131
The
Muscled Self and Its Aftermath: A Life History Study of an Elite, Black,
Male Bodybuilder
SAGE Publications, Inc.2005DOI: 10.1177/09675507050130020301
Andrew C.Sparkes
University of Exeter, UK, A.C.Sparkes@exeter.ac.uk
JoanneBatey
University College Winchester, UK
DavidBrown
University of Exeter, UK
This article draws on the
life history of an elite, black, male bodybuilder to explore the social meanings
of muscle in the construction and confirmation of specific forms of masculine
identity. Attention is given to childhood experiences in a hostile environment
and how this initiated a quest for a hyper-muscular body. Having successfully
achieved this aim by winning a British Championship a turning point moment
prematurely terminates his sporting career. The aftermath of this moment
for his sense of self are examined by focusing on experiences of the following:
negative pain, an atrophying body, the loss of a disciplined body and an
athletic identity, and becoming `black again' in a small body. Finally, some
reflections on the muscled self and its aftermath are provided.
INTRODUCTION
According to Shilling (1993), in the affluent West the body becomes a project
that should be worked at and accomplished as part of an individ- ual's self-identity.
People come to believe that the appearance, size, shape, and even the contents
of the body, are potentially open to reconstruction in line with the designs
of the owner. For him, `Treating the body as a project does not necessarily
entail a full-time preoccupation with its wholesale transformation, although
it has the potential to do so' (1993: 5). One example of the body as project
noted by Shilling (1993) is the increasingly popular activity of bodybuilding1
in which the sheer size of the muscles achieved challenges accepted notions
of what is `natural' about male and female bodies. Likewise, Benson (1997)
notes
Address
for correspondence: Andrew C. Sparkes, Qualitative Research Unit, School Sport
and Health Sciences, University of Exeter St Luke's Campus, Heavitree Road,
Exeter, UK, EX1 2LU; Email: A.C.Sparkes@exeter.ac.uk © 2005 Edward Arnold
(Publishers) Ltd 10.1191/0967550705ab033oa
132
this
activity is one in which bodies become treated as a project of the self and
as bodies for display. The central idea is to build mass: to build big muscles....
These muscles should be hard and clearly defined, `shredded' or `cut'....
The result will be a body for others to look at, not a body for use.... The
body here is a very literal project of the self.... The flesh itself must
be blasted, bombed and shaped, and the mass and power of built muscle confirms
the body-builder in his or her own selfhood: I bulge, therefore I am. (Benson,
1997: 146–48) Others have also noted how with this group identity construction
takes a peculiarly physical form. For example, Bloor et al. (1998) point out
that for bodybuilders their identities are crucially shaped by their physical
appearance in such a way that Cooley's (1983) looking glass self is no longer
a mere metaphor. Indeed, according to Fussell (1991) and Hotten (2004) the
admiring gaze of the other is the ultimate reward for the body- builder. Brown
(1999) also notes how bodybuilders both desire and use the gaze of others
regarding their increasing hyper-muscularity, along with their own constant
self-scrutiny, to construct and confirm their identities as their flesh is
transformed. With these transformations, Brown suggests, bodybuilders became
acutely aware that they are their bodies and that changes in their bodies
can bring about changes in their sense of self. Therefore, in Frank's (1991)
terms, bodybuilders provide an excel- lent example of the mirroring body in
action. This kind of body seeks to recreate the body in the image of other
bodies that are more muscular than itself. The primary sense is visual. The
body sees an image, idealises it, and then seeks to become the image of that
image. Importantly, the mirroring body is judged by its appearance. To produce
the desired hyper-muscular body requires many hours of intense training each
day over a number of years. Dedicated bodybuilders also follow elaborate and
rigidly defined diets, and many opt for chemi- cal interventions to enhance
their training programmes and gain muscle mass (Benson, 1997; Bloor et al.,
1998, Fussell, 1991; Hotten, 2004; Klein, 1993, 1995; Monaghan, 2001a). In
attempting to transform their bodies, bodybuilders adopt increasingly disciplined
regimes of self-regulation and self-monitoring strategies in order to promote
the maximal conditions for muscular development. As such, they provide a good
example of the disciplined body in action as described by Frank (1991). This
kind of body defines itself primarily in actions of self-regimentation that
are intended to lead to predictable outcomes in muscle growth and shape. In
this regard, Brown (1999) notes how, in attempting to transform their bodies,
the bodybuilders in his study adopted increasing regimes of self-regulation
and self-monitoring strategies in order to promote the best
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possible
conditions for muscular development: `This can be regarded as an anthropometric
bodybuilding lifestyle, characterized by the measure- ment of the body size,
composition, performance, recovery, ingestion and excretion' (1999: 86). Indeed,
Benson (1997) notes the obsessional con- cerns that bodybuilders have with
what they take into their bodies along with the anxious attention they devote
to policing the boundaries of the self in the quest for the `perfect' body.2
Of course, the value placed on, and the acceptance afforded to this constructed
hyper-muscular body varies greatly. For example, the general public, along
with many in the sporting world treat bodybuilding with suspicion because
of its focus on `unnatural' muscle mass and an end performance that involves
`just' being looked at and appraised. Furthermore, as Basalmo (1997) notes:
The women who use bodybuilding technology to sculpt their bodies are doubly
transgressive; first, because femininity and nature are so closely aligned,
and any attempt to reconstruct the body is transgressive against the `natural'
identity of the female body. Second, when female athletes use technology to
achieve physical muscularity – a male body prerogative – they
transgress the `natural' order of gender identity. (Balsamo, 1997: 167) Against
this backdrop, as Wesely (2001: 173) emphasizes: `Female bodybuilders face
incredible pressure and tremendous attacks if they do not stay within the
realm of acceptable femininity'. Thus, as a number of studies have highlighted,
the experience of becoming and being a body- builder varies significantly
according to gender (e.g., see Benson, 1997; Grogan et al., 2004; Klein, 1993; Mansfield and McGinn, 1993; Roussel et al., 2003). BODYBUILDING MOTIVATIONS
With regard to the motivations for becoming a bodybuilder, particularly with
regard to men, the dominant view in western cultures seems to revolve around
notions of masculinity in `crisis'. Thus, Pope et al. (2000: xii) talk of
a `widespread crisis among today's boys and men'. The signs of this crisis,
for them, are evident in a range of body obsessions that con- stitute what
they define as the `Adonis Complex'. With regard to male body image obsession,
Pope et al. note how many `normal' boys and men feel insecure and anxious – even paralysed – by how they look: `Society is telling them now, more
than ever before, that their bodies define who they are as men. Because they
find it impossible to meet this supermale standard, they turn their anxiety
and humiliation inward' (2000: 4). They suggest this can lead some men to
develop a psychiatric condition known
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as `muscle
dysmorphia' that involves misperceptions and/or obsessions about their muscularity.
They identify bodybuilding as one outlet for this obsession. For those adopting
this crisis perspective, in a situation where taken-for- granted notions of
culturally dominant masculinity are being challenged in many social spheres,
sport, and particularly aggressive contact sports, become defined as one strategy
for retaining, continuing, and reproducing hegemonic forms of masculinity.
