| Summary: | This study aimed to build upon the literature on women's athleticism by using
bodybuilding as a vehicle for exploring associations between women's muscularity, notions of
gender and bodily empowerment. Feminist cultural analyses of women's bodybuilding have
claimed that muscularity is constrained by gendered meanings surrounding the sport and the
female body (cf. Bordo, 1993; Coakley, 1994; Schulze, 1990).
The purpose was to explore how personal interpretations of muscularity by competitive
female bodybuilders contributed to their definitions of gender and empowerment through the
body.
Three competitive female bodybuilders were recruited. Ethnographic techniques were
employed, including observations of subjects' training sessions, ongoing fieldnotes, and
individual in-depth interviews to uncover the women's interpretations of their muscularity,
gender and bodily empowerment. Data analysis involved organization of the data into themes
using the computer program NUD.IST.
The women re-defined certain values and expectations of femininity based on norms of
discipline and restriction (cf. Bartky, 1993; Kissling, 1991; Willis, 1990). As such, it was
revealed that muscularity contained possibilities for transforming common cultural images of the
female body and meanings surrounding women's athleticism (cf. Birrell & Theberge, 1994;
Hesse-Biber, 1996; Markula, 1993).
From this, the women gained a sense of bodily empowerment which they defined as self
actualization through confidence building, a positive body image, discipline, independence, inner
strength and self awareness. This reinforced the idea that shifted understandings of gender
through muscularity exist as one route to women's bodily empowerment as they function to
replace dominant meanings which limit women (cf. Horden, 1993; Obel, 1996; Theberge, 1987). The women's sense of empowerment related to their visions of gender and their bodies in
that these challenged traditional symbols of male dominance, involved independence and
physical 'space-taking', and provided role models of female capability extending beyond the
personal (cf. Hall, 1990; Hargreaves, 1994; Nelson, 1994).
This analysis contributes to the existing literature by questioning the contention that
bodybuilding does not constitute a form of empowerment because it is limited by the dominant
ideologies of female body image, behaviour and sport surrounding it (cf. Bryson, 1990;
Mansfield & McGinn, 1993; Miller & Penz, 1991). === Education, Faculty of === Kinesiology, School of === Graduate
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