Flexing Femininity: Female body-builders refiguring 'the body'

Abstract

This paper considers the built bodies of female body-builders and their training environments. Empirical findings suggest that place of training provides a material and discursive environment that reworks bodies in the feminine/masculine binary. However, the female body-builder works her body within this binary as well as beyond the acceptable feminine/masculine dualism. Three possible, non-exclusive, readings of female body-builders are offered. I argue that the specific materiality of female muscled (built) bodies provides the ground for contestation of the feminine/masculine binary as well as other binaries such as nature/culture, body/mind and sex/gender, thereby opening up new spaces to reconceptualise sexed bodies in geography. The ontological and socio-political status of female body-builders demands a refiguring of sexual difference.