ABSTRACT
In late-modern dominant discourses glorifying the freaky body as the crystallization of 'pure' bodybuilding, classical antiquity remains a pertinent reference, albeit drastically re-signified: this time as the womb of the current paradigm of pushing the human limit in sport competition. Borrowing the vocabularies of established sports, and in particular individual ones, critical performances are framed in terms of both the trajectory of individual bodybuilders and the larger trajectory of the sport of bodybuilding. The framing of muscular development and, more generally, the appearance of the body on the competition stage as an instance of sport performance has become the commonsensical foundation of today's paradigm. It is in the context of a paradigm of elite sport performance, exalted in the US and the West more broadly in terms of the individual athlete, that the freaky body is produced, signified, and appreciated.
