![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper explores how taste and distaste, body image and masculinity play into young people’s perceptions of risk related to steroid use. Data are drawn from a qualitative study on risk-taking among 52 Danish youths enrolled in high school or vocational training. A number of ‘risky’ practices such as drug use, fights, speeding, etc. were discussed. In contrast to these practices, which were primarily described in relation to ‘physical risks’, steroid use was understood as part of an ‘identity’ or ‘lifestyle’ in a way these other risks were not. Few interviewees had used steroids, and the large majority distanced themselves from the practice. Reasons for not wanting to use steroids were related to (1) perceiving the drug to be part of a broader lifestyle and identity that they are not interested in committing to or embodying and (2) finding the body image, physicality and associations with steroid use ‘fake’, ‘gross’ and distasteful. We draw on recent developments in feminist sociological theory related to the gendered body as both a performance and process to understand steroid use as a practice through which the body and self is produced. More than a one-dimensional ‘risky’ practice, we argue that gendered and embodied identities are crucial to understanding the dynamics of steroid use.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. In some places steroids are classified as an addictive drug on par with other drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy and heroin (e.g., in the USA); in some places they are classified as a drug that is less addictive than recreational drugs (e.g., in the UK where steroids are a ‘class C’ drug like benzodiazepines), and in other places regulated by non-drug frameworks. For instance, in Australia the ‘One Punch Laws’ from 2014 frame steroids as related to street-level violence. This law punishes possession of steroids much more severely than possession of other drugs, while in Denmark steroids are regulated primarily as a health matter and punishment is less severe compared to other drugs.
2. This means that women who engage in bodybuilding challenge physical gender norms related to ‘proper’ femininity. For instance, Andreasson and Johansson (Citation2013) describe how in the 1990s ‘female bodybuilders were seen as parts of a grotesque subculture, [while] fitness women were seen as desirable and feminine’ (2). Despite some disruptions of this image today, the polarized view, depicting muscles as masculine, still seems to be predominant (Andreasson and Johansson Citation2013).