Monaghan (2001a: 8) summarizes this perspective as follows, `bodybuilding
in particular provides men (and some women suffering personal insecurities)
with an atavistic means of redressing their feelings of powerlessness through
the pursuit of a cultur- ally valorized mesomorphic image signifying hegemonic
masculinity'. An example of this perspective is provided by Klein's (1990; 1993) ethnographic work on bodybuilding. According to Klein, his findings
reveal a widespread lack of self-esteem among bodybuilding males that are
bolstered by various institutionalized forms of narcissism found in this sport
and subculture. He suggests that, for the male bodybuilder, the quest for
muscular mass and size, is a defence against the thing he fears most, his
smallness. This has implications for his often fragile ego structure and also
for his equally fragile gender identity structure. More recently, Klein (1995:
114) summarized the situation as follows, `the social psychology of male bodybuilders
is quite simple really, almost cliché-like. The more insignificant he feels
on the inside, the more significant the bodybuilder strives to appear on the
outside. In bodybuilding this translates into an obsession with appearing
large'. Thus, the hyper-muscular body becomes a mask or wall between low self-esteem
and a potentially threatening world. With regard to the constitutive predicament
of masculinity and the hidden anxiety at the core of conventional masculinity
displayed in Fussell's (1991) autobiographical tale of becoming a hard-core
body- builder, Wacquant (1995) notes the following: Bodybuilding forms a unique
prism though which to examine this predicament because muscles are the distinctive
symbol of masculinity, the specific armamentarium of embattled manhood. Their
wilful acquisition and exhibition serve to establish and repair a damaged
sense of oneself as a properly gendered being, i.e., a virile individual.
Surveys have shown time and again that men's self esteem correlates highly
with having a muscular upper body, that males with slight or `soft' physical
make ups have lower levels of life satisfaction than their more athletic peers.
The quest for muscles reveals men locked in a `passionate battle against their
own sense of vulnerability'. (Waquant, 1995: 171)
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While
analyses informed by the crisis perspective may be useful in helping explain
why some men are drawn towards bodybuilding, it should not be assumed that
this perspective applies to all male bodybuilders. The crisis perspective
needs to be treated with caution as it has a number of limitations. In the
first instance, at a general level, it tends to view mas- culinity as a unified
and homogenous entity when this is simply not the case. As Salisbury and Jackson
(1996: 7) point out: `There is no such thing as masculinity – only
masculinities.... Masculine identities are always full of cracks and fissures,
as they shift across history and different cultures. They are complex and
contradictory.... They are never harmo- niously integrated or rationally coherent.'
The crisis perspective also tends towards an overly simplistic view of sport
as a patriarchal institution that reinforces men's domination and power over
women. However, as Messner (1992: 17) points out, `the rise of sport as a
social institution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had
at least as much to do with men's class and racial relation- ships with other
men as it did with men's relationships with women'. Importantly, Messner goes
on to argue that the turn-of-the-century `crisis of masculinity' was, in actuality,
a crisis of legitimation for hegemonic masculinity: `In other words, upper-
and middle-class, white, urban heterosexual men were the most threatened by
modernization, by changes in the social organization of work, by the New Woman's
movement into public life, by feminism, and by working-class, ethnic minority,
immigrant, and gay men' (1992: 18). Against this backdrop, Mercer (1994) has
criticized the Eurocentrism of many theoretical approaches to masculinity
that have failed to recog- nize that, `not all men in the world are white
or even that white masculin- ities are informed by an ethnicity of whiteness'
(1994: 153). In drawing attention to the historically constructed social position
of black males he emphasizes that `black masculinity is a highly contradictory
formation of identity, as it is a subordinated masculinity' (1994: 143). Subordinated
masculinities, as Carrington (2002) emphasizes, cannot be fitted unques- tioningly
into the template of the crisis perspective without reproducing a `non-raced'
male subject. Thus, he calls for a more sophisticated and non- reductionist
analysis that takes seriously the intersectionality of `race', gender, nation,
and class if we are to fully appreciate how social identities are constructed
over time. With specific reference to bodybuilding, various scholars have
drawn attention to the limitations of the crisis perspective and its `deficit'
view of masculinity. For example, Brown (1999) points out that the relationship
between hyper-muscularity and the construction of a specific form of masculinity
is much more dynamic than is generally presumed.
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The
notion of bodybuilders all being insecure men, bolstering their flagging sense
of masculine selves by building their bodies to keep the world away, is I
feel, a narrow and essentialist view of male insecurity, which takes no account
of the possible consequences of ontological insecurity in the context of high
modernity. Furthermore, bodybuilding's hyper-muscular masculinity must, therefore,
be seen in the hegemonic, competitive sporting context into which it is locked,
because modern bodybuilding is a sport.... Unlike Klein (1993), therefore,
I remain unconvinced that idiosyncrasies of the bodybuilding masculinity are
more significant than the obvious similarities to mainstream hegemonic masculinities
and its inherent insecurities. (Brown, 1999: 89). Monaghan (2001a) also advises
caution and provides an extensive critique of the crisis perspective and its
notion of deficit. For example, while he notes that the social construction
of masculinity may contribute to the current appeal and sustainability of
bodybuilding, given a social structural shift in gender relations and the
erosion of traditional sources of masculine identity, he emphasizes that such
a view can only reveal so much. This is particularly so given the ways in
which the work of Klein (1990; 1993; 1995) and Pope et al. (2000) pathologize
the individual com- mitment to bodybuilding by explaining this activity in
terms of personal and gender inadequacy. In contrast, Monaghan (2001b: 331),
argues that more positive readings are possible in terms of the `sensual pleasures
that muscle enthusiasts derive from their vibrant physicality. For individ-
uals embroiled in the positive moment of bodybuilding, such activity is beneficial
to mental, physical and/or social health'. Monaghan (2001b) also points out
that a variety of men from a range of occupations are attracted to bodybuilding.
As such, existing theoretical work, that seeks to explain bodybuilding in
terms of gender inadequacy caused by a masculinity-in-crisis scenario pays
scant attention to the heterogeneity of this activity and the multiple reasons
why men engage in it: `Different spatially, temporally and contextually located
actors will give different and sometimes mutually incompatible reasons for
adorning their bodies with muscle' (2001b: 334). Consequently, Monaghan argues
that hegemonic masculinity is not the only meaning that may be ascribed to
the muscular body's surface, and that taken by themselves, `particular meanings
attached to muscle partially as opposed to exhaustively account for the ongoing
appeal of bodybuilding' (2001b: 334). Furthermore, Monaghan (2001a) notes,
given that modern day competition standard bodybuilders have physiques that
are stigmatized by non-initiates, then the social process in the affiliative
context of body- building becomes important in accounting for individual commitment
to
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the cult
of muscularity: `Rather than being antecedent, motives and dispositions for
transmogrifying the body emerge during the course of experience within a subcultural
context' (2001a: 10). For Monaghan, this means that while gender anxieties
might fuel the desire for muscles in a number of bodybuilders it remains
that `antecedent insecurities are neither a necessary not sufficient condition
for bodybuilding' (2001a: 10). Clearly, there are many complex reasons and
motivations why different kinds of men seek to become bodybuilders. This
said, it is interesting to note the limitations of making such an investment
in the body. The most obvious, as Shilling (1993) points out, is that bodies
age, decay and die. Bodies can also refuse to be moulded in accordance with
the intentions of its owner. For example, some body types find it harder than
others to develop muscle mass. Finally, individual body projects can be interrupted
by fateful moments or disruptive life events such as illness, seri- ous injury,
or acquired disability. In this regard, as Connell (1995) notes, `The constitution
of masculinity through bodily performance means that gender is vulnerable
when the performance cannot be sustained – for instance, as a result
of physical disability' (p. 54). Such interruptions can be particularly disturbing
and generate a number of specific masculine identity dilemmas for men who
have invested in sporting bodies (Sparkes, 1996; 2003a; 2003b; 2004; Sparkes
and Silvennoinen, 1999; Sparkes and Smith, 2002; Young et al., 1994). These
dilemmas are likely to be accentuated for men who have adopted the anthropometric
lifestyle, subordinated all concerns to the pursuit of maximum muscular growth
and, for whom, the display of this muscle is a defining feature of the self.
As one of the bodybuilders in Klein's (1995: 112) study commented, `Shit!
Life's too short to die small'. Against the backdrop provided above, some
interesting issues are raised regarding those men who seek to bolster their
sense of self by building a hyper-muscular body, and actually succeed in doing
so, but then find themselves in circumstances where the maintenance of this
muscularity is not possible. This is particularly so with regard to men
who have subordinated masculinities in relation to race and social class.
