Introduction: Food and Nonfood In the movie “The Matrix“, Lawrence Fishburne’s character tells Keanu Reeves’ character, as the two dig into bowls of beige mush, that the foundation of their futuristic diet is “single-celled proteins [huh?] with a complete profile of amino acids, vitamins, and minerals.” Sound familiar? Have you looked into your blender recently? […]
Female Bodybuilders, Fitness Competitors and the Crisis of Representation
Introduction This article is not just about female bodybuilders or fitness competitors. It is not about who is posing where and how. It is not about who is more feminine, athletic, sexy, muscular, or appropriate. It is about the creation, maintenance, and representation of a so-called crisis. Avid watchers of physical culture, or anyone who […]
The Bodybuilding Grotesque: The Female Bodybuilder, Gender Transgression, and Designations of Deviance
The other day I received some email from a man who had visited my women’s weightlifting website. He was so emphatic in his pronouncement that he felt he had to send the message twice, once with the content in the subject line just in case I missed it the first time. His important missive, in entirety: […]
Cyborgs in the Gym: The Technopolitics of Female Muscle
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 […]