Gender, Fitness Doping and the Genetic Max : The Ambivalent Construction of Muscular Masculinities in an Online Community

摘要

This article is based on written accounts posted on an online forum called Flashback.The purpose of the study was to explore how participants in this community negotiated themeanings of fitness doping and how such negotiations could be understood in terms of masculinity.The findings indicate that the Internet community studied in this article can be read as an example ofa transformational process in which ordinary rules are questioned and partly put out of play. In theworld of the bodybuilder, the marginal masculinity is, in certain senses, dominant. On the one hand,achieving a muscular and well-trained body is regarded as a core aspect of manhood within thecommunity. Marginal masculinity is thus momentarily transformed into dominant and hegemonicmasculinity. On the other hand, however, the findings also indicate that a drug-using, muscularmasculinity is constructed in negotiation with other central masculine ideals, such as the employableman and the responsible father. Found within the community is a complex and dynamic interplaybetween intersecting discourses of manhood.