To explore some of these issues, we now turn our attention to the life history
of one male, black, elite bodybuilder, called Jessenka (a pseudonym). In
Monaghan's (2001a) terms Jessenka was an elective bodybuilder who engaged
in a stylized form of this activity that involved him entering competitive
shows where the physique is judged by specific criteria. He was very successful
in this sport and won a British championship. However, Jessenka's bodybuilding
career was then prematurely terminated by a serious injury.
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METHODOLOGY
According to Cresswell (1998), life history or biographical research, is an
approach in which the researcher reports on an individual's life and how it
reflects personal themes, institutional themes, cultural themes of the society,
and social histories. It is assumed that human action can be best understood
from the accounts and perspectives of the people involved, and so, the focus
is on the individual's subjective definition and experi- ence of life. Plummer
(2001: 40), a leading advocate of life history research states, `the life
history reveals, like nothing else can, the subjec- tive realm'. He goes on
to argue that one of the major strengths of this approach is its ability to
give meaning to the overworked notion of process: `The life history technique
is peculiarly suited to discovering the confusions, ambiguities and contradictions
that are played out in everyday experiences' (2001: 40). The exploration of
this subjective realm can draw on a range of data sources. These include the
life story as defined by Atkinson (2002). A life story is the story a person
chooses to tell about the life he or she has lived, told as completely and
as honestly as possible, what the person remembers of it and what he or she
wants others to know of it, usually as a result of a guided interview by another.
The resulting life story is the narrative essence of what has happened to
the person.... It includes the important events, experiences and feelings
of a lifetime.... Whatever form it takes, a life story always brings order
and meaning to the life being told, for both the teller and the listener.
It is a way of understanding the past and the present more fully. (Atkinson,
2002: 125–26) Accordingly, the data presented in this article are based
on a series of six life story interviews, lasting 13 hours in total, that
were conducted with Jessenka over a nine-month period. The interviews were
conducted by the primary investigator (Joanne Batey) who worked alongside
Jessenka for a period of one year at a health club where he was employed as
a personal trainer. During that year, the primary investigator learned about
Jessenka's involvement in bodybuilding, his former championship status, and
the car accident that terminated his career in this sport. As part of a larger
study on interrupted body projects and the performing self,3 Jessenka was
invited to share his life story. Given the trust and rapport that had developed
between him and the primary investigator he agreed to do so. Prior to the
first interview, the ethical principles that would inform the process were
discussed with Jessenka. These included the following: the content of the
interviews would be confidential; the interviews would
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be audio-taped
and the only person to listen to the audiotapes and tran- scribe them would
be the primary investigator. It would be Jessenka's decision at the end of
the project as to whether the audiotapes were returned to him, wiped clean
by the primary investigator, or were allowed to remain in her possession for
further analysis. It was agreed that in any publications pseudonyms would
be used to protect the identity of those involved. The difficulties of maintaining
anonymity given Jessenka's former status as a British Champion were also discussed.
Jessenka was to have access to any article written about him in order to pass
comment on the accuracy of the data presented and the fairness of the interpretation.
It was also made clear to Jessenka that he was free to terminate an individ-
ual interview or withdraw from the study completely without having to provide
any explanation for doing so. As suggested by Wolcott (1994), the first interview
began with a `grand tour' question in which Jessenka was invited to tell the
primary investiga- tor something of his life in his own words. With this as
a starting point, life course stages and experiences were explored in an open-ended
manner as issues and themes emerged from his life story in relation to pivotal
events. During the interviews the primary investigator adopted the role of
active listener. As Wolcott explains, this implies taking an interactive
role in making a more effective speaker out of the person talking. After each
interview, the primary investigator transcribed the tape and then assumed
the posture of indwelling. This entailed reading through the transcript several
times in order to immerse herself in the data and understand Jessenka's point
of view from an empathetic rather than a sympathetic position. Next, the transcript
was read through again several times with a view to identifying narrative
segments and categories within it. As part of this process analytical memos
were also made. Following this, in discussion with Andrew Sparkes in his role
as `critical friend', preliminary and tentative connections were made to theoretical
concepts that were thought to be related to issues emerging within Jessenka's
story. This process along with the analytical memos helped shape the questions
asked and the themes explored at the next interview as part of a cyclic process.
As the interviews progressed and data were accumulated, connec- tions were
sought across narrative segments and themes in an attempt to identify patterns
and meanings as constructed by Jessenka. Interpretation, Wolcott (1994: 36)
suggests, is when the researcher `tran- scends factual data and cautious analysis
and begins to probe into what is being made of them'. Here, as Cresswell (1998)
notes, the researcher reconstructs the individual's biography and identifies
factors that have shaped the life. Following this an analytic abstraction
of the case is produced that highlights the processes in the individual's
life, the different
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theories
that relate to these life experiences, and the unique and general features
of the life. Accordingly, we now present a partial reconstruction of Jessenka's
life that revolves around him becoming a bodybuilder and the impact that a
career-terminating injury had on his sense of self. THE EARLY YEARS: SMALL
AND BLACK Jessenka was raised in a working-class, black family in the heart
of a major city in England. His parents parted when he was sixteen. He has
two elder brothers and one elder sister. As a young child, relations with
his parents were distant at best. Although Jessenka's relationship with his
mother got closer in his teenage years, the relationship with his father was
often characterized by fear and sometimes violence. Jessenka states that he
was a very small, shy child, who was no good at sports, and weighed less than
seven-and-a-half stone at secondary school. In contrast, his brothers were
good at sport and were `very rough customers' with a stature and attitude
more appreciated by their Jamaican father, who had been an excellent boxer
in his youth. I do believe to this day that my Dad always looked at me as
sort of a wimpy person. He'd always been quite rough, a man's man. He boxed
for Jamaica.... When I see my Dad even to this day, having a conversation,
it feels like there's a big tension there. My other brothers get on better
with him because I believe they were shown to be rough or harder people than
I was. You know, from very young Lewis was just a brilliant sportsman... so
it left the little one who wasn't particularly bright and couldn't do any
sport.... I felt the odd one out from quite early on.... A couple of incidents,
we were playing cricket one day and my Dad decided... he was going to teach
me to play cricket properly. He bowled this particularly fast ball damn hard
and nearly took my fucking head off, bashed me in the face and I ran off.
And then he came in to give me a hard time, `Don't cry you big sissy, you
will get back out there and play cricket.' With regard to boys, sport and
masculinity, Drummond (2003) notes that those who are good at sport are often
afforded the privilege of being popular among their peers. This enhances self-esteem,
self-image and masculine identity due to the creation of dominant and subordinate
groups. In contrast, Drummond suggests: `Boys who are less athletically skilled
are often ridiculed, which can negatively impact on their self-perception....
Boys who do not live up to societal expectations of being accomplished at
sport and physical activity may feel unskilled and awkward' (2003: 133). Furthermore,
as Drummond's (2003) study of school-based adolescent males indicates, muscularity
is also a highly prized feature among this age
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group
(also see Grogan and Richards, 2002). Those boys who have mus- cular and mesomorphic
bodies tend to be held in high regard, are led to feel good about themselves,
and often develop a healthy body image and positive self-esteem. However,
Drummond emphasizes, the same cannot be said for boys who are small and frail.
Such boys often develop a poor body image and low self-esteem. For him, during
this period of schooling, boys quickly learn what is a `successful' and `unsuccessful'
body and define their own bodies in relation to these categories in ways that
have consequences for masculine identity construction. In particular, those
with unsuccessful bodies perceive their identity as `flawed within a social
and cultural context that upholds and vindicates specific forms of physicality
as a masculinized virtue' (2003: 138). It would appear that from an early
age, sporting prowess, physical size, muscularity and strength emerged as
defining features of a `successful' body and a respected masculinity for Jessenka.
