Reconceptualising the gender of fitness doping: Performing and negotiating masculinity through drug-use practices

Jesper Andreasson

doi:10.1016/j.peh.2015.06.014

Abstract

This article analyses self-portrayals and gender constructions among Swedish male bodybuilders who are engaged in fitness doping. The empirical material comes from a larger ethnographic investigation into gym culture. The results show that there is a strong propensity to conform with particular gender fantasies that rests heavily on a binary understanding of gendered, doped bodies. However, this storyline does not apprehend the entire self-presentation of the analysed drug users. Negotiations and inclusive subversions of traditional gender norms are also expressed. For example, the narratives show how the use of performance-enhancing substances makes it possible for (heterosexual) men to approach, touch and express feelings of desire towards other men and their bodies. As such, this practice can be viewed as a contestation of hegemonic gender values, in which masculinity and fitness doping are detached from a quite heterosexist understanding, and turned into a symbolic world of homoerotic pleasure.

Highlights

As a dedicated, closed space for working on the body, the contemporary fitness gym has a long history, stretching all the way back to the gymnasium of the Greeks [1]
Becoming a Man and the Risk of Losing it All. In this first section of the results I will initially present some narratives of performance/image-enhancing substances (PES) users that can be understood as rather traditional in relation to gender norms
This section reveals a historical continuity in the presentation and construction of a muscular masculinity, and shows how what

Summary

Introduction

As a dedicated, closed space for working on the body, the contemporary fitness gym has a long history, stretching all the way back to the gymnasium of the Greeks [1]. The modern roots of gym and fitness culture, are probably more in debt to what used to be called physical culture in the teachings of the forefathers of bodybuilding in the early part of 20th century [2]. This body (sub)culture was understood to be an almost exclusively masculine sphere. This study discusses narcissism, homophobia and hypermasculinity as institutionalised expressions within bodybuilding culture It illustrates contradictory and transgressive gender negotiations via bodybuilding, as for example when discussing how some bodybuilders, while formally condemning the behaviour, and self-identifying as emphatically heterosexual, chose to engage gay men in a range of more or less sexually explicit behaviours. Theorists have explored aspects of this phenomenon—such as corporeal ideals, gender transformations, illicit steroid use, and training techniques [8,9,10,11,12]

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Results

Conclusion