Bodybuilding is generally considered to be a deviant behavior. The reasoning behind this is that the build required to be a bodybuilder is not efficient or useful in day-to-day life. What is the purpose of being that big? Bodybuilders builds are generally seen as freakishly big. Both men and female bodybuilders are considered deviant but especially so for women. Typically, in our society, the ideal body type for a woman is small and skinny. However, women bodybuilders prioritize muscle mass over societal desires for women’s bodies. Stated in the study, “Deviant or Normal? Female Bodybuilders’ Accounts of Social Reactions”, by Ruth A. Chananie-Hill, “The most common appearance aspects of female bodybuilders that mainstream audiences find deviant …show more content…
Women’s bodybuilding has lost popularity throughout the years because of the masculinity that the sport presents in the eyes of many. Quoted in the article, “The Death of Women’s Bodybuilding”, by John Romano, “Rewind back to 2005, the IFBB introduced an infamous “20 percent rule”. They asked female bodybuilders to decrease amount of masculinity by a factor of 20 percent.” This quote explains how the hegemony is striking back by limiting the manliness of female bodybuilding competitions. Women are expected to possess maternal traits. Traditionally, they have been designated as home builders and to nurture their kids and take care of the family. Feminine traits are desired for these roles. There are also many negative health risks that come with bodybuilding. Bodybuilding is bad for the health, because of the excessive training and the amount of fat they cut. Health issues that many bodybuilders face are heart problems, stroke, and elevated blood pressure. The vascularity of bodybuilders is another side-effect of excessive exercise that is viewed as undesirable. A premium is placed on the smooth skin in our …show more content…
Bodybuilding is an interesting case when discussing deviant behaviors because it is not irregular to workout and is typically praised when done in moderation. However, the excessive amount of muscle that many bodybuilders possess is abnormal in the eyes of many. Bodybuilding is viewed as a deviant behavior because it serves no practical purpose to be that large and muscular. Also, the ideal body in our society for women is small and lean. Initially, bodybuilding was a popular sport and fascinated the public. However, as time goes on, the popularity of bodybuilding has greatly declined. There are a plethora of criticisms surrounding female bodybuilding. The deviance of this behavior has rendered bodybuilding obsolete in the eyes of the
Over the years even action figures have gotten larger muscles, so much so that they are to proportions physically impossible to obtain. Every time you turn the corner, your eyes are drawn to some advertisement that shows a man with his shirt off, muscular and defined. “There is no way to plug popular culture into an equation and see what effect it has on mass psychology, of course, but there is widespread sentiment that these provocative images of buff males have really upped the ant...
Throughout history, certain problems or societal aspects are often associated with one gender or the other. Manual labor was, and still is, often performed by men, while more skillful tasks, such as cooking and sewing, were done by women. By using the ideas put forth by Judith Lorber in Believing is Seeing: Biology as Ideology, we can analyze the findings of Matthew Petrocelli, Trish Oberwies, and Joseph Petrocelli’s “Getting Huge, Getting Ripped.” Lorber’s ideas of people having unique experiences, gender being one of society’s inventions, and a power differential between men and women can help us understand why men feel the need to use steroids to become the ideal male.
The existence of hegemonic power related to gender roles in sport limits the participation of students in Sport Aerobics. This hypothesis is supported by the data gathered from a survey that 24 Nambour High students took (Appendix 1). The survey included 2 female and male students from each year level. This survey revealed that only 16% of students have participated in Sport Aerobics and the majority of the students were from the senior year levels. When the students were asked what gender Sport Aerobics is for over half the students said both male and female. However, 37% of the students said that Sport Aerobics is for women only and 6 out the 9 students that answered women were male meaning that the majority of male students believe that Sport Aerobics is a feminine sport. None of the students believed that Sport Aerobics is an only male sport. Seventy percent of students throughout all the year levels believe that men are stronger than women. The only students that said women were female themselves. It is fixed in to student’s minds that men are stronger than women because of the lack of recognition to female athletes on the media. Students only see strong male athletes such as rugby league players presented on the media. This accounts for the 70% of students that do not watch any women’s sport and the only students that do were female. This result is due to the lack of women role models in the
At the Gym, written by Mark Doty, dramatizes the conflict within the mind of a bodybuilder and his desire to change who and what he is. The speaker observes the routines of the bodybuilder bench-pressing at a local gym, and attempts to explain the driving force that compels him to change his appearance. The speaker illustrates the physical use of inanimate objects as the tools used for the “desired” transformation: “and hoist nothing that need be lifted” (5,6). However, coupled with “but some burden they’ve chosen this time” (7), the speaker takes the illustration beyond the physical use of the tools of transformation and delves into the bodybuilder’s mental state. The speaker ends by portraying the bodybuilder as an arrogant, muscular being with fragile feelings of insecurity.