These features were made particularly prominent at his school where racial
tensions ran high. Here, because he was black and small Jessenka was bullied:
`There was a lot of racism there, but it was kind of underlying, kind of waiting
for an explo- sion.... I got fairly beat up as you can imagine, being small
and the rest of it.' However, due to their physical size and prowess, he was
`protected' by his two elder brothers. Indeed, there was a period in school
where his elder brother `ruled the roost' and the bullying subsided. But,
once his brothers left the school the bullying erupted again: `They left.
That year was fucking open season. It was like shooting season it really was.
They weren't there. Everybody who had been upset by my brother, or had grief
with him, came after me. I had a full year to swallow it all.' Jessenka remembers
other racially fuelled incidents during his ado- lescent years that led to
his brothers becoming involved in violent encounters: `We had got into a
war, it's as simple as that. And it was quite a frightening experience for
me because of me still being fairly small.' At the time, Jessenka remembers
being `very, very scared to be honest'. He was scared for his own personal
safety and also for what might happen to his eldest brother in particular
should he take things `too far' in these fights. This said, Jessenka admired
the qualities displayed by his brother. Very, very frightened sometimes,
cos he's just a hard bloke. Sometimes I envy him because he is as rough as
he is. If I be honest, sometimes I wish I had that sort of air about me that
people sort of knew I was hard, that hard. That I don't have to pick up a
bottle or a knife. I'll punch the living daylights out of you with my bare
hands. And then on the other hand I think, he must be nervous of himself sometimes
knowing what he's prepared to do for his family.
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It
was the pervasive fear that Jessenka felt in his neighbourhood that eventually
led his brothers to decide that he should leave the area when he was 16 years
of age. The backdrop to this was a simmering feud with a group of older white
men that was escalating out of hand with regard to the violence used. His
elder brothers rightly feared for the safety of their younger, smaller, brother.
I saw this [white] man one particular day on the road. I was walking along
the road with my girlfriend and he just stared at me, and I was walking towards
him. I was just in shock because he went, `You're next nigger'. He was a big
man, big grown man, and I was just scared, I was really, really, scared. Really,
really, scared. I haven't been that scared before.... The truth is that I
was quite happy to get away. I was frightened to fucking death. Shaped by
what Jefferson (1996: 153) calls the `scarring psychological impact of racism'.
Jessenka's fearful experiences were truly embodied via his smallness in relation
to his peers, his elder brothers, and his father. Here, Jessenka was simultaneously
impressed, protected and frightened by muscular male bodies and a specific
form of masculine subjectivity and performance that enabled self-survival
plus an element of control in a threatening and hostile environment. BUILDING
MUSCLE AND BUILDING THE SELF On leaving school with minimal qualifications,
Jessenka moved away from his home and gained employment in the catering industry.
While enjoying a day off from work, he got into a brief conversation with
a `very big guy he's about six foot two, stepping with purpose'. Jessenka
found out he was going to a local gym and that he did bodybuilding with his
brother. That same evening, Jessenka visited a nightclub and met the same
man who was working as a `doorman'. Again, they struck up a conversa- tion,
and Jessenka decided to visit the gym the next day. When asked why he decided
to go to the gym, Jessenka commented, `I needed to be stronger for what I
was doing, being as small as I was, and just the way this guy was walking
and the way he approached me. The way he stood and the way he walked, he looked
good. And he was friendly and he was confident. I thought “Yeah”.'
Entering the gym the next day began the process of identity construction and
confirmation via physical activity that takes the initiate from the outside
to the inside of a sporting subculture. Thus, as a newcomer, Jessenka went
in `very quietly, trained very quietly. I was learning the ropes. And so I
trained with them'. After five months of regular training in the gym, Jessenka
recalls getting a `real taste' for bodybuilding when at the end of a session,
the two broth-
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ers,
both weighing approximately 17 stone, took off their tops and began flexing
their muscles and checking out their poses in the mirror. When they looked
across at Jessenka he thought `but I'm only little. And they made me take
my top off and flex, and I haven't ever done flexing up like that before.
So I had a little flex. I saw them look at each other, and one of them said, “You
got a good little shape there”. I said “Really?” That made
me smile and wanna flex some more. I got a little bite of it then'. Gradually,
Jessenka adopted the anthropometric bodybuilding lifestyle described by Brown
(1999), Fussell (1991) and Klein (1993). This involved moving from his usual
gym to a rougher hardcore bodybuilding gym where a number of former national
champions trained: `It was like coming out from Buckingham Palace and walking
straight out onto the streets of Harlem.' He recalls feeling intimidated and
inferior when he began training there: `I got a few looks and it intimidated
me. I remember taking my shirt off once there in the early days and putting
it back on again because I thought, “You just can't do this in here
you haven't got the size.”' Jessenka also recalls the strict pecking
order in the gym with people like himself at the bottom and Leroy, a former
national champion at the top. Leroy was head dog in there, very much so. You
could talk to him outside but the minute he passed that threshold to the gym
then don't speak to him. Don't look at him. Don't go near him. If he wants
that dumbbell that's near you – you're not using it.... I knew who
Leroy was the minute he arrived by the way that everybody in the place reacted.
They picked up their training by maybe thirty percent and that's no word of
a lie. It was a feel and you felt it lift the fucking place up. If you weren't
breaking your arse in there when Leroy arrived then get the fuck out.... I
was in there training one day and I could feel fucking electricity in that
place, bouncing off the walls.... Looked like he would rip your head off as
good as look at you. But he got the job done and I learned a lot of techniques
from him. Leroy was eventually to become Jessenka's mentor and acted as his
guide into the world of elite bodybuilding. For example, prior to taking control
of his diet so that Jessenka could make the necessary weight gains Leroy once
informed him, `Eat like a sparrow and you'll look like a sparrow.' Leroy also
acted as a motivator for Jessenka to overcome pain in his training routines.
Jessenka recalls the worst leg workout he ever had in his life prior to a
competition when he was hardly eating anything because he was trying to reduce
his body fat and show his muscles `cut' to maximum effect: We did supersets
of everything which were squats, lunges, bent-over dead lifts, and leg extensions
and all this stuff. As you can imagine this just went in a constant circle
for forty-five minutes. One time I fell down onto one
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knee
and said, `I don't want this anymore'. Leroy grabbed me by the scruff of my
clothes and hoisted me back into position with some quiet words in my ear,
not loudly: `Don't fuck with me now Jessenka.' I couldn't speak, couldn't
speak, I was using energy just to speak to him, I needed all the energy I'd
got. For a period of years, Jessenka disciplined his body in the pursuit
of muscle: `I trained, I ate, I trained, I ate and trained and trained, and
watched videos [about bodybuilding] and ate.' He attributes his rapid progress
in the quest for muscle and his willingness to endure the bodybuilding lifestyle
to the insecurities he experienced in his youth: All the aggression that
was going on back home that I couldn't get involved with because it was more
than I could handle. I knew if I went back home I've got to be able to take
a hit. I could give out a hit but I still wasn't strong enough, nobody was
going to fall down.... I had to vent a lot of anger, and I had a lot to vent
`cos I was the little one and couldn't really participate, couldn't do my
piece, and so because I couldn't do my piece for my brothers.... I had a lot
of anger then, and all that went into my training over the years. All this
training and sacrifice eventually led to Jessenka becoming a British champion.
On the morning before he won the title, he recalls how his body looked. As
I got up that morning (prior to the show) I was about to get showered, I looked
in the mirror and I have never looked so good in all my life. Yes, I had a
big smile just come across my face. I flexed my abdominals and my obliques
in the mirror and they all stood out like three or four fingers. All of my
abdominals are like chocolate biscuits and I just smiled at me in the mirror....
