“Mass Production” in the Mass Consumption Societies: The Case of Male Bodybuilding

Abstract

Nowadays, the body seems to be the perfect object of consumption. People use it to define themselves but also as a vehicle that can send signs to others in the hope that their body will be a factor of social integration and social recognition. Hence we can observe the development of practices of body transformations which go along with the philosophy of the society in which everything seems possible for everybody, with no limit whatsoever. Indeed, if you want your body to be seen, you have to produce it before. The practice of bodybuilding sustains efforts in that direction : historically born and developed along with the consumption society, it came to embody its values. The analysis is based on qualitative methodology that is observations in three bodybuilding Gyms and 30 interviews with bodybuilders in France. The results show that bodybuilding reflects the consumption society's norms, that is a practice in which the body is in tension between imitation and distinction, hence showing the will to be like others but in better thanks to the production of a nice and massive body. Such a dimension could sometimes be dialectical, when the body becomes a source of alienation.