June 26, 2005
From Abject to Object: Women's Bodybuilding
"Do muscles have gender, or are they, on the contrary,
ungendered human meat? Other than the few muscles
associated with their sexual organs, men and women have the
same muscles. Does this make muscles neuter, or perhaps
neutral? Is there some "difference" between the biceps of a
male and those of a female other than, possibly, that of
size? If a woman's biceps, or quadriceps, are bigger than a
man's, are hers more masculine than his? In the eyes of
most beholders, the more muscle a woman has, the more
"masculine" she is. The same, of course, is true for men:
the more muscle a man has, the more masculine he is too.
Bodybuilding in a sense is a sport dedicated to wiping out
"femininity," insofar as femininity has for centuries
connoted softness, passivity, non-aggressivity, and physical
weakness. Eradicating femininity just may be the purpose of
both male and female bodybuilders. Even so, for men to wage
war on femininity, whether their own or somebody else's, is
nothing new. For women, however, it is."
article Copyright (c) 1991 by Marcia Ian
[a free sample from Bil Dobbins.com
not with article]