Male Athletes and the Cult(ure) of Thinness in Sport

Abstract

Although female emaciators and anorexics in sport have received considerable academic attention as a deviant population of athletes (Atkinson 2008; Grieve 2007), researchers have only recently attended to the onset and development of self-starvation or weight minimization programs among male athletes (Hargreaves and Tiggemann 2006; Papathomas and Lavallee 2006). The bulk of academic literature on eating pathologies among male (or female) athletes fails to account for many of the complex sociocultural processes involved in learning an emaciator's habitus (Bourdieu 1984; Elias 2004). Qualitative, open-ended interviews were conducted with 73 male athletes in 9 different sports to inspect the social–psychological genesis of the emaciator's habitus. Interviews focused on the role of exogenous to sport influences on eating behaviors and body attitudes, and endogenous influences on body regimen habituated as normative, rather than pathological, within specific sport cultures. Findings suggest that males who emaciate: (1) express rather socioeconomic and rational–scientific attitudes about the body as a site of controlled and disciplined work; (2) have life histories of, and phenomenological preferences for, being thin; (3) are socially insulated within sport cultures saturated by groupthink-replete nutrition ideologies; (4) attach significant cultural and personal meaning to social display inner-restraint and emotional control; (5) possess strong bonds with parents and coaches; and (6) generally express low thresholds of shame and guilt tolerance toward their risky behaviors.

Notes

¹The BMI has been widely, and appropriately, critiqued as a diagnostic tool, and condemned as a conceptually problematically index. Nevertheless, BMI scores were employed throughout this study as empirical measurements of body size and composition, and as a barometer of individual thinness.

²Typically, an aggregate EAT-26 score of 20 or over suggests the likelihood of disordered eating. In this study, the critical cutoff mark was lowered to include more men who may emaciate regularly, but do not fit into the traditional psychological profile of someone with an eating disorder. Due to the exploratory nature of the study, less emphasis was placed on the EAT-26 control and oral subscales.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Atkinson

MICHAEL ATKINSON is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Health at the University of Toronto, where he teaches physical cultural studies, sport policy, and research methods. His current research projects include ethnographic analyses of technology and bioethics in sport, violence and criminal behavior in sport, pain and illness narration, human rights through sport, anorexia cultures, and animal ethics. He is the author of Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art (2003, University of Toronto Press), Sport, Deviance and Social Control with Kevin Young (2008, Human Kinetics), Battleground: Sports (2008, Greenwood Press), Tribal Play: Sports Subcultures with Kevin Young (2008, Elsevier Press), and Deconstructing Men and Masculinities (2011, Oxford University Press). In October of 2004, he received the Aurora Prize from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as the outstanding young scholar in the Canadian social sciences.