At times I was dangerously thin, and my arms have always been longer than they should be for someone of my height. Nonetheless, my body has never gone under scrutiny and in fact, was common and celebrated among male basketball players. This is one of the many benefits of my male privilege. Female athletes, on the other hand, are subjected to a contradictory ideal that they should maintain a strong athletic body for the sport they play, yet also remain thin and appeal to the sexual ideal men hold them to. Nita Mary McKinley states in, Weighty Issues: Constructing Fatness and Thinness as Social Problems, “The construction of ideal weight parallels the construction of the traditional ideal woman and ideal weight becomes gendered” (99). This is unfair to the female athlete as it creates a conflict between physically exceling in their sport and being sexually discriminated against by men. As a male, there is practically no sexual consequences I suffer from that pertain to the body type I maintain. One of the most publicly scrutinized athletes for her body shape is tennis legend Serena Williams. Male sports writers in their attempts to objectify Williams, have shared their thoughts on how she is too strong and too muscular to sexually appeal to men. Serena has since reclaimed her sexuality by posing in ESPN Magazine’s body issue, along with appearing in Beyonce’s “Formation” music video. American celebrity culture, European fashion culture, and international advertising are all responsible for the development of thin female body types being the most sexually desired among males in America. It is important to apply locational context and recognize that other female body types are celebrated throughout other cultures. For instance Fatema Mernissi confesses, in Size 6: The Western Women’s Harem, “In the Moroccan streets, Men’s flattering comments regarding my particularly generous hips have for decades led me to
Peterson, Judy Monroe. Steroids, sports, and body image: the risks of performance-enhancing drugs. Berkeley Heights, NJ, USA: Enslow Publishers, 2004. Print.
Bodybuilding subculture is a very interesting subculture to me. It originated somewhere around the 1890’s. At first “bodybuilding” was just a way to show strength and power to the people almost as if it was like a show that people would attend to watch these people lift heavy things. Unlike now most of them can lift heavy weight but it doesn’t come with a crowd watching every time they do, although many people, like in the Venice beach gym in California, come to watch famous bodybuilders to work out, and because it is an outdoor gym, a lot of people recognize these faces and stop to watch.
Dworkin, Shari L. and Faye L. Wachs. 2009. Body Panic : Gender, Health, and the Selling of Fitness.New York: New York University Press.
Petrocelli reveals to us that,”It is hard to deny that they [steroids] have become a part of the American fabric.” Somehow we’ve learned to brush off the appearance of these abnormally huge, or skinny, human beings because they fit into the shape society tells us we must be. No one would expect that a man who increased his bench press max 150 pounds in under two months was using anabolic steroids because at least he’s “perfect” now right? It is rare to suspect a 6’2” female that weighs 135 pounds to be at an unhealthy weight, bulimic, or anorexic because you’re considered overweight or obese is you weigh more that 140 pounds. Even as we try to get out of a recession we expect everyone to be able to afford the methods it takes to achieve such a perfect body. Lorber states that,” gendered people do not emerge from physiology or biology but from the exigencies of social order.” If we evaluate the principle that if you do not have this “perfect” body you don’t “fit in” and then take into consideration Lorber’s statement, nothing makes sense. We’re told we need to fit this shape to finish the puzzle but only the rich or famous can attain such a shape because they’re the only ones that can actually afford it. Lower class people shouldn’t be perfect because that defeats
Female athletes, unlike males, are not always portrayed exclusively as performance athletes, instead attention is placed on sex appeal usually overshadowing their on-field accomplishments. Unfortunately female sports, like male sports, are directed primarily to a male audience, the media commonly use marketing techniques which involve sexualisation of the female bodies under a male gaze (Bremner, 2002). The idea that “sex sells” is used to generate viewers and followers of female sport.
“The Politics of Muscle” by Gloria Steinem is an essay arguing the difference in strength between men and women. Steinem starts her essay by stating how she grew up in a generation where women didn’t participate in a lot, if any, sport activities. She goes on to say that she believes this is the reason why women of her generation believe that it’s not what the female body does, but how it looks. Steinem feels that women always seemed to be owned in some degree as the means of reproduction. She believes that women are made to feel ashamed of their strength and that “only when women rebel against patriarchal standards does female muscle become more accepted.” (pg 372)
Krane, V. (2001). We can be athletic and feminine, but do we want to? Challenging hegemonic femininity in women's sport. Quest, 53,115-133.
Taking all this into consideration the goal of my paper is not to discourage you from working out, but rather inform you in the realities of weight lifting. The media and society continues you to fill out heads will lies about weightlifting weather its gender stereotypes and just the belief that one can achieve the stereotypical perfect body. There should be a greater understanding of how the media incorrectly portray weight lifting, working out, the idea of the perfect body and how society.
When most people hear the term ‘bodybuilding’ they think of massive, inhuman looking individuals, mostly males, who spend every waking minute in the gym lifting weights and injecting steroids. But that is not entirely true. Bodybuilding is much more complex than that, especially when it comes to nutrition. Bodybuilding is a lifestyle. There are many different factors that come in to play for professional bodybuilders, as well as the regular person who is looking to put on muscle mass or whatever their fitness goals might be. Some of those factors include nutrition, training, recovery, supplementation, as well as the controversial topic of drugs in the bodybuilding scene. Bodybuilding also has a unique history that should be addressed before diving into the topics of bodybuilding.
The struggle for the ideal body has haunted women since the 1800’s. Different from today’s