Cyborgs in the Gym: The Technopolitics of Female Muscle

Estimated reading time: 21 minutes

Introduction

My general argument in this paper is that, contrary to the popular view of it as merely a simpleminded pursuit for large, oddly shaped, animated pieces of meat, bodybuilding is a scientific and technological practice. The bodybuilder not only conceives of her body as a site to be disciplined through various chemical and mechanical technologies, but as a collection of discrete parts distinguished from the whole, which can be individually manipulated. Thus I suggest that the bodybuilder is a cyborg. In her article, “A Cyborg Manifesto”, Donna Haraway attempts to create what she calls “an ironic political myth” which combines postmodernism with socialist feminism. Central to her myth is the image of the cyborg, which is “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.” The cyborg for Haraway is both a metaphor for the postmodernist and political play of identity and a lived reality of new technology.

In this paper I show that within the world of bodybuilding this construction of cyborgs is heavily gendered and does not exist in isolation from the multiple and contradictory discourses already present in social and political spheres. I examine some of the concrete practices in which female bodybuilders engage, such as hormonal alteration, surgical intervention, image construction, and dietary regimentation, and point out the conflicts between bodybuilding as healthy athletics and bodily destruction. I link these to more abstract discourses around female bodybuilders, particularly the debate over what is “natural” for the female body.

Much attention has been given to bodybuilding from the point of view of social science and cultural studies, focusing on female bodybuilders as they are represented both within the sport and within cultural discourse. However, since the gym can be considered a subculture, it is difficult for those who do not participate in the practice of weight training to fully appreciate the actual technological processes and scientific theory behind it. Furthermore it is easy to simplify the contradictions and tensions inherent in the experience of becoming a female lifter by merely passing it off as a quest for bodily perfection of one kind or another.

In this paper I discuss women’s bodybuilding from a dialectical “inside-outside” position which brings some unique perspectives. My “inside” position is the point of view of a noncompetitive bodybuilder who engages in many of the technological practices of the sport, and who maintains an interest in the latest scientific developments in the field. I combine this with an “outside” position as a feminist theorist who is equipped with the tools of academic critique, with particular attention given to the historicization and sociopolitical contextualization of technological processes.

In the iron game the body becomes the cyborg which blurs the boundaries between natural and unnatural as it engages in active transformation of itself. For female lifters the contradictions are particularly acute. Noncompetitive lifters manipulate their body through training, diet, and a variety of nutritional supplements including vitamins, stimulants, amino acid complexes, neurotransmitters, creatine, and testosterone precursors. Competitive lifters add more substantial hormonal and dietary manipulation, breast implants, diuretics, tanning pills or UV treatments, and meticulous attention to feminine accoutrements such as hair and fingernails. While ostensibly women’s bodybuilding championships support “good health habits and planned physical exercise… clean living, [and] good sportsmanship” [1] and ban drug use, no mention is made in official literature of the use of breast implants, tanners, and other external hyperfeminine modifications which involve a significant degree of “artificial” bodily intervention.

In keeping with the cyborg self, bodybuilders conceive of themselves as a collection of discrete parts. The body is separated into its muscle groups, which can be individually manipulated. Muscle magazines devote a substantial amount of their content to articles about training individual body parts, with titles such as “Wide World of Delts” and “The Biceps Edge”.[2] In competitions bodybuilders are assessed on “symmetry”, which is a quasi-mathematical expression of the relationship between body parts.

Despite the discourse of “good health” and “natural bodybuilding”, I propose that the bodybuilder, and particularly the female bodybuilder, challenges ideas about what is natural, and through technological mechanisms constructs a cyborg self. This cyborg is not a neutral entity (to be fair, “natural” is not neutral either); it is marked by gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability. I have selected three topics for discussion: dieting/fat loss, breast implants, and anabolic-androgenic steroids. In each section I describe the actual technological practice, situate it within a social and/or historical context, and ask how these technological practices of the female bodybuilder both illustrate and constitute contradictory cyborg selves which then challenge or perpetuate social configurations.

Dieting

Dieting, and its related processes such cardiovascular exercise and supplementation with chemicals, is known as the cutting phase. Because the aesthetic of bodybuilding requires muscularity combined with low bodyfat, and because these two goals are counterproductive (it is difficult to gain muscle mass while losing bodyfat), bodybuilders work in separate stages or phases. During the off-season of competition, bodybuilders eat and train to gain muscle mass, without regard to fat gain, then begin to diet and cut bodyfat a few months before competing.

