ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the aesthetic implications of extreme (i.e. competitive) bodybuilders. Elsewhere I refer to such bodies as “Post Classic” (see Introduction, this volume). By this I refer to a body that remains rooted in the classical style – but a style which has been applied very selectively, creating what I consider to be a new ideal, a hyper-muscular, but essentially fragmented body, in which the sculpting of individual body parts and the display of body poses have come to supplant the whole body. I want to debate whether such an aesthetic can be recuperable, particularly as bodybuilding is palpably transgressive and adheres to certain features of the avant-garde.
