“DON’T BE A SKINNY B*TCH”: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF MALE AMATEUR BODYBUILDING

Abstract

This research conducts an ethnography of male amateur bodybuilders and how their practice is motivated through history, theory, and social media. The first chapter traces competitive bodybuilding from the racially exclusionary Mr. America Era through the popular culture of the Golden Era and the steroid driven mass Monster Eras to today's more inclusive, Science-Based Era. The second chapter draws on Wacquant and Durkheim to explore how total dedication to bodybuilding can yield a kind of religious sense of enlightenment, while also analyzing how the idealization of pain intersects with social media masculinity culture. The third chapter examines how bodybuilding affirms masculinity within a neoliberal, hyper-competitive American context, engaging Mauss, Bourdieu, and Ghannam alongside a political history of the American body ideal. The fourth chapter asks whether bodybuilding is genuinely healthy, drawing on Metzl's critique of health and Butler's theory of performativity, before exploring how the muscled body is commodified within an economy of appearance. Together, these chapters illuminate the complex social, cultural, and political forces shaping male amateur bodybuilding in contemporary America.