ABSTRACT
In critically engaging a particular strand of feminist literature, a caveat is required. Documenting bodybuilding ethnophysiology and members’ heterogeneous bodyprojects does not, by itself, place a question mark against existing knowledge claims. The following could merely be taken to suggest that academics should be more sensitive to differences in the bodybuilding community. However, if the types of muscular bodies to which 1990s bodybuilders (not weight trainers) orient themselves are not culturally prescribed but are instead stigmatised, then bodybuilding cannot be theorised adequately in terms of an antecedent culturally endorsed image i.e. ‘the muscular (masculine) body’. Of course, a general masculine will to be muscular may figure in thegenesis and sustainability of bodywork, but then again it may not (Glassner 1990). In accounting for the ongoing variable project of bodybuilding, I feel a more satisfactory account – which is attentive to the diversity of members’ meanings – must recognise that in the sport and art of bodybuilding, ‘aesthetic pleasurepresupposes learningand, in any particular case, learning byhabit and exercise’ (Bourdieu et al. 1991: 109, emphasis added).
