Can Muscles be Queer? Reconsidering the Transgressive Hyper-built Body

Abstract

This article examines the hyper-built body in light of queer theoretical investigations into gender, sexuality, and resistance. It is too easy to claim that female or male bodybuilders are either subversive of, or are upholding, dominant gender systems or heterosexuality. Such declarations do not explain why or how subversions/shifts might occur. Demonstrating how using a queer theoretical perspective offers some useful shifts in analysis by enabling an investigation into the complex operations of norms that shape the body and its practice, I consider David Halperin's argument that gay muscles are different from straight muscles. Pointing out some of the limitations of such a claim when viewed within the realm of women's bodybuilding, I reconsider the seminal film, Pumping Iron 2: The Women, in order to raise questions about transgression and gender norms that might provide insights into the operations of power vis-à-vis hyper-built bodies.

Keywords:

• Ascesis
• bodybuilding
• gender-transgression
• Pumping Iron 2
• queer ethics

Notes

¹ My definition of ‘queer’ follows Warner (1993) in asserting resistance to heteronormativity as the defining characteristic. Slippage in terminology between ‘gay’/‘lesbian’ and ‘queer’ has at times created misleading conflations (see my discussion of such slippage in Halperin's text below). I am also sympathetic to Richardson's ‘queer’ designation for the (male) bodybuilder's practice and body, although I do not share his contention that the queerness of male bodybuilding/the built body is ultimately related to hysteria in the psychoanalytic sense (Richardson, 2004).

² Both Foucault and Halperin point out that the men whose lives we might study in these examples were not ‘progressive’ or otherwise especially good examples for contemporary liberationist or queer politics. Their ability to pursue their ascetic lives was directly linked to the oligarchic and otherwise hierarchical social structures that positioned ascetic male Greeks above women, slaves, and younger free men. Their examples are therefore not an adoptable blueprint for contemporary politics.

³ What makes this quote by Simpson even stranger, although more interesting as well, are the words from a Catholic hymn, originally written by Thomas Aquinas, that appear at the very end of Simpson's chapter on male bodybuilding, directly following the claim quoted in my text. ‘Pange, lingua, gloriosi/Corporis mysterium (Sing, my tongue, of the mystery of the glorious body)’ (p. 42). Is it strange, I had to ask myself, that the very last lines in a chapter on bodybuilding, in a thoroughly contemporary book about men and masculinity, are from a hymn originally written for, how could it be otherwise, the feast of ‘Corpus Christi’? Not strange at all, I figured. After all, I was reading Simpson's book because I was writing on bodybuilding in the context of studying American religion and culture. In fact, I was happy to have found another colleague who, like me, was intrigued by the rituals and practices of pumping iron, bodybuilding competitions, and the complicated cultural dynamics in and beyond the gym. Others in religious studies who have written about the bodies produced through the worship of iron include Boer (1999), S. Moore (1996), Boyarin (1997), and Pellegrini (1997).

⁴ Richardson (2004), drawing on similar primary and secondary sources as I do in this essay, also views the activity of bodybuilding as ‘queer’. He is careful to distinguish his approach from those that have described bodybuilders as closet-gay, instead focusing on ‘how extreme bodybuilding can be termed a “queer” – as in the sense of non-normative, strange, or odd – activity’ (p. 50). Another valuable scholarly resource for the different interpretations (or ‘readings’) of bodybuilding practice and bodybuilders' bodies is Monaghan (2001, especially pp. 73–94).

⁵ An important caveat to keep in mind, as it clarifies that Halperin takes this practice as case study to examine queer effects of practical engagement of norms. ‘It is all too easy to think of reasons why working out ought not to qualify as a utopian political practice or as a proper vehicle of homosexual ascesis in Foucault's sense: it's too popular, too “narcissistic”, too consumerist, too unoriginal. Far from providing a means of translating into actuality an individual's freely chosen set of values or idiosyncratic vision of life, working out might seem rather to express a caving into peer pressure, a form of submission to the normalizing disciplines produces by and within gay subculture – the very discipline that cultural radicals of all sorts ought to be resisting’ (Halperin, 1995, p. 115).

⁶ The meaning of gay athletic practices requires continuous examination and deserves its own study, especially as the AIDS crisis changes, and as representations of gay male bodies shift in our cultures.

⁷ Given Halperin's concern with normalization in a Foucaultian trajectory, I had initially expected that he would rank the discursive effects (i.e. the bodied produced and their placement in specific normative networks) to be more crucial (than the intensions and hoped for meanings on the part of the practitioners). The place of intention is indeed an important factor to consider and to keep in mind. In the context of Saint Foucault, my expectation in this regard relied on Halperin's earlier discussion of examples of resistance to the discipline of sexuality: he argues that some aspects of sadomasochism and in particular the sexual practice of fisting generate means of resistance despite being indulged in not for the sake of politics, but purely for the sake of pleasure, i.e. in the absence of intentions to produce political resistance or specifically queer meaning (Halperin, 1995, pp. 85–91). To me, such a claim importantly questions the place of intentionality (or the intended creation of meaning) in resistant practices and – by extension – in his, my, or any other queer ethical approach. Inscribing gay muscles as resistant, or even queer, due to the intentional inscription with a specific desire seems to raise new questions.

