Little Big Men: Bodybuilding Subculture and Gender Construction (Suny Series on Sport, Culture, and Social Relations) - Softcover

Klein, Alan M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791415600 ISBN 13: 9780791415603

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1993

Synopsis

Little Big Men is a study of competitive bodybuilders on the West Coast that examines the subculture from the perspective of bodybuilders’ everyday activities. It offers fascinating descriptions and insightful analogies of an important and understudied subculture that has risen to widespread popularity in today’s mass culture.

Alan Klein conducted his field study of bodybuilding in some of the world’s best-known gyms. In studying the social and political relations of bodybuilding competitors, Klein explores not only gym dynamics but also the internal and external pressures bodybuilders face. Central to his examination is the critique of masculinity. Through his study of “hustling” among bodybuilders, Klein is able to construct a social-psychological male configuration that includes narcissism, homophobia, hypermasculinity, and fascism. Because they exist as exaggerations, these bodybuilder traits come to represent one end of the continuum of modern masculinity, what Klein terms comic-book masculinity. This study is a rare foray into the critique of contemporary American macho.

About this