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After the Northern Lights: Florence Griffith Joyner and the Making of Contemporary Women's Sports by Leslie Heywood, PhD
Florence Griffith Joyner, a sprinter, became a permanent part of media culture in the early days of June, 1988, when in the Olympic trials she set the world record in the women’s 100 meter and 200 meter events. In multiple ways, she helped transform the U.S. cultural sense of ethnicity, gender, and race, what it means to be taken seriously as an athlete and who, according to these variables, should be taken seriously. She gave us new “materials” to consider what was possible for female athletes, who had, with a few exceptions, largely been marginalized as “unfeminine” or ignored. She renegotiated the traditional male/female, white/black, powerful/powerless divide in ways that, along with legislation and increasing attempts to enforce Title IX, the education act of 1972 that made gender discrimination illegal in institutions receiving federal funds, vastly expanded the horizons of possibility for the rest of us.
Athletic vs. Pornographic Eroticism: How Muscle Magazines Compromise Female Athletes and Delegitimize the Sport of Bodybuilding in the Public Eye by Leslie Heywood, PhD
Weider's quest for legitimacy is one that conceivably the entire bodybuilding community would support, including the legitimization of the sport's female participants. Yet, as is Flex's custom, pictorials, so trivializing and prurient in its focus, indisputably contribute to the fact that female bodybuilders and fitness competitors are not respected the same as athletes in other sports. In the long struggle for legitimacy that has finally seen some progress, I would argue that as long as there is pornographic representation of female bodybuilders and fitness competitors within the bodybuilding magazines, the sport's main outlet for media exposure, Weider's dream of mainstream acceptance will remain compromised and bodybuilding will not be taken seriously as a sport. Until bodybuilding treats its female athletes with a modicum of the respect they surely deserve, it will remain the marginalized freak show that it stages in the mainstream cultural imagination today.
The Bodybuilding Grotesque: The Female Bodybuilder, Gender Transgression, and Designations of Deviance by Krista Scott-Dixon, PhD
The other day I received some email from a man who had visited my women's weightlifting website. He was so emphatic in his pronouncement that he felt he had to send the message twice, once with the content in the subject line just in case I missed it the first time. His important missive, in entirety: "Muscular women look gross." After some digestion of these four words, I realized that in an idiot-savant sort of way, this individual had summed up a great deal of material about gender construction, the categorization of deviance, and the role of the grotesque in the gender presentation of female bodybuilders
Cyborgs in the Gym: The Technopolitics of Female Muscle by Krista Scott-Dixon, PhD
My general argument in this paper is that, contrary to the popular view of it as merely a simpleminded pursuit for large, oddly shaped, animated pieces of meat, bodybuilding is a scientific and technological practice. The bodybuilder not only conceives of her body as a site to be disciplined through various chemical and mechanical technologies, but as a collection of discrete parts distinguished from the whole, which can be individually manipulated. Thus I suggest that the bodybuilder is a cyborg. In this paper I show that within the world of bodybuilding this construction of cyborgs is heavily gendered and does not exist in isolation from the multiple and contradictory discourses already present in social and political spheres. I examine some of the concrete practices in which female bodybuilders engage, such as hormonal alteration, surgical intervention, image construction, and dietary regimentation, and point out the conflicts between bodybuilding as healthy athletics and bodily destruction. I link these to more abstract discourses around female bodybuilders, particularly the debate over what is "natural" for the female body.
Female Athletes and Menstrual Irregularities by Elzi Volk
What sets the female gender apart most from the male is the dynamic rhythmicity of the reproductive cycle. Dynamic fluctuations in hormone levels cyclically prepare the female human body for propagation of the species despite the volitional intent to produce children. Today, more women are participating in sports activities and training has become increasingly intense. Consequently, the effect of exercise and nutrition on women’s reproductive and metabolic physiology has become an important aspect of sports pathology. What happens to women’s bodies when the ever-changing circus of hormones is altered by exercise and diet?
Female Bodybuilders and the Feminine Mystique - Where Bev Francis meets Betty Friedan by Lisa Bavington
Will there ever come a day where women become separated from how the world views their bodies or are they destined to forever be defined by them? The female physique is a constant topic of debate between those intent on controlling it and those who wish to be freed from its constraints. Female bodybuilders pose the ultimate threat to the male ego as they challenge the shared assumption that men are, and will always be, more powerful than women. Based on this notion, society has continued to over sexualize women’s bodies in a concerted effort to diminish them from attaining any real power; as it is much easier to accept a muscular woman if she is portrayed as overtly sexual. For this reason, most women have learned to justify and/or apologize for their physical development in order to be accepted by a population who fails to understand it.
Female Bodybuilders, Fitness Competitors and the Crisis of Representation by Krista Scott-Dixon, PhD
This article is not just about female bodybuilders or fitness competitors. It is not about who is posing where and how. It is not about who is more feminine, athletic, sexy, muscular, or appropriate. It is about the creation, maintenance, and representation of a so-called crisis. Avid watchers of physical culture, or anyone who reads mainstream muscle mags on the Stairmaster, will know that in recent years a "crisis" has been introduced into the world of women's bodybuilding. This crisis is, of course, the appearance of fitness competitors, who are lauded by supporters as providing an athletic yet feminine alternative to ungainly and androgynous female bodybuilders, and criticized by detractors as being little more than pectorally amplified lingerie racks.
