ABSTRACT
This chapter explores exhibitions of individual bodybuilders in 'high' and 'low' cultural frames respectively. It looks at group displays of built bodies in the format of organized competition, and in particular pivotal events in both the UK and USA. Looking at how the exhibition of built bodies was assembled in various contexts, often by the same bodybuilders, the author draws comparisons and contrasts between bodybuilding as organized spectacle and other cultural forms. In the process, the author attempts to understand how the larger organized bodybuilding culture came to operate. The notions of 'rational recreation' as a duty were also central in the articulation of a masculinity based on notions of self-improvement. In bodybuilding media, works of classical art were presented not as idealized representations of a mythic time but as concrete testimonies of a period in human history.