The process used by bodybuilders is more complex than merely laying off the potato chips. Many use a variation of a cyclical ketogenic diet, or CKD. The CKD is based on the principle of consciously stimulating the body to burn fat instead of sugar-based fuels for energy. Normally the body uses glucose-based glycogen for its energy stores and turns to fat for fuel only when muscle glycogen has been exhausted; depletion of glycogen does not occur until quite some time after the body has been engaging in activity. After activity, the glycogen is replenished. In a CKD, the body does not use glycogen for fuel but ketones. “[T]he body breaks down triglycerides (fats) from both dietary and bodily sources for energy. One byproduct of this breakdown are ketone bodies. Ketones are energy substrates (fuels) that the body uses for basic energy needs.”[3] Using ketones as the primary fuel source means that the body burns fat extremely effectively. In a gross oversimplification, glucose is derived from the carbohydrates in the diet. When carbohydrates are completely eliminated from the diet, the body exhausts its stores of glycogen permanently. De notes in “The Future of Fat Loss”: “[T]hese are not situations that are easily established with a normal individual. However, the body can be tricked into entering a ketogenic state…”[4] (italics mine) Thus bodybuilders, using this knowledge of biochemical reactions, consciously “trick” and manipulate the body’s metabolic mechanisms through a regimented diet that excludes all carbohydrates. This provides an interesting tension: is ketosis (the using of ketones for energy) “unnatural”, since the body is not normally in ketosis, or do all bodily processes count as “natural” no matter how they are achieved?

CKDs are often augmented by the ingestion of a variety of other chemicals, which work as appetite suppressants, thermogenics, and beta-agonists (most supplements used for this purpose have more than one of these effects). The role of an appetite suppressant is fairly self-explanatory. Thermogenic substances raise body temperature, and cause the body to expend more energy; this equals a larger total caloric consumption. Beta-agonists work by telling the body to release norepinephrine, a hormone that stimulates beta-receptors on cells; adipose (fat) and skeletal muscle cells have a large number of receptors relative to other tissues. Stimulating the beta-receptors leads to increased lipolysis (fat burning). Many of these substances also help the body to retain muscle tissue, which is easy to lose while dieting. This helps bodybuilders achieve the lean yet muscular look. Thus not only do bodybuilders play with “natural” metabolic rate through dietary and chemical manipulation but also the body’s “normal” responses to deprivation.

Women’s relationship to bodyfat and dieting has been remarked on by many theorists, particularly Susan Bordo, who links it to a postmodern control of a fluid body. Dieting to be slim is regarded by theorists as a way for women to erase themselves, to be smaller and take up less space. Naomi Wolf writes that extreme thinness carries the suggestion of “female weakness, asexuality, and hunger”,[5] and that it signifies “not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.”[6] Women in North American society are quite familiar with the aesthetic of radical slenderness that has been offered continuously by the media since the late 1960s.

However, female bodybuilders are dieting, contradictorily, to achieve an aesthetic that is not socially rewarded in dominant culture. Many female bodybuilders regard the thin ideal with disdain; they refer to lanky fashion models as “stick chicks” and turn up their noses at “aerobics bunnies”. Bodybuilders are dieting so that their musculature can be more easily seen. The judging criteria for the American Bodybuilding Association (ABA) states in its section on “Separation and Definition” that separation constitutes the clear border line between adjoining muscles, and that a distinct visible separation between muscles, commonly known as ‘cuts’, is desirable. Definition refers to the clear muscular detail within each muscle which would appear (for example, cross-striations or the ridges in the actual muscle tissue, which indicate extremely low bodyfat). Competitors must retain the appearance of muscular development while displaying the quality of separation of adjoining muscle groups.[7] The ideal is to be both muscular and well-defined.

Thus the cutting phase is not just about food. It involves technological processes such as metabolic manipulation and supplementation with various chemicals. Since hormones in the estrogen group are linked to fat storage, fertility and menstruation ceases when bodyfat drops too low. A substantial majority of female bodybuilders experience regular long-term amenorrhea, both while dieting and while maintaining offseason weight. Subcutaneous fat also contributes to the characteristic softness of women’s faces and bodies; when this is lost in the process of metabolic manipulation, it fundamentally alters the visual presentation of the female body. Although the story of bodybuilders’ fat loss cannot be told in the same way as that of “normal” fat loss by women dieting for slenderness, it has one important thing in common: the purposely induced minimization of bodyfat. Since bodyfat, linked to fertility and a particular female shape, can be thought of as one of the defining characteristics of femininity, its deliberate reduction through technological processes, combined with strategic increases in muscularity, creates a cyborg body that contradicts notions of what is “natural” for women.