I felt confident, I looked fucking tremendous. That sounds really arrogant
doesn't it? But I did. I felt tremendous, I felt full, I'd got my carbing
right. Literally spot on the bone. I was ripped to the bone and hard and full....
I felt like I'd won it before going on stage. Winning a British title was
a peak moment in Jessenka's life and he remembers the emotions he felt on
stage: I felt my eyes almost burst out of my head and my mouth dropped open,
and all these really bright lights are in my face. And it's, `Got the fucker
it's mine.' Then they say it `And first place Mister Jessenka ... the new.'
I love that word `and the NEW (weight category) British Champion.' That was
just incredible and then they play the music again and the lights flash on
and off and it's just too much. It's just too much and they hand you the trophy
and put a medal around your neck.
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ATHLETIC
IDENTITY AND THE GLORIED SELF Winning a British Championship confirmed the
strong athletic identity that Jessenka had been developing in the previous
years as he devoted his life to training and gaining muscle mass. According
to Brewer et al. (1993), athletic identity is the degree to which an individual
identi- fies with the athletic role. The overwhelming strength of Jessenka's
identification with the bodybuilding role at this period in his life is evident
in the following comment. Life was bodybuilding. Jessenka was bodybuilding.
If you looked it up in the dictionary you'd see me and my name right in front
of it.... It was my whole identity because it has to be your life. It was
my whole life. I can't say any more on it than that. It was everything. Brewer
et al. (1993), suggest there are both positive and negative consequences associated
with having such a strong athletic identity, and that this identity can act
as either `Hercules' muscles' or an `Achilles' heel'. The potential benefits
include the development of a salient self- identity or sense of self, positive
effects on athletic performance, and a greater likelihood of long-term involvement
in exercise behaviours. Here, it is interesting to note that having won a
British Championship, Jessenka felt `fairly invincible' at this stage of his
career. Indeed, he began making plans to win the forthcoming World Championships
in his weight cate- gory because, in his words, he was now an invulnerable
`monster'. Thus, it could be argued that, quite literally, Jessenka's muscles
had acted in a Herculean fashion to assist him develop a positive sense of
self as opposed to the fragile self he experienced prior to his involvement
in bodybuilding. Indeed, with regard to the work of Giddens (1991), the development
of muscle can be seen as a defensive carapace or protective cocoon that provided
emotional support and protected Jessenka against previous feelings of inadequacy
and the ontological insecurities that permeated his childhood. Becoming a
British champion heralded the start of a new lifestyle for Jessenka as his
physical capital was exchanged for economic and social capital (Shilling,
1993). Along with a new car, came free entry into night- clubs, being recognized
by people at sports exhibitions, guest appearances at bodybuilding competitions,
and feature articles in bodybuilding maga- zines. He was now sponsored by
a leading nutritional supplements com- pany, who provided him with this expensive
but essential resource for building the body. Jessenka was also earning money
as a personal trainer and he was in demand as a result of his new found fame
and celebrity status. In this regard, Jessenka showed signs of developing
a gloried self, as identified by Adler and Adler (1989) in their study of
the changes in the
146
selves
of elite college basketball players in the United States when they entered
a world of celebrity and fame. According to Adler and Adler (1989), experiencing
glory is exciting for the athletes involved and creates or expands various
aspects of their sense of self. They point out that, characteristically, the
gloried self is a greedy, intoxicating and riveting self that seeks to ascend
in importance and to cast aside other self-dimensions as it grows. Thus, the
gloried self encourages role engulfment or identity foreclosure to occur.
Here, energy and time are withdrawn from a variety of social roles in order
to focus on the athlete role. This transformation involves various forms
of self- narrowing or self-erosion. As both Adler and Adler (1989) and Sparkes
(1998) point out, athletes can sacrifice both the multidimensionality of their
current selves and the potential breadth of their future selves as various
dimensions of their identities are either diminished, detached, or somehow
changed as a result of their increasing investment in a gloried self which
makes it difficult for the person to conceive of any other identity for themselves.
Accordingly, the influence of a gloried self in combination with a strong
athletic identity can be problematic. Various studies point to a number of
potential risks for individuals with a strong athletic identity that relate
to the difficulties they might encounter in sport career transitions such
as career ending injury. For example, Brewer et al. (1993) suggest that a
strong athletic identity is a risk factor for emotional disturbance on termination
of an athletic career because individuals with this kind of identity are less
likely to explore other career, education and lifestyle options due to their
intensive involvement and total commitment to a sport. In this regard, Brewer
et al., note that indi- viduals with this kind of identity exhibit greater
depression, anxiety and lower self-esteem when they experience injury than
those who do not have this kind of identity. In this sense, a strong athletic
identity can become an `Achilles' heel' in specific circumstances. THE FATEFUL
MOMENT According to Giddens (1991) fateful moments have major implications
not just for the circumstances of an individual's future, but also for self-
identity. Such moments, he argues, threaten the protective cocoon that defends
the individual's ontological security because the `business as usual' attitude
that is so important to that cocoon is broken through. In these moments, the
sense of invulnerability provided by the cocoon is undermined and the bodily
and psychological integrity of the individual is challenged. Jessenka's fateful
moment, when his plans for the future dissolved, came several years after
winning the British Championship
147
when,
between training personal clients, he took a short drive to the bank to deposit
some money. Sitting there for a few seconds I started hearing the screech
of a car. I looked in my rear view mirror and I could see a white vehicle
and I know it's gonna hit me.... I went violently forwards.... Hit my head
across the top of the car, smashed my ribs on the bottom end of the steering
wheel, and felt my shoulders cave in.... Next thing I've hit the car in front
of me which was at least a metre and a half away, and I felt a surge of pain
and anger all at once from my back mostly and my neck. The injury Jessenka
sustained in the car crash prematurely terminated his bodybuilding career.
Reflecting on the impact of this injury on his life, Jessenka states: `I had
just been rocked from my world. It was like one minute being in Buckingham
Palace and the next minute being a pauper. It just rocked my world completely....
In the bat of an eyelid that day you [the driver] decided you was late getting
to where you was going and you fucked up my life.' Unable to continue with
bodybuilding, Jessenka entered a period of depression and drug taking. First
of all, when you're E'ing it up, you're jumping around like a fucking lunatic
you're wasting muscle away. Secondly, maybe you might die from one of these
E's and just call it a day because my Championship was gone. It doesn't really
matter, it doesn't fucking matter. I had about six months where I just kind
of ripped the arse out of it. All of the time E'd up, drinking, smoking to
excess, coming back, crashing and just feeling sorry for myself ... My head
tells me, well if you keep going jumping around in these clubs on those drugs
you're gonna make it worse still.... I must have been putting an awful amount
of stress on my neck and my back but I just didn't care. My Championship had
gone. I didn't care, life didn't matter any more. I'd split up with my girl
... it didn't matter.... I was at the lowest that I'd ever been. Indeed, at
the time of interview, four years after this event, Jessenka acknowledges
that he has yet to find a replacement for the sense of self he lost as a hyper-muscular,
champion, bodybuilder: `Replaced it? I haven't if I be honest... Every so
often I try to believe, or I try to tell myself to believe that I've got over
it. But I'm really kidding myself. I don't know how long it's going to take.
I thought I would have got over it by now.' LOSING MUSCLE AND LOSING SELF
The injury sustained in the car accident means that Jessenka now experi- ences
intense pain on a daily basis. He continues to work as a personal trainer
but hides this pain from clients.
