thus, according to Featherstone (1991: 187), in contemporary consumer society there is an emergence of a ‘performing self’ – one which focuses upon the display and appearance of the body and impression management. This new emphasis on the body has been associated with a number of cultural phenomena, including an increase in cosmetic surgery and a surge in eating disorders. More commonly still, it has informed the unprecedented numbers of people in the affluent West who now ‘work out’ on and with their bodies in one way or another. In this respect, American ideals of ‘trim, taut and terrific’ bodies, incorporating within their very flesh the appearance of efficiency and hard work so prized within social and corporate life, have become increasingly popular in Europe over the past few decades.

Consumer society’s obsession with ‘working on the body’ to attain hegemonic beauty norms and maintain social standing has not gone uncontested, however. Indeed, critical commentators are quick to point out that ‘body projects’ perpetuate social inequalities: not everyone has access to the resources (such as time, finance, physical capabilities) necessary for participation in ‘re-moulding’ the body. Feminists, furthermore, argue that women are under more pressure to conform to beauty norms and maintain an attractive appearance than are their male counterparts. As Shilling (1993: 8) explains, the body projects engaged with by some women ‘appear to be more reflective of male designs and fantasies than an expression of individuality’.

Although the majority of ‘body projects’ conform to contemporary norms of appearance, there are some ‘alternative’ body modifications that seem to oppose and resist the unblemished, smooth, pristine ideal of the body’s surface. Indeed, there has been a rapid growth in non-mainstream body modification practices, including heavy tattooing, multiple piercings, bodybuilding, branding and binding. Curry (1993: 76) believes that these represent ‘a revolution in claiming freedom to explore one’s own body and claim the territory discovered as one’s own’. Such unconventional forms of body modification have been met with revulsion, disgust, pathology, horror and abject fascination by mainstream society and also by some feminists (Pitts 2003). Others, however, have celebrated these ‘hardcore’ modes of body modification on the basis of their potential to effect a rebellion against Western hegemonic norms of beauty. In this book, however, I argue that we do not yet have enough evidence to assess whether these new practices are empowering, and that there is a distinct need for more empirical research to be conduct...