Implants

As a result of rigorous dieting and subsequent loss of bodyfat, breasts, which are largely constituted of fatty tissue, disappear or are quite minimal in serious bodybuilders. Many female bodybuilders feel, for one reason or another, the need to get implants. Some are pressured by judges and promoters of bodybuilding, “because [they say] women are supposed to be built like that.”[8] (italics mine) Others feel that breasts are integral to femininity and/or their sense of self-worth, since after all harsh penalties are imposed for gender transgressions. It is estimated that up to 80% of female lifters have breast implants[9].

Though they are permitted in all “natural” (i.e. non-drug-tested) contests, implants are clearly inorganic. The first recorded breast implants were injections of industrial-grade silicone into the chests of Japanese women during and after WWII. “This practice was later stopped as women experienced a wide variety of problems from bits of silicone drifting around their bodies, including reports of cases of silicone-inflamed lung tissue causing suffocation and death.”[10]

Presently the industry standard is silicone gel implants, with 10% of the market taken up by saline implants. Both fillers are now encased in a silicone shell, after the U.S. FDA discovered in 1989 that. “polyurethane foam, which was used as a coating on certain types of silicone gel-filled breast implants, would degrade and release 2-toluene diamine (TDA), a chemical known to cause cancer in animals”.[11] Claims of autoimmune and other disorders from leaking silicone are common in women who have had implants. Clinical research suggests that implants themselves trigger autoimmunity regardless of filler or capsule, as the body rejects a foreign object within its boundaries.[12]

The intrusion of these “devices”, as they are called in the corporate and government literature, into the “natural” body’s perimeter, provides an interesting contradiction. Breast implants are clearly the most “artificial” of all the bodily interventions discussed, since they are fully inorganic (and manufactured by companies who also produce industrial-grade chemicals) and are never completely assimilated into the organic body. Yet within the context of bodybuilding competitions, breasts serve as signifiers of a “natural” (read: feminine) look for competitors. It is clear that what is constituted as “natural” is highly gendered.[13] Thus technological interventions and intrusions into cyborg bodily boundaries function within particular social and political discourses, which constitute what is natural or artificial not based on qualifications of organic or inorganic, but rather on intersecting notions of gender and sexuality, as well as the contention that bodybuilding at its heart is about pursuing a healthy, “natural” physique.

Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids (AAS)

The use of AAS among female bodybuilders provides perhaps the most interesting debates about what is “natural”, since so-called “sex hormones” frequently operate within a discursively dichotomized arena, despite the fact that their actual physiological operation contradicts much of this dualist discourse.

Early research on “sex hormones”, was located firmly in gonads. Animal breeders had long known of the effects of castration in their livestock, and it was here that studies of hormones began. At this time a great deal of attention was being devoted to discovering the differences between male and female anatomy, physiology, sexuality, and so forth. This attention was informed by the Victorian designation of “separate spheres” for men and women; inherent in biological configuration were essential characteristics of maleness and femaleness. Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scientists theorized that gonads held the secrets of what made “sex character”. Sex hormones (in what limited capacity they were understood at this point) were thought to not only keep reproductive organs developing and functioning properly, but also to determine the cognitive and behavioural attributes appropriate to males and females. We will see later that the conflation of psychological/behavioural and physiological effects of hormones (testosterone in particular) remains, at the present time, quite apparent and strongly linked to cultural assumptions.

The names for the hormones provide clues to their discursive and physiological sources. Testosterone, the first hormone to be “discovered” and named, took its name from the testes, the main organ of secretion, and it was implicated in both male reproduction and sexuality. Interestingly, the Latin root, testis, literally signifies “witness” (evoked in “testimony” and related words). The Collins English Dictionary adds in brackets that the witnessing is to male sexuality[14]. Androgens is the general name now given to the presently known collection of testosterone and its derivatives, and this name is also suggestive: andro means “man”, and -gen is a common suffix rooted in the Greek genes, which means “producing or that which produces”[15]. In other words, androgens produce a man; much of the metaphors and discourse around androgens suggest that “man” can be equated with a number of signifiers of “masculinity”. One doctor wrote in a 1945 book titled The Male Hormone that testosterone was “chemical manhood”[16]. Though estrogen was located in the ovaries its name was not derived from them, but rather from estrus, or the ovulation period during which females came into heat (often described as a period of “sexual receptivity” for insemination). No mention is made at this time of a female sexuality separated from reproduction, and later research into the female contraceptive pill was similarly singularly concerned with the relationship between estrogen and fertility.

