Flexing the Tensions of Female Muscularity: How Female Bodybuilders Negotiate Normative Femininity in Competitive Bodybuilding

Times have changed; they're looking for a mixture of muscularity and femininity and you have to be able to have both and these girls have a hard time figuring that out. Kate, interview transcript, 2002 Since the First Women's World Bodybuilding Championship in Los Angeles in 1979,i the relationship between femininity and muscularity has been the central problematic of the sport. Throughout the 1980s and 90s female bodybuilding flourished, as did the size of the athletes. Early pioneers such as Bev Francis, Lenda Murray, Carla Dunlap, and Cory Everson pushed female muscularity way beyond the sport's initial beauty pageant boundaries. However, these gains did not occur without growing moral panic-to the extent that gender-bending bodies are now being attributed to the "death of women's bodybuilding as a spectator sport" (Williams 2000:105). The most recent responses from bodybuilding gatekeepers to the increased muscularity of female competitors include the formalization of "femininity" as a judging criterion and the erasure of serious reporting on women's bodybuilding competitions in the bodybuilding media. Wayne DeMilla, vice president of the International Federation of Bodybuilding (IFBB), explained the factors that forced these developments to Iron Man magazine: We saw that as the physiques became more extreme, we couldn't market it. At the beginning of 2000, we sent out a criteria (sic) that the athletes had to come in with more of an emphasis on symmetry and muscularity and that the face would be judged. We also switched to weight divisions so that the smaller women wouldn't have to try and get big like the larger girls. The Sandwich 2001:12 DeMilla's explanation not only underscores the growing intolerance for female hypermuscularity and persistence of sexism within bodybuilding, but it also signals a much more widespread cultural abhorrence for female strength and muscularity. The decision by the IFBB to actively institute "femininity" as an official judging criterion, while masculinity remains implicit with muscularity in men's bodybuilding competition, mirrors shift within American politics toward an increasingly conservative ideology. These shifts can be understood as a response to the gains made by feminist and civil-rights movements over the past few decades. In this context, developments in the patriarchal institution of women's bodybuilding can be understood as part of a broader cultural effort to protect normative sex, gender, and heterosexual identity paradigms that the specters of hypermuscular female bodies attack. This essay examines the responses of some female bodybuilders to the current conservative shifts within their sport. I draw on data from my interviews with six competitive female bodybuilders conducted in Vancouver during the fall of 2002.ii Although bodybuilding is popular in other nations and continents, including Australia, China, Japan, and Europe, my focus in this essay is specifically on the original American institution of bodybuilding as it is enacted in the Canadian context. Known as the International Federation of Bodybuilding (IFBB), this institution acts as an international gatekeeper for the rules and regulations of men's and women's bodybuilding competitions. The most prestigious professional events are presided over by the IFBB and are held in the United States. Although different bodybuilding federations in other countries may diverge along some judging lines, they are all shaped by the rules and regulations set by the IFBB. Competitive bodybuilding in Canada is closely shaped by the IFBB and therefore provides a useful context to examine some of the most recent and significant developments in women's bodybuilding. My focus here is on two compelling themes that arose from my interviews: (1) constructions of the ideal female bodybuilder-how my participants negotiate gender, race, heterosexual, and class norms in their attitudes toward female muscularity and (2) performing normative femininity in bodybuilding competition-how my participants negotiate expectations to perform heterosexuality and middle-class femininity in bodybuilding competition. …