Abstract
This article focuses on the development of heavy athletics in urban Ethiopia during Haile Selassie's reign. In an attempt to modernise the country, educational institutions and missionary movements such as the Young Men's Christian Association were used to create healthy citizen bodies. By focusing on weightlifting, bodybuilding and wrestling, the article shows different trajectories of institutionalisation due to specific ideas about modernity and global sports. As a way of showcasing self-improvement, and by lucrative bodybuilding performances, urban leisure arguably paved the way in Ethiopia for the muscular male body as an ‘acceptable' aesthetic form.
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