ABSTRACT
This chapter explores developments in organized bodybuilding culture in what term the middle period, from the 1940s to the 1970s. Debates about the 'proper' meaning of bodybuilding, typically inscribed in the various systems of aesthetic criteria and rules of competition, often involved in indirect or direct ways claims over institutional power in an expanding field of social and economic activity. In an attempt to illustrate the antagonisms characteristic of this time and the progressive consolidation of a shift in the dominant model of organized bodybuilding culture, the author focuses on two prominent contests and the organizations that promoted them: the Mr. America, sanctioned by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), and the Mr. Olympia, sanctioned by the International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB).