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It
feels like you're living two lives because in the job that I do nobody really
wants to know that you're constantly in pain and that you feel suicidal at
least once a week. I find that very difficult to say as you can imagine. I
get upset thinking about feeling suicidal, thinking that I haven't got the
bollocks to go on with life. Most evenings I'm in bed as early as possible,
sometimes I'm in bed at six o' clock. Often I try to finish work as early
as I can just so that I can lie down. Hiding this kind of pain is in direct
contrast to the sharing and celebra- tion of another form of pain that Jessenka
experienced when training in the gym as a bodybuilder where he adhered to
the old sporting adage of `No pain, no gain'. In this context, pain was defined
as not only necessary but at times pleasurable in its effects. It was welcomed
because it was seen as instrumental in the creation of an ever expanding and
idealized body. As Monaghan (2001b) points out, as part of the so-called `erotics
of the gym' non-injurious pain can be a sensuous experience that bodybuilders
learn to enjoy. As such, the learned capacity to convert self-induced, controllable
and non-injurious pain to pleasure contributes to the sustain- ability of
bodybuilding. In contrast, the injurious, solitary and unwelcome pain now
experi- enced by Jessenka causes what Leder (1990) calls spatiotemporal con-
striction. This exerts a phenomenologically `centripetal' force, gathering
time and space inwards to the centre and collapsing the surrounding universe.
Such pain is isolating and not easily shared. It is associated by Jessenka
with shrinking and being crushed rather than expanding his world. I take them
[painkillers] every day and you think this is just killing my stomach. I'm
in so much pain, my stomach hurts, you're bleeding from your bottom. It just
drags you down, drags you down. So then you stop taking the painkillers for
a while and the pain gets worse.... And that's why I say about once a week
you feel suicidal. You think, `This is shit'. It's like someone is pressing
you down with a great weight and they're just waiting to try and squash you
into the ground. According to Leder (1990) the disruption and constriction
of one's habitual world by injurious pain brings about a new relationship
to one's body. Here, the body or certain parts of it emerge as an alien presence
and is often experienced as something foreign to the self. For Jessenka, his
body as an alien presence was experienced in several ways. The first, and
most obvious, was the threat posed by this kind of pain to the disciplined
body-self he had developed. As Frank (1991) points out, given that this kind
of body-self defines itself primarily in actions of self-regimentation and
its most important action problems are those of control, it experiences
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its
gravest crisis in loss of control. The anxiety provoked by this loss of control
and the body now acting as an oppositional force that prevents him bodybuilding
is evident in the following comment by Jessenka. People wouldn't even dare
squat five plates each side as low as I was squatting them, they wouldn't
even look at it.... But my head tells me your body can do this ... and your
body will do it because your head tells it to. This is very difficult for
me because I was always able to tell my body to do something and it would
do it.... Now I do two little biscuits on the bloody leg press and my back
says `Fuck you head, I'm not doing it. I just can't do this.' The demise of
the disciplined body poses a major threat to Jessenka's core sense of self
that is associated with a hyper-muscular body. Unable to train intensively
with weights any more, Jessenka's sense of self as a `mirroring body' (Frank,
1991) is amplified as his changing shape and size is subject to his own critical
gaze and the gaze of others. I was really depressed one morning. I got up,
looked in the mirror and my legs were like sticks. Two people had recently
told me `Oh Jessenka haven't your legs disappeared'. And that was like such
a blow to me because I was really well known for having great legs. I was
so ashamed. For Giddens (1991) feelings of shame have a direct bearing on
self- identity and the experience of shame often focuses on the body as the
`vis- ible' aspect of self. Indeed, over time, as the loss of muscle mass
and definition has become more evident, Jessenka appears to have grown increasingly
ashamed of his body's aesthetic appeal. This might be because the body he
is on the verge of becoming is a reminder of a past body that was deemed by
him and others to be inadequate and inferior. Jessenka is fearful of returning
to this body that was itself fearful. Indeed, his sporadic attempts to train
again with weights are fuelled by this fear of losing muscle and the desired
self that goes with this. As he states: `I just feel like I'm fucking fading
away, just fading away.' Given that muscularity is closely associated with
masculinity any loss of muscle would appear to have ramifications for the
masculine self. As Murphy (1990: 94) notes, `For the male, the weakening and
atrophy of the body threaten all the cultural values of masculinity: strength,
activeness, speed, virility, stamina and fortitude.' Thus, Jessenka's hyper-muscular
and masculine sense of self, a self he has laboured to construct is, quite
literally, disappearing in front of his eyes. Having transformed himself over
a number of years from a frail and small body into a `short monster' his body
is now metamorphosing back to whence it came. In this process, Jessenka's
body is once again becoming a source of embarrassment to him
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and
a reminder of inadequacies. Having lost muscular mass he no longer looks at
himself in the mirror unless he is fully dressed, and he hides behind cars
when he sees old bodybuilding friends coming his way. At times, however, Jessenka
cannot hide his body from view and is forced to acknowledge the reactions
of others. My friend's wife proceeded to tell me how skinny I looked. That
was very difficult for me, but I have to tell myself that I was always a very
small person. It's like someone who was this thin becoming very, very fat
and then becoming very thin again. It's difficult looking at this body in
the mirror, it's very difficult. You get up and look in the mirror and you
think “Yuck!”... People turn up in the funniest of places and
catch you by surprise. I often move house because I've caught up with people.
People have turned up in supermarkets and stared at me. Sometimes they don't
want to say it but they'll do this (makes shocked face looking someone up
and down) almost in shock. I see the look on their face and I feel a sadness
and it's almost as if to say, `Please don't ask.' And I just feel as though
I need to be somewhere else. Other key events heightened Jessenka's dissatisfaction
with his body and diminishing masculine sense of self. One such occasion was
when he made a trip abroad to visit a bodybuilding friend with a view to making
a guest appearance at his gym. The trip was a disaster and Jessenka returned
home feeling humiliated and undeserving of his British Championship title.
He was expecting me coming to his country, big bodybuilder and everything.
But I wasn't this short monster that he'd expected.... He'd shown the [old]
photos and videos of me to them.... I'd let everybody down. They were expecting
an elephant and I brought them a mouse. That was very hard to take because
I could see the disappointment in him.... I didn't look nothing like my former
self and I even felt bad because there's mirrors all over the damn place.
And I wore my England shirt because it is my England shirt and it's the shirt
I'm most proud of. But, it was very difficult wearing it because I wasn't
in the condition to deserve to wear an England shirt.... But I didn't know
which was the worst of two evils, do I not wear it at all? I came to him with
nothing and the least I can do is wear my fucking England shirt. But I didn't
feel right wearing it. Besides not feeling right about wearing his England
shirt, Jessenka does not `feel right' in the body he currently inhabits. Just
like he let his friend down with his smaller body, so Jessenka feels his body
has let him down. Like many other male athletes who have experienced a serious
injury there is a sense of bodily betrayal and heightened feelings of corporeal
alienation (Sparkes, 1996; 2003b; Young et al., 1994).
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As
you get up in the morning and you wash your face and you wash your body, you
feel your body and it doesn't feel like it's my body. You know, someone borrowed
mine and they gave me this, and I don't want this one, I want mine back. It's
like you've driven round in a Rolls Royce for twenty years and then someone
takes it away and gives you a Mini. This isn't fair, this isn't right, this
isn't mine. Where's mine? The losses and anxieties associated with losing
muscle are intimately connected to racial dimensions within Jessenka's life
story. This issue will now be explored. LOSING MUSCLE AND BECOMING `BLACK
AGAIN' According to Sewell (1997) issues of race, while vitally important
in contemporary life and politics, are not separate from other factors (class,
gender, sexuality, disability) nor is it always the most important character-
istic in human experience and action: `Race may be more or less impor- tant
to the same person at different times in different contexts' (1997: xiii).
