 |
 |
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|||
|
||||||
|
Women
of Steel reviewed by |
 |
This is not a book of photographs. It is not a training manual for women. I'll give you a hint: one of the chapters is "Profitable Physiques, Precarious Hegemonies: The Maintenance of the Feminine Apologetic". Give up? Women of Steel is an academic study of female bodybuilding. The author, Maria R. Lowe, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Southwestern University in Texas whose research focuses "on women's experiences in sports as well as on the construction of gender in nontraditional arenas." She set out to research the question, "How does the sport of female bodybuilding deal with the strong and muscular image of female bodybuilders?" To conduct this research, Lowe conducted in-depth interviews with thirty seven people involved in female bodybuilding: national-level and professional competitors, judges and officials, and journalists. She also attended five professional and amateur female bodybuilding shows. This, of course, is in addition to copious amounts of research (this is a book in which I actually looked at the bibliography to get a list of future reading).
What did she find? Since the identities of the interview subjects are concealed, frank discussions of the issues facing women's bodybuilding without the need to preserve the Weider party line. These issues are the same ones that have faced women's bodybuilding all along:
The book does have two weaknesses. The first is that it does not delve deeper into the issue of steroids in the sport. How do the competitors feel about having to use steroids to reach the top? Is the motivation to be as big as they can be or to do what it takes to reach the top? How do they feel about drug testing? Steroids are touched on here and there but not with any great depth. The second weakness is that it seems that much of the research was done in 1991 and 1992. If this was a book about men's bodybuilding, this would not present a problem. However, women's professional bodybuilding has been all but killed off by fitness competitions in just the past few years. The early nineties were still early in the fitness phenomenon but, to Lowe's credit, she does predict that "Female bodybuilders will more than likely be left to fight among themselves for increasingly smaller amounts of money and publicity," as a result of fitness competitions.
It's refreshing to get an outsider's view of women's bodybuilding. Someone who has nothing to fear from the Weiders. Someone without an axe to grind because of a grudge against those in the industry. Sometimes the reading is a bit dry (it is an academic research project, after all) but it is an interesting read, nonetheless.
|
|
| © 1990 - 2006 WeightsNet | |