'Papa regarde, c'est super femme'. Bodybuildsters, vrouwelijkheid en identiteit in de jaren tachtig
Auteurs
Marjolein Van Bavel
Samenvatting
Within academic literature female
bodybuilding has primarily been praised as
a form of feminist resistance to traditional
ideals of femininity. Women’s bodybuilding
can be seen as a way to create ‘gender
trouble’, as the hyper-muscular female body
expresses a subversion of dominant gender
norms. Others have, however, wondered
whether and to what extent one can speak
of such feminist resistance. After all, female
bodybuilders seem willing to mimic and
almost exaggerate traditional requirements
of feminine iconography. Previous research
thus considered the practice of women’s
bodybuilding from normative forms of
discourse. These interpretations render
these women as passive rather than active
agents within dynamic social processes, in
which the individual and practical embodied
experiences are often forgotten. Interviews
lend themselves pre-eminently to accessing
embodied agents. By interviewing seven
women who participated in bodybuilding in
the eighties, the article attempts to bridge
the gap between academic discourse and
materiality in the study of these female
bodybuilding bodies. In the experience of
embodied practice, the concept of ‘feminist
resistance’ was renounced. These women
constructed an identity of femininity,
contrasted with masculinity, and testified
that gender should be worked on through
performance. And although many elements
within literature on ‘feminine recuperation’
were confirmed through the interviews,
greater complexity was uncovered in the
experienced reality. Through bodybuilding
these women were provided with strength,
confidence as well as being able to create
an identity for themselves, incorporating
traditional male characteristics. Female
bodybuilding therefore contains a liberating
potential on the level of personal experience,
distinguished from the concept of ‘feminist
resistance’ within literature.