For Jessenka, as for many other black athletes, success in sport takes on
specifically racial and ethnic dimensions at particular times (Carrington,
2000; 2002; Majors, 1990). Being a black British champion was some- thing
he was immensely proud of and he gained a lot of attention once in this position:
`I'm here and I'm British champion. I'm from England, and I've got an English
accent. Just to speak in an English accent to foreign people with a black
face and my look, it was just different so I caused a lot of attention.' Furthermore,
despite being aware of the racism that pervades British society, Jessenka
felt his success in bodybuilding could help break down racial barriers and
allow for greater tolerance and accept- ance of ethnic minorities. Indeed,
he acknowledged how issues of race and ethnicity often `disappeared' or were
blurred when he was a British champion. Being black and in Britain is very
difficult. Someone said the other day, `Because a dog is born in a stable
that doesn't make it a horse.' And that really opened my eyes to what I already
knew was true. I mean, if you look at any black people in Britain in sport
they're known and respected but only because they represent their country.
We are then ... classed as British and they are proud of us, we are British.
Being black doesn't occur then, but in the other ninety-nine percent of your
life you are a black person and you're in Britain, and you shouldn't be here.
So to become British Champion, to be black, British and proud and representing
my country gave me belonging. Jamaicans still class you as British, British
class you as West Indian or Afro- Caribbean as they like to call it these
days, but nobody wants to accept you.
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It's
the same as mixed race children, it's like being in the middle and nobody
wants to accept you on that side or on the other.... So to be British champion,
the belonging, the pride, the pride of competing for my country, representing
your country all over the world was great. Thus, for Jessenka, being a British
champion, resolved a number of contradictions and tensions he felt regarding
his ethnic identity by fore- grounding his national identity through success
in bodybuilding. By doing so, he gained a sense of belonging that had been
denied to him previously. However, as Carrington (2000) notes, gaining acceptance
for the black athlete is normally conditional on the athlete renouncing claims
to their own cultural history and dissolving themselves within the notion
of nationhood and `Britishness'. Jessenka appears to have been willing to
adopt such a position. As a consequence, he remains resentful of the woman
who caused his injury because he believes this act robbed him of his newly
gained national identity, his Britishness, and accentuated his race and ethnicity
once again. In short, Jessenka feels he is no longer regarded as British but
is now just another young black man on the streets having to deal with the
racist stereotypes imposed on him. It goes all the way back to what I said
at the beginning about being black and being British and belonging. She's
taken away my belonging and made life difficult for me on so many other fronts
to be accepted. If Linford Christie walked into a sports shop everybody knows
who he is. Everybody is happy to see him in their shop and he's British and
he's black. Now you walk into a shop and the assistant comes and looks at
something beside you to see if you're gonna nick something. You see what
I'm saying? There's that anger. Yes, there's the anger of me being in constant
pain but there's also the anger of her taking away my British passport, she
put me back floating in the river of not belonging to either side. The comments
made by Jessenka are testimony to the manner in which the social meaning of
muscle and masculinity are infused by issues relating to race, ethnicity,
social class and national identity. Here, it is interesting to note how his
experiences parallel those of other black athletes. For exam- ple, Harrison
et al. (2002) illustrate how African American athletes compet- ing in intercollegiate
sport are shielded from racism and discrimination so that their athletic identity
comes to the fore and the importance of their racial identity decreases and
slips into the background. Likewise, in his analysis of the racial signifiers
at work in the media portrayal of Michael Jordan, the basketball player, Andrews
(1996: 142) notes how early on in his extremely successful career the popular
media constructed him as a `racially neutered identity'. As long as Jordan
con- formed to the role of the wholesome, non-threatening, hard-bodied hero,
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he was
deified for being one of `America's boys': `However, once his behaviour, especially
off the court, was deemed to be transgressing the boundaries of what was considered
acceptable for the prototypical All-American male, the spectre of racial
Otherness reared its demonized head' (1996: 142). With regard to the case
of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, Jackson (1998) uses the term `twist of race'
to characterize the mediated floating signifiers which served to either demarcate
or displace Johnson's racial identity within particular contexts during his
life in Canada. Thus, prior to his world-class performances and subsequent
to the national shame of the steroid scandal at the Seoul Olympics, Johnson
was represented by the media through signifiers that defined him as the
`racial other'. For example, in these periods he was defined as `Jamaican-Canadian'.
In contrast, during his reign as world champion there was a temporary displacement
of his racial identity and Johnson was simply referred to as `Canadian'.
Finally, within a British sporting context, Mercer (1994) notes the following:
On the front page headlines black males become highly visible as a threat
to white society, as muggers, rapists, terrorists and guerrillas: their bodies
become the image of a savage and unstoppable capacity for destruction and
violence. But turn to the back pages, the sports pages, and the black man's
body is heroized and lionized; any hint of antagonism is contained by the
paternalistic infantilization of Frank Bruno and Daley Thompson to the status
of national mascots and adopted pets – they're not Other, they're OK
because they're our boys. (Mercer, 1994: 179) Similarly, as a champion bodybuilder
Jessenka's racial identity was effectively displaced and neutered. He was
not Other. In contrast, follow- ing his injury, the loss of his athletic identity,
and the loss of a champion status and hyper-muscular body, Jessenka experiences
the `twist of race' that brings into sharp relief his racial identity. This
reminds him that in the eyes of many he is the Other once again. REFLECTIONS
Multiple interpretations can be made of Jessenka's life story as it has been
presented. The following reflections are offered with a view to generating
discussion rather than providing closure. Even though we have no desire to
pathologize his individual commitment to bodybuilding by explaining this activity
in terms of various inadequacies, it remains that one interpretation might
be that Jessenka's story provides a penetrating treatise on the hidden anxiety
that punctures the core of conventional masculinity and discloses the multiple
dimensions of vulnerability experienced by some men. In this
154
regard,
it might be argued that the quest for hyper-muscularity he embarked on when
he was 16 years of age was a case of, quite literally, building the muscles
of Hercules and a strong athletic identity. This was necessary to protect
a fragile sense of self that was developed as a small, black, adoles- cent
male in relation to his powerful father and brothers in a climate of racial
discrimination and violence, and in a context where Jessenka was regularly
bullied at a school. As his comments reveal, in a sense this strategy worked,
his original `damaged' sense of self and low self-esteem were repaired and
he felt (for a while at least) `fairly invincible'. From this perspective,
it could be argued that as the body was `muscled up' so a different self was
constructed in the process. That is, Jessenka's story is one of positive self-change
via bodily transformation. In this regard, Jessenka is similar to the men
focused on by Wesely (2001), whose motivations to begin bodybuilding were
rooted in dominant social constructions of gender. According to Wesely, they
began body- building because `as children they were sickly, teased by peers,
or felt otherwise insecure and powerless; what they saw or imagined on the
muscled male body conjured feelings of being powerful' (2001: 170). Of course,
as Wesely is quick to point out, this is not to suggest that all male bodybuilders
were sickly as children, nor is it to say that all weak boys become bodybuilders.
However, within her study, `the more power- less a boy or adolescent felt,
the more appealing the muscular body became as he matured' (2001: 170). Importantly,
participating in bodybuilding made these men feel empowered because they saw
the muscular body as a signifier of masculine power and a repudiation of feminine
weakness. The promise of self-transformation that the muscled body can bring,
and which appealed to Jessenka, is reflected in numerous advertisements in
bodybuilding magazines. As part of their analysis of such advertise- ments,
White and Gillett (1994) suggest that in constructing muscular bodies, men
seek to pursue and construct what they perceive to be their true or `real'
selves. This true self, a masculine self, possessing power and self-confidence,
is one that is encased in a hard and defined muscular physique. What is required,
the advertisements suggest, is the transforma- tion or metamorphosis from
the non-muscular, passive, and weak self via bodybuilding into a muscular
hyper-masculine body that represents the new powerful self. The construction
of muscles and a muscular physique, through the consumption of bodybuilding
commodities and involvement in disciplinary regimes (diet and bodywork), holds
the promise that the individual will be freed from his less powerful self.