⁸ An anonymous reviewer remarked that ‘the bodybuilder V-shape is not an “hourglass” given that it is appraised on angularity rather than curves?’. Although it is correct that ‘womanly’ curves of hips are not what the bodybuilding ideal aims for, it should be noted that certain curves still remain important: sweeping lats and the bulging shapes of biceps and, most importantly (see my discussion of breasts in this essay) ‘well-developed pecs are both curvaceous and voluptuous’ (Richardson, 2004, p. 55).

⁹ A typical ad reads: ‘BITCH TITS (GYNECOMASTIA) – Whether occurring naturally or as the result of substance abuse, it can be corrected by a simple procedure with minimum interruption in training. LIPOSUCTION, BREAST IMPLANTS. Plastic surgery for the bodybuilder – face, breast and body by a bodybuilder who understands your concerns. Free consultation’. The only advertisement that is consistently found more often than those promising help with ‘bitch tits’ is for procedures of penile enlargement.

¹⁰ Marc Simpson (1994) suggests that bodybuilding, once suspected to cause homosexual feelings and queer acting out, is now billed as hyper-masculine in a straight sense. However, Simpson notes that there are unforeseen slippages and suspicions. Supporting his interpretation of deficiency in male hyper-built bodies, Simpson claims that male builders are ‘like a reverse anorexic … chronically deficient in manliness’ (p. 34). In that context, steroid-use, to Simpson, is not merely about muscle-growth enhancement, but about injecting man(li)nes/masculinity, the ‘actual importation of same-sex attributes’ (p. 34, emphasis in original). For other approaches and interpretations of steroid use, see Shernoff (2001) and Parsi (1997).

¹¹ I thank the anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to me in order to clarify the control that can be asserted over this process.

¹² One should point out that these women and men have to train quite a bit to gain such muscularity. For women, as for men, injecting steroids does not cause muscles to grow to Schwarzeneggeresque proportions; heavy and regular workouts do, although workout results are significantly increased when certain steroids are injected during that time as well. It is worth mentioning, however, that the immediate suspicion that any hyper-muscular body must be on the juice is as misleading as the fear many women voice that they will develop massive muscularity overnight if they touch anything heavier than a ten pound dumbbell.

¹³ Also see my discussion of the peculiar gendering of judging norms below.

¹⁴ Francis is not the darling of the big media-controlling Weider brothers. Arguably, her physique does not compare to those counting as competitive ‘hard core’ these days. Francis has reflected in interviews on a number of aspects of gender representation over the years. Another illustration of their difference is, of course, that Francis, unlike Schwarzenegger, is neither a movie star nor is she running for governor of California, as Arnold was at the time of completion of this article.

¹⁵ Some exceptions that do more explicitly discuss the relationships of white supremacist ideology and the issue of tanning the skin (in the realm of bodybuilding) are Ahmed (1998) and Dyer (1997).

¹⁶ This need not contradict the question, of course. Embracing black femininity is not always an entirely celebratory or positive endeavor. The embrace of Dunlap in Pumping Iron 2 is, indeed, complicated.

¹⁷ The phrase ‘bodybuilding is so queer’ is from Novid Parsi's essay ‘Don't Worry Sam, You Are Not Alone: Bodybuilding is So Queer’ (1997). Parsi re-reads Sam Fussell's Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder (1991) as a (or as related to his own) queer narrative. Parsi reads passages in Fussell's book in exaggerated and willfully ironic ways, yet succeeds in pointing to similarities between the production and signification of these two specific bodies/narratives, queer and bodybuilder, while using the same connections to critique and to undo some of the racist and homophobic strands in Fussell's narrative.

¹⁸ Unlike Shea (2001) who decides not to examine fitness competitions at all in a study of female bodybuilding, I consider this institutional shift a very important move that is part of the power dynamics around gender in this realm.

¹⁹ The rhetoric of proponents and opponents to this more recently re-invented genre of women's competitions is interesting. In some video footage I was able to collect in ‘serious’ builders' gyms, the leading men and women were quite adamant that they considered fitness competitions not ‘the real thing’ but found them to be a despicable marketing gimmick at best. Interestingly, some of the hard core builders suggested that with the emergence of fitness competitions, women's bodybuilding would have to retreat into the background. In a sense, this is to imagine a turn back to its roots. Before the relatively recent emergence of competitive women's bodybuilding, women posed after men's competitions, and/or after power-lifting contests (more recently even after women's power lifting contests – see Bev Francis's earlier career as a powerlifter, before attempting competitive bodybuilding). The latter was also the case for men's bodybuilding. Although we find traditions of exhibitions and ‘strongmen’ shows, the exclusive comparison of competitors according to body shape (i.e. with disregard to the body's function as in strength or speed) is a more recent ‘invention’. The comparison to beauty contests is thus accurate in many ways.