Grotesque or Beautiful?

For this blog I wanted to discuss the issue of how women body builders are viewed in society. Before I do, I wanted to bring up the a few different terms that are typically associated with female sex. The female sex is the biological make up of the female consisting of X-X chromosomes instead of the X-Y chromosome makeup of a male. Additionally, the gender role; "a set of behaviors, attitudes, and conditions" that typically exist among identifiable groups (Clatterbaugh, 1997) that is associated with the female sex has a passive, soft, small, submissive, and emotional connotation associated with it. With that being said, the sport of body building is seen in more of a masculine light, portraying stereotypes of masculinity such as big, dominant, muscular, and aggressive. The concept of body building has been disrupted by the involvement of women. Women body builders work to achieve the same body fitness as their male counterparts with the huge highly developed muscles and exceptional strength. While women body builders may see themselves as masters of their sport, the perception of women body builders have been expressed in terms of "un-attractive", "grotesque", "masculine", and "unacceptable" in some cases. The article "Firm but Shapely, Fit but Sexy, Strong but Thin: The Postmodern Aerobicizing Female Bodies" (Markula) describes how the female body is viewed in society and how those societal views can be seen as oppressive. In many cases women are expected to be tight, thin, slim and fit, anything else seems to disrupt or offend this notion of femininity. Markula also goes into detail about how women body builders not only disrupt the social norms of the female body type, but that they create a new body type for women. A classmate and group member of mine elaborated a little more on this issue and mentioned that women body builders see themselves a feminine and do not believe that their physique is offensive, but healthy and beautiful. Many women body builders encompass the same femininity as non-body building women, although they possess a more masculine looking body type. However, there are extreme cases in which body building for male and females, but especially for females, becomes a health risk and may interfere with the natural hormonal process of the female body. This side of body building in general concerns me. I personally find that huge and highly developed muscles seen in bodybuilding either male or female is in many cases disturbing, however I can also see how this particular form of sport represents the beauty of the human body. For anyone to be able to develop their muscles to the point where every muscle fiber of most if not all muscles are noticeable is amazing to me. So from this point I just leave this issue as "to each it's own" :-)

I found this topic to be very interesting and it opened my eyes more to the fact that women are of ALL shapes and sizes whether they are natural or developed, and they should not be made to feel like they are not accepted because of their size. Because of this fact, women should embrace the beauty of their bodies and not try and model their bodies to that of the stereotypical images portrayed in our society. I believe that a healthy body is more important that the actual body size, and if more women just focus on being healthy, and eating and exercising with their health in mind, they can learn to accept their bodies regardless of what is portrayed in the media.