Fitness Culture and IPEDs: Crisis, revolution, and the digital push, 1990-2020

The history of doping is also a history of modernity and the plastic and changeable body. Through ideas about performing bodies, various sports have been successfully modernized since the mid-1800s (Dimeo, 2007). Within this modernization process we also find the use of image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs). In the 1930s, different types of drugs were used to combat fatigue and to increase sport performance, largely done in a non-judgmental fashion. Steroids were also widely used by American bodybuilders, among others, as early as in the 1950s (Connolly, 2015). As gym culture was picking up steam in the wake of the developments in the 1970s with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the forefront, IPEDs were largely seen as part of the equation. However, this was about to change.

In this article we continue our discussion of the historical development of gym and fitness culture and of IPED use in this context. In the previous article we described the early years of gym and fitness (1900-1960, phase 1) and the developments on the American west coast in the 1970-80s (phase 2). Here we focus on the developments that took place in the 1990s, during which bodybuilding was marginalized within fitness culture following what has been described as the fitness revolution. We will then work our way up to the present.

The 1990s crisis in bodybuilding

At the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, bodybuilding started to get a bad reputation. Klein’s (1993) now classic study of competitive bodybuilders on the American west coast touched on this process and discussed it in terms of changes in the public perspective, as well as transformed subcultural understandings of the self within bodybuilding. Viewing themselves as nutrition and kinesiology experts, the bodybuilders of the 1980s in Klein’s study are positioned at the top of the food chain in a developing culture of vanity, muscles, vitality, sexuality, control, health, and physical prowess. As proponents of this healthy lifestyle and culture (which included drug using practices), Klein’s participating bodybuilders offered their services for a fee, and counseled and trained others in the art of bodybuilding. Ironically, and in direct contrast to the public declaration of fitness and health, the previous acceptance of IPED use among bodybuilders started to generate negative publicity. Psychiatrists began to describe a new category of young patients who were obsessively preoccupied with their bodies and muscularity.

Through this process, in tandem with the publication of autobiographies such as Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder (1991) by Sam Fussell, bodybuilding subculture entered a third development phase in which it was thoroughly reviewed and scrutinized. Fussell’s account kicked off movement that began to strongly critique the American macho. At the time, the muscle-building practices through the use of steroids were understood as a means to compensate for a vulnerable and insecure masculinity. This led to an audit of both doped bodybuilding masculinity and bodybuilding culture at the time. This was happening at the same time that women continued to enter and gain a firm position within this culture. The issue of health became paramount, as did the discussions of side effects related to IPED use.

The fitness revolution

In parallel with the developments within bodybuilding, new forms of working out were developing elsewhere. Kenneth Cooper’s book Aerobics was published in 1968 and helped to light a spark that would drive the fitness trend within the commercial gym and fitness enterprise. The book was written as a response to diverse psychosomatic diseases in American society. Later, aerobics came to be associated with a particular form of exercise, emerging as an extension of Jane Fonda’s popular workout routines. Fonda developed her own training repertoire, included celebrities, and marketed her concept well. Soon she had an empire of her own. Her first book – Jane Fonda’s Workout Book (1982) – sold 17 million copies (Fonda, 2005). On the back of this success, she released another five books and 23 workout videos in the late 1980s and early 90s (Mansfield, 2011). One explanation for this success of Fonda-like aerobics was due to a growing population of 20 and 30 year old singles. Working out gradually became an important part of young, urban, middle-class women’s lifestyles.

During the 1980s and into the early years of the 90s, (men’s) bodybuilding and (women’s) working out were largely developing in tandem but at different locations. Men had their facilities targeted at building muscles and getting ripped, while women were largely found in other facilities where the aims were on achieving a slim and beautiful body. These different forms of training the body were separated and oriented around the gendered ideals of the time. Much of this changed in the 1990s, when new spaces for coexistence were created. Rooms for muscle building were situated next to rooms for group fitness activities. Men and women began to work out at the same locations. This was an exciting time in the history of gym and fitness, where different techniques to shape and build up the body were mixed. The hard, slim, and muscular body became a benchmark ideal for both men and women (Wienke, 1998).

In the late 1990s and especially when moving forward to the first two decades of the 21st century, there was an explosion of fitness franchises and an increasing number of people became attracted to fitness. In this fourth phase of the historical development of gym culture and fitness doping, bodybuilding subculture was gradually disconnected from the more general trend of fitness gyms. It was even further removed from the conception of the gym as a place for everyone and from fitness as a mass leisure activity with strong connotations of health and sound lifestyles (Smith Maguire, 2008; Sassatelli, 2010).

The fitness revolution in the 1990s can be seen as a reaction to bodybuilding’s falling star during the third phase and an attempt to sanitize the sport and subculture. The gradual separation between bodybuilding and fitness culture does not mean that these phenomena become two different activities and lifestyles. These conceptions of exercise and lifestyle are partly disconnected from each other and partly increasingly dependent on each other. Fitness has become the overall concept used when referring to health clubs and fitness franchises, and has thereby turned into a popular movement. But this fitness isn’t really comparable to the old 20^th century movements that were often connected to nationalistic and collective ideals. Instead, contemporary fitness is highly personal and individualized (Sassatelli, 2010).

