Bodybuilding: The Construction of Bodies

Abstract

The sport of bodybuilding is a western phenomenon that has roots in imperialistic, colonial, and gendered anxieties about the correct state of the body. The history of bodybuilding supports the idea that the sport is posed as a remedy to relevant 20th century fears about a loss of man-power in the United States. The evolution of the sport throughout the 20th century– culminating in the production of two bodybuilding docu-dramas, titled Pumping Iron and Pumping Iron II: The Women–underscores the way that attempts to enter a body and gender-inclusive discourse only further enforce gendered, racialized, classicized, and ableist ideals that are foundational to American imperialism. Analysis of historical and contemporary texts, as well as the aforementioned docu-drama films will support my conclusion that the sport of bodybuilding is inextricable from its historical function of underlining, reinforcing, and eliminating physical difference is the pursuit of a national bodily ideal.