The building of a muscular exterior yields a different, better person. (White
and Gillett, 1994: 28–29)
155
In
contrast, another interpretation is that despite building up a muscu- lar
body, Jessenka's core sense of self did not change. That is, the hard muscular
exterior he developed encased a fragile and vulnerable self that was continuous
with his former self. From this perspective, while Jessenka might believe
that by building muscle he could transcend his former self, this is evidently
not true because this self remains, lying dormant within his hyper-muscular
frame. As the muscles disappear so does the illusion of the powerful, transformed,
new self, as the fragile, and in many ways the feared self, announces itself
one again. Reflecting on his own personal experiences of becoming a bodybuilder,
Fussell (1991) acknowledges the illusion of the transformed self that hyper-muscularity
can create. But this shell that I created wasn't just meant to keep people
at bay. After all, a can of Mace can do that. No, this carapace was laboriously
constructed to keep things inside too. The physical palisades and escarpments
of my own body served as a rocky boundary that permitted no passage, no hint
of a deeper self – a self I couldn't bear.... As long as I hated myself,
I still believed that I mattered. My deepest fear was that I didn't matter.
All my life, I'd felt like I was treading water in a bottomless sea.... I
needed whatever buoy or marker or myth I could find to keep me from feeling
meaningless in the face of infinity.... But behind that huge frame and those
muscular sets, I felt shut up in a kind of claustrophobic panic. Not flexing
but drowning.... I was as twisted, warped, and stilted as a bonsai tree. Another
of life's miniatures. (Fussell, 1991: 248–50) Being one of `life miniatures'
with regard to ideals of masculinity raises a number of identity dilemmas
that foreground the issue of gender. However, as Jessenka's comments reveal,
his trajectory into the world of hyper-muscularity is also shaped by his social
class position. As Shilling (1993), drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu,
points out, the body bears the indisputable imprint of an individual's social
class. Thus, work- ing class individuals via their habitus, tend to develop
an instrumental relationship to their body that becomes a means to an end.
Accordingly, it might be argued that, given his lack of ability in conventional
sports, Jessenka's `choice' of bodybuilding as a means to the end of bolstering
his insecure sense of self is classed as well as gendered. Jessenka's social
class position is also connected to issues of race and ethnicity in terms
of the ways in which as a black, working-class male he comes to understand
the multiple meanings of muscle and physical size in relation to his own body
and the bodies of others within a racist society that has historically objectified,
sensualized, and sexualized the black
156
body.
Such `bodies' have also encountered a limited structure of opportu- nity in
terms of access to education, employment, and institutional power. Against
this backdrop, Majors (1990) suggests, the dominant goals of hegemonic masculinity
have been sold to black males but access to the legitimate means to achieve
these goals has largely been denied. As a con- sequence, many black males
seek to prove their manliness to themselves and others via sporting activities.
Messner (1992) also notes the role of sport in allowing subaltern groups to
realize a masculine identity. For him, `[s]ubordinated groups of men often
use sport to resist racist, colonial, and class domination, and their resistance
most often took the form of a claim to “manhood”' (1992: 19).
Likewise, Carrington (2002: 285) suggests: `Sport provides an arena whereby
black men can lay claim to a masculine identity as a means of restoring a
unified racial identity, freed, if only momentarily, from the emasculating
discourses imposed by the ideologies and practices of white racism.' In this
sense, Jessenka's choice of bodybuilding and his use of this sport to develop
one of the defining features of masculinity (muscularity) is understandable.
Jessenka's commitment to bodybuilding can also be seen, therefore, as an attempt
to recuperate some degree of power or active influence over the objective
conditions of powerlessness created by institutionalized and individual racism.
As Messner (1992: 13) argues, subaltern groups are able to `use sport as a
means to resist (at least symbolically) the domi- nation imposed upon them.
Sport must thus be viewed as an institution though which domination is not
only imposed, but also contested; an insti- tution within which power is constantly
at play'. Thus, becoming and being a successful bodybuilder, and developing
an empowered sense of self can be interpreted as an act of resistance by Jessenka.
Like the black, male cricketers described by Carrington (2002: 285), the sport
of body- building provides for Jessenka, `a modality though which black cultural
resistance to racism can be achieved'. Clearly, the ways in which gender,
social class, and ethnicity and race interact to shape the story told, and
lived, by Jessenka are complex and multidimensional. How these operate to
construct a strong athletic identity developed in relation to the production
of a hyper-muscular body is equally complex. In combination, however, it
would seem that in Jessenka's case these have acted as an Achilles' heel.
This is particularly so regarding his reactions to a turning point moment
in his life that has consequences for his long-term personal development.
Like other elite athletes facing premature career termination due to injury
or illness, Jessenka encounters problems regarding the availability of alternative
narratives within specific subcultures on which to build alternative iden-
157
tities
and notions of self that recognize and acknowledge, among other things, issues
of vulnerability and fragility. As the comments earlier suggest, for Jessenka,
the issue of access to a variety of narratives and counter narratives is of
no small importance. At the moment he is struggling to envisage a suitable
replacement for the hyper-muscular, disciplined, body-self he had developed
through body- building. Lacking narrative resources, that might, for example,
assist him to reject or reformulate conventional versions of masculinity,
Jessenka struggles to use the disruption that has occurred in his life as
a platform from which to reconstruct a positive sense of self in relation
to the body he currently inhabits. The unfolding story, the aftermath of the
muscled self, therefore, remains problematic. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors
would like to thank the following for their critical but supportive comments
on earlier drafts of this paper: Mark Anderson, Maria Antoniou, Murray Drummond,
David Jackson, Margaretta Jolly, Lee Monaghan, David Morgan and Brett Smith.
NOTES
1 Monaghan (2001a) has
questioned the usefulness of `bodybuilder' and `bodybuilding' as descriptive
labels because these terms can have different meanings for those who do and
do not train with weights. That is, it is a heterogeneous category. He notes
various orientations to lifting weights in order to distinguish between weight-lifting,
weight-training, and bodybuilding. Weight-lifting (comprising Olympic Weight-Lifting
and Power-Lifting) is aimed at lifting the maximum weight (bodily performance).
Weight-trainers are typically fitness or sports orientated and possess a
functionalist attitude towards the body. Bodybuilders have as their goal the
improvement of physical appearance (bodily display), as defined by the aesthetic
criteria operating within a specific subculture.
2 As Monaghan (2001a) points
out, conceptions of physical perfection within the differentiated subculture
of bodybuilding are spatially and temporally contingent, varying from one
individual to the next and also for the same individual during the course
of their bodybuilding career. Furthermore, this lifestyle, particularly in
its `hard core' manifestations, can carry with it a number of health risks
that range from major surgery to repair injuries caused in training, degenerative
arthritis, cirrhosis of the liver, hypertensions, heart disease, and a host
of other problems associated with long-term drug use. For details, see Fussell
(1991), Hotten, J. (2004), Klein (1993; 1995) and Monaghan (2001a).
3 For further details of
this project see Smith and Sparkes, 2002; 2004; 2005; Sparkes, 1996; 1998; 2003a; 2003b; 2004; Sparkes and Silvennoinen, 1999; Sparkes and Smith, 2002; 2003; in press.
158
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NOTES
ON CONTRIBUTORS JOANNE BATEY is Programme Leader for Combined Honours Sport
Studies in the School of Social Sciences, University College Winchester. Her
research interests include the exercise experience of women recre- ational
runners with regard to issues of upholding a valued sense of self, and how
athletes experience turning point moments in their lives. DAVID BROWN is with
the Qualitative Research Unit, School Sport and Health Sciences, University
of Exeter. His current research interests include the exploration of changing
body–self–society relationships in and through the practice
of sport and physical culture. ANDREW C. SPARKES is Director of the Qualitative
Research Unit, School Sport and Health Sciences, University of Exeter. His
research interests are eclectic and include: performing bodies, identities
and selves; interrupted body projects and the narrative (re)construction of
self; sporting auto/biographies; and the lives of marginalized individuals
and groups.