Regarding women’s bodybuilding, which gained increasing recognition during the 1980s and early 90s, the scene has changed since the turn of this century. On an organizational level, the governing body of bodybuilding and fitness, the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness (IFBB), increasingly started to insist that women must maintain their “female form” and muscle definition. In line with this, the discipline of Women’s Fitness was introduced in 1996 and paved the way for a “less muscular and aesthetically pleasing physique” as an ideal for female bodybuilders (IFBB, 2018). Later, disciplines such as Women’s Body-Fitness and Women’s Bikini Fitness were added, further accentuating the marginalization of women’s bodybuilding.

In many ways, this development can be understood as a means through which organizers and central stakeholders within bodybuilding have attempted to adjust the development of the sport by adapting it to what are considered to be more traditional gender configurations. Of course, as the women’s bodybuilding bodies of the 1990s steadily grew in mass and vascularity, discussions were initiated about the impacts of doping. These discussions were also related to central stakeholders’ efforts to deal with the stigma of doping in bodybuilding and fitness. The marginalization of women’s bodybuilding and the boosting of disciplines such as Bikini Fitness have helped to make the connection between the modern fitness gym and health paramount.

A globalised (virtual) drug market?

Doping and the market for IPEDs has spread from elite sport and men’s bodybuilding to women bodybuilders, non-elite athletes, and, more recently, among those who are perceived to be regular gym goers and fitness enthusiasts (Hanley Santos & Coomber, 2017). The demographic profile and market for potential users has seemingly diversified, following the mainstreaming of fitness culture. This development has been fueled further by the use of online communication for discussing, learning about, and dealing with the effects of IPED use.

The market and distribution for IPEDs followed a roughly similar route as the development of gym and fitness culture. In the 1980s and 90s, the IPED market was often described as following a social, less commercially driven model (van de Ven & Mulrooney, 2017). Experienced users/bodybuilders often “helped out” and supported new friends at the gym. This included supplying the substances as well as mentoring newbies on how to use IPEDs.

The inherent risks of encounters with the police in some countries have diminished the level of sociability among fitness doping suppliers. Instead, there is a growing online market within online communities, providing opportunities through which profit-drive dealers are replacing culturally embedded suppliers (Fincoeur et al., 2015). This new type of online market and drug community has been evolving since the turn of the 21^st century (van de Ven & Mulrooney, 2017). This displacement may challenge national anti-doping policies and law enforcement, but for some who use IPEDs it may also be the only social support and harm reduction mentoring available.

Conclusions

During the late 1980s and 90s, bodybuilding and the associated lifestyle was increasingly questioned in public discourse. In order to preserve and develop gym and fitness culture, strong attempts were made to dissociate fitness culture from bodybuilding, and especially from the use of IPEDs. This was a type of “civilizing process,” where the entire gym and fitness culture gradually changed appearance. These became something quite new and bore little resemblance to the subcultural forms of bodybuilding we saw in the 1970s. Thefitness revolution of the 1990s was mainly about how gym culture transformed into a fitness enterprise. In this new configuration, drug using practices and bodybuilding were, to a certain extent, exiled.

What we see today is, perhaps, the initiation of a new phase in this historical development. Increasingly, we have critical debates on the effectiveness of various drug control systems, as well as about how to develop more holistic approaches to drug use in sports (Hanstad & Waddington, 2009). There are also critical discussions on the stigmatization of other substances. For example, López (2012) argued that there is a lack of evidence for the deleterious and fatal side effects of human growth hormone use that have become popular media tropes. The medical curiosities found in the prehistory of gym culture also seem to be reappearing in discussions on human enhancement drugs. Discussions around the possibility of developing harm-free IPEDs have also been initiated, which certainly brings new questions about the role of these substances in fitness, sport, and society (Gleaves, 2010).

About the author

Jesper Andreasson

Associate Professor at Linnaeus University

Jesper Andreasson holds a PhD in Sociology and is associate professor in sport science at Linnaeus University, Sweden. His research can mainly be positioned within health, gender studies and cultural sociology, and he has published extensively about doping and doping use. Recent books are Performance Cultures and Doped Bodies. Challenging categories, gender norms, and policy responses (2021, with April Henning);  Fitness Doping. Trajectories, Gender, Bodies and Health (2020) and Extreme Sports, Extreme Bodies. Gender, Identities and Bodies in Motion (2019, both with Thomas Johansson).

April Henning

Lecturer at University of Stirling

April Henning is Lecturer of Sport Studies at the University of Stirling in the U.K. and has a PhD in sociology. She has published extensively in the fields of doping, health, and policy in the sport and fitness contexts. Recent books include Performance Cultures and Doped Bodies (with Jesper Andreasson) and Doping: A Sporting History (in press, with Paul Dimeo). She is an Associate Editor at the journal Performance Enhancement & Health and is a Director of the International Network of Doping Researchers.