TY - CHAP

T1 - Female Bodybuilding and Patriarchal Civilization. The Intrusion of a Practice in Sport into Artistic Fields and Visual Culture

AU - Mola, Isabelle Fontbona

AU - Wuggenig, Ulf

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - This essay focuses on the practice of female bodybuilding (in the form we know it today) from the perspectives of domination and empowerment, social influence and power. The primary theoretical frame of reference is Bourdieu’s field-habitus-capital approach, though this essay also discusses some limitations of applications of this theory, since Bourdieu linked bodybuilding with the working class only and did not discuss it as a middle class and feminism connotated female practice as well. Using a critical queer approach, the practice of female bodybuilding is discussed in terms of its similarities and fundamental difference with male bodybuilding. The essay furthermore looks at the practice on a systemic level, analyzing its expansion from sport and entertainment into several cultural and visual fields, including eroticism and the arts, in a process of social differentiation; and its globalization beyond its origins in the United States and the United Kingdom, which was also facilitated by the internet—psycho power—and which redefined the practice’s visibility after the iconic turn in an overall economy of appearance and attention. Of special relevance, this essay analyzes some of the intra- and intergender struggles within the field in light of the male dominance on the institutional level, which is enforced by heteronomous orientations (demand as well as male gaze) that support heavily sexualized, essentialist expectations of “femininity” for performing bodybuilders. These expectations are similarly reinforced by the demands of marketing interests and are supported by the complicity of the negatively privileged, which is characteristic for the functioning of symbolic power in Bourdieu’s sense. The ambiguity involved in the affirmative reproduction of the dominant gender order, as well as the critical intentions and dissident interventions in the patriarchal order, are discussed using the theoretical frame provided by French constructivist structuralism and further approaches to social power.

AB - This essay focuses on the practice of female bodybuilding (in the form we know it today) from the perspectives of domination and empowerment, social influence and power. The primary theoretical frame of reference is Bourdieu’s field-habitus-capital approach, though this essay also discusses some limitations of applications of this theory, since Bourdieu linked bodybuilding with the working class only and did not discuss it as a middle class and feminism connotated female practice as well. Using a critical queer approach, the practice of female bodybuilding is discussed in terms of its similarities and fundamental difference with male bodybuilding. The essay furthermore looks at the practice on a systemic level, analyzing its expansion from sport and entertainment into several cultural and visual fields, including eroticism and the arts, in a process of social differentiation; and its globalization beyond its origins in the United States and the United Kingdom, which was also facilitated by the internet—psycho power—and which redefined the practice’s visibility after the iconic turn in an overall economy of appearance and attention. Of special relevance, this essay analyzes some of the intra- and intergender struggles within the field in light of the male dominance on the institutional level, which is enforced by heteronomous orientations (demand as well as male gaze) that support heavily sexualized, essentialist expectations of “femininity” for performing bodybuilders. These expectations are similarly reinforced by the demands of marketing interests and are supported by the complicity of the negatively privileged, which is characteristic for the functioning of symbolic power in Bourdieu’s sense. The ambiguity involved in the affirmative reproduction of the dominant gender order, as well as the critical intentions and dissident interventions in the patriarchal order, are discussed using the theoretical frame provided by French constructivist structuralism and further approaches to social power.

KW - Science of art

KW - Arts and Power

KW - Third wave feminism

KW - Sociology

KW - Field-theory

KW - Body

KW - Female bodybuilding

KW - Female bodybuilding

KW - Body

KW - Arts and Power

KW - Field-theory

KW - Third wave feminism

UR - https://link.springer.com/book/9783658374280

UR - https://d-nb.info/1253238790

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/21fc4dbc-09c0-3811-9d90-90e99fa13406/

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-658-37429-7_9

DO - 10.1007/978-3-658-37429-7_9

M3 - Chapter

SN - 978-3-658-37428-0

T3 - Kunst und Gesellschaft

SP - 155

EP - 193

BT - Arts and Power

A2 - Gaupp, Lisa

A2 - Barber-Kersovan, Alenka

A2 - Kirchberg, Volker

PB - Springer VS

CY - Wiesbaden

ER -