Hormone Replacement Scandal: New Study Discredits Toxic Hormone Combination by Karlis Ullis, MD and Josh Shackman, PhD
In one of the biggest scandals in medical history, government scientists shut down a study on the most commonly used hormone replacement therapy used in the country. These researchers concluded that it was no longer ethical to keep administering the infamous Prempro hormone replacement drug combination to post-menopausal women in a multi-center research study because it was inflicting more harm than good. While I have been an opponent of the Premarin and Provera strategy for a long time, there are safe and effective alternative hormone replacement therapy programs that I have been using successfully in my private practice for a long time. My own approach emphasizes natural, human bio-identical hormones rather than toxic and synthetic drugs such as Premarin and Prempro. In this article, I want to go over what the key implications of the NHLBI/WHI study are, and give some guidelines for doctors and post-menopausal women who are still interested in an alternative approach to hormone replacement therapy.
The Language of the Female Physique by Lisa Bavington
The female physique continues to be a constant topic of debate between those intent on controlling it and those who wish to be freed from its constraints, as women strive to become separated from how the world views their bodies. A woman’s gender role requires the strict adherence to the ideal female form judged by standards of femininity that are culturally specific and historically located designed to keep her in a perpetual state of weakness. There are numerous examples from popular culture which outlines how women’s power has become dictated by the media, their weakness embedded in a language that glamorizes addiction and their continued participation reinforced through the adoption of Western standards of beauty across the globe in a deliberate intent to create and maintain control over their body and mind. The combination of these efforts serve to keep women’s progress under wraps and prevent them from attaining any real form of power or sense of control over their lives.
Planet Estrogen Part I - Hormone Therapy, Training and Diet by Elzi Volk
Many women are prescribed hormones for contraceptive purposes or for hormone replacement therapy. Can hormone therapy affect exercise and the female athlete? Because many contraceptive methods and menopause therapies influence a woman’s hormonal milieu, both will be addressed here and are referred to as ‘hormone therapy.’ First, let’s briefly look at some of the hormone preparations, their components and the different routes of administration. Then we will discuss the implications they have relative to training and diet.
Planet Estrogen Part II - Apples and Pears by Elzi Volk
Apart from psychological issues, there are many evident physical gender differences. Depending on gender the typical shape of the adult human is often referred to as resembling an "apple or pear". Adult men tend to accumulate bodyfat in the abdominal area and low back (called android deposition). Women’s bodyfat is generally deposited over the lower abdominals, buttocks and thighs (called gynoid deposition). These patterns of bodyfat deposition are similar to the shapes of apples (men) and pears (women). One of the factors responsible for these differences in bodyfat deposition is our hormonal constitution. As we already know, the primary sex steroid in women is estrogen; in men, testosterone. How does this affect bodyfat deposition? After a brief description of the structure of fat, we will discuss the implications of estrogen and testosterone.
Planet Estrogen Part III: The Menstrual Cycle and Athletic Performance by Elzi Volk
Although there is abundant research addressing how exercise affects menstruation (see previous column "Female Athletes and Menstrual Irregularities"), less is known about how menstruation affects women’s performance in exercise and athletics. These cyclic hormone changes can affect physical and psychological potentials and ultimately influence sports performance although experiences are highly individual. This article will look at some of the research on how exercise performance is affected by the menstrual cycle and include anecdotal observations reported by women athletes and coaches.
Staying A-Breast of Things by Elzi Volk
Here in Texas where it is warm people like to show their skin regardless of size or stature. All too common I see women on the treadmills or in the aerobics classes who have double-C breasts crammed into flimsy size-B sports bras, their breast mass bouncing up and down like swinging water balloons. Many women wear so-called ‘sports’ bras made of non-supportive and flimsy fabric, opting for appearances rather than functionality. They make me cringe in pain. Most of these women don’t realize that they are destroying their natural breast support and, if continued, their breasts will become "belly ornaments" in a matter of years. This article presents anatomical features of the breast, discussion of changes in breast structures, and sports bra design.
The Weighting Game by Lisa Bavington
I first started training with weights after university at a fitness club in Toronto. Initially, I was interested in training for triathlons, but soon found I enjoyed strength training more than I had expected and results came quickly with relative ease. Given my history of athletic participation, educational background in Kinesiology, academic interest in feminism and personal views regarding sexuality, bodybuilding for me represented a point in my life where all of these elements collided into one big grand experiment. I was drawn to the feeling of physical empowerment the weights provided that I never received with aerobic conditioning. Bodybuilding seemed to be a natural progression and an ideal fit after years of participating in team sport. It provided me with the opportunity to pursue an individual sport where I would be completely responsible for my own success and/or failure.
What Overweight Women can Learn from Bodybuilders by Karlis Ullis, MD and Josh Shackman, PhD
Probably bodybuilders are the last group of people most overweight women would think of asking for advice on how to transform their bodies. However, observing the habits, training, and eating patterns of bodybuilders can work wonders for women and help them either jump-start their weight loss program or break their plateau.The key to any successful diet and exercise program is to burn off the fat while maintaining muscle and density-mass, which is a constant challenge for bodybuilders on diets. This article will demonstrate how the principles that are common sense in the bodybuilding community can be used effectively by women.
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