It is not insignificant that much of this early research was concerned with locating the source of male sexuality. Following a solid Western historical precedent dating from Aristotle, male sexuality, and by extension the quintessence of masculinity was cast in terms of aggression, power, energy, and strength. The quest to locate the origin of such sexuality operated on several levels: in a literal sense scientists were seeking to further their understanding about hormonal systems, particularly with regard to the operation of male reproductive organs; in a metaphorical sense scientists were seeking the source of male power (some early scientists injected bull testicle extract into themselves and reported feeling “rejuvenated”). This history has important discursive consequences for women who manifest “an excess” of “male hormone”.

In the scientifically optimistic period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, researchers were confident that they were on the verge of proving conclusively that males and females were “opposites”. It was postulated that the male sex hormone actively suppressed the female sex hormone, and vice versa (which supported a theory, known as Sex Antagonism, then circulating in both social and clinical arenas [17]). Since by extension masculinity was and is traditionally predicated on suppression or negation of femininity [18], the apparent confirmation of this “fact” by early hormonal research tied in nicely (this theoretical position is still familiar to male bodybuilders who motivate one another by reciting such truisms as “Every time you lift, you become less of the pussy you are” and “Come on, my sister/wife/grandmother could lift that”). It came as a shock to everyone, then, when in of one of the most “masculine” of animal organs-stallion testes-a researcher noticed the strong presence of estrogen [19].

In one of the great scientific surprises of twentieth-century Western culture, researchers realized that what had been thought to be discrete “male” and “female” hormones were in fact present in both sexes. Since available scientific methodologies and tests tend to determine what is “discovered”, it was not until the 1930s with advances in organic chemistry that scientists could begin to deduce the identity of sex hormones, locate their sites of secretion and activity, and manipulate their structures [20]. At this point it became apparent that not only were androgens and estrogens found together, but that they were close chemical cousins and testosterone could be converted to estrogen. Later, male bodybuilders, who began experimenting with hormones in the 1940s and 50s, would discover this fact in a rather unpleasant way, through the phenomenon known as “gynecomastia” (colloquially termed “gyno” or “bitch tits”), in which excess testosterone (through steroid supplementation) converts to estrogen and begins to stimulate production of breast tissue.

I have provided a highly abridged account of the historical and cultural elements that were part of the development of AAS as chemical substances and as metaphors. Let us turn now to a very brief summary of the chemical processes of AAS, for by understanding metabolic events we can see in another way how they become conflated with behavioural and cognitive characteristics, such as those associated with testosterone and masculinity. AAS are synthetic derivatives of testosterone, modified chemically (how many?). AAS have two kinds of physiological effects: anabolic, or tissue-building; and androgenic, or “masculinizing” (a term ostensibly referring to physiological changes in body hair, voice, oiliness of the skin, and so forth). AAS have a large spectrum of action, in different tissues as well as in different pathways within a single kind of tissue. The holy grail of AAS chemistry is to locate a configuration that produces the anabolic effects without the androgenic effects. Through stimulating the genetic material involved in muscle protein building, “[t]he molecule of AAS ultimately causes the muscle cell to make more of certain proteins, helping the user to get bigger.” [21]

However the activity of AAS is not confined to skeletal muscle. Other tissues in the body are affected to varying degrees (depending on the kind of AAS used). Female bodybuilders using steroids can experience androgenic effects, many of which are irreversible, such as facial hair growth, acne, deepening of the voice, growth of the clitoris, thickening of the jaw, male-pattern baldness, and so forth. These androgenic effects result in blurring of familiar dualistic gender lines, and, when compounded with defined muscularity and breast implants, present us with a study in cyborg contradictions.

The discourse and mechanisms of AAS are of particular interest both from a technological and a representational standpoint. Key to the discussion of women and steroids is, once again, the concept of “natural”. Many people believe that women cannot be muscular without the use of steroids. Interestingly, “male” hormones and hormonal precursors are an important part of therapy for menopausal and postmenopausal women, since “[a]fter menopause aromatization [conversion through the enzyme aromatase] of androgens to estrogens in adipose tissue is one of the most important sources of estrogen in the circulation and for peripheral tissues.” [22] The anabolic steroid Tibolone, for example, is used to prevent bone loss and to alleviate some symptoms of menopause such as hot flashes. The hormone precursor DHEA is “converted into androstenedione (4-dione) and then into potent androgens and estrogens in peripheral tissues” [23], all of which have numerous therapeutic effects.

In other words the same chemical processes that produced “unnatural” results in female bodybuilders are useful in other contexts where the effects are more socially appropriate. Like the other technological processes studied, AAS present us with an interesting contradiction. On the one hand AAS are perhaps the most “natural” of all the technologies employed by bodybuilders, since hormones supplemented are already present in the body. On the other, the manipulation of and supplementation with anabolic steroids produces bodies that begin to transgress gender boundaries.

Conclusion

The history of women’s bodybuilding is the history of contested terrain, technological interventions, and bodily manipulation. The development of technology to manipulate and modify bodies results in cyborg selves which challenge definitions of “natural”; the provocation of these bodies inspires technological developments for further biological change. Bodybuilders recognize that training, diet, and supplementation will not help them win if they do not possess the proper genetics. Perhaps the area of inquiry for 21st century sports scientists will be genetic tweaking to finally achieve perfect symmetry, or to prevent the body from rejecting its cybernetic implants.

However it is important to note that technological processes are situated firmly within social, political, and economic configurations. Much of the conflicting criteria for judging women’s bodybuilding is derived from the problem of “marketability” of female lifters, which means the possibility of their commercial promotion both as athletes and sexual objects. Thus much of the discourse around which technological interventions are appropriate for bodybuilders is based on particular constructions of female sexuality, gender presentation, the link between biology and behaviour/cognition, and the conflicting role of “natural femininity”.

“Cyborgs in the Gym:  The Technopolitics of Female Muscle” was presented October 4, 1998, at a conference at Duke University entitled “Discipline and Deviance:  Genders, Technologies, Machines”. © Krista Scott-Dixon 1998

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the assistance of: Bill Roberts in the Medicinal Chemistry department of the University of Florida; Robin Coleman, Certified Trainer and Nutritionist, and NPC amateur bodybuilder; and Sandeep De, personal trainer.

Notes

1. NABBA Charter.

2. Article titles from “Bodypart Training”, Muscle and Fitness web site.

3. Sandeep De, “The Future of Fat Loss: The Ketogenic Diet, Part 1″,. This site also contains extensive clinical references.

4. De, “The Future of Fat Loss”.

5. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (Toronto: Vintage, 1990), 184.

6. Wolf, 187.

7. Paraphrased from ABA judging criteria.

8. Maria Lowe, Women of Steel: Female Body Builders and the Struggle for Self-Definition (New York: NYU Press, 1998), 124-125.

9. Lowe, and Leslie Heywood, Bodymakers: A Cultural Anatomy of Women’s Bodybuilding (New Jersey: Rutgers Press, 1998),35.

10. Irene Franck and David Brownstone, The Women’s Desk Reference (New York: Penguin, 1993), 118.

11. “Chronology of FDA Activites Related to Breast Implants”.

12. S.J. James S.J., M. Pogribna, B.J. Miller, B. Bolon, and L. Muskhelishvili, “Characterization of cellular response to silicone implants in rats: implications for foreign-body carcinogenesis.” Biomaterials 18(9):667-75 (May1997).

13. It is worth mentioning here that most bodybuilding competitions also officially or unofficially encourage female competitors to select a nice swimsuit, wear makeup, and have their hair and fingernails done.

14. “[W]itness (to male sexuality)”. Collins English Dictionary.

15. CED, 641.

16. Paul de Kruif, The Male Hormone (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1945), cited in William Taylor, Macho Medicine: A History of the Anabolic Steroid Epidemic (North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 1991).

17. Oudshoorn, 22-24.

18. “[T]he male identity of science is no mere artifact of sexist history; throughout most of its evolution, the culture of science has not simply excluded women, it has been defined in defiance of women and in their absence.” David Noble, A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), xiv.

19. Oudshoorn, Beyond the Natural Body, 25-6.

20. Oudshoorn, 29.

21. Bill Roberts, “Anabolic Pharmacology, Part One”, Mesomorphosis 1(2) (July 1998).

22. J. Szymczak, A. Milewicz, J.H. Thijssen, M.A. Blankenstein, J. Daroszewski, “Concentration of sex steroids in adipose tissue after menopause,” Steroids, 63(5-6):319-21 (May-Jun 1998).

F. Labrie, et al, “DHEA and the intracrine formation of androgens and estrogens in peripheral target tissues: its role during aging,” Steroids, 63(5-6):322-8 (May-Jun 1998).

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