Gender and Fitness in the Global Blogosphere

Abstract

As we have seen, the basic system on which the contemporary fitness culture is founded is the bodybuilding culture (Denham, 2008; Klein, 1993). But the entire culture has changed, and new ways of approaching the field of bodybuilding and fitness have emerged. There is, for example, less emphasis on the large, muscular body and more on the well-developed, tight, perfectly defined, and moderately muscular body (Coad, 2008; Nixon, 1996). In today’s gym culture, the hard, beautiful body is idolized as both an aesthetic and a sexual object. The body that is sculptured to perfection is partly revered because it symbolizes success and hard work and partly because it awakens desire and has become a beauty ideal (Sassatelli, 2011). It is at once an extremely gender-neutral creation and a sexualized and gender-definite one (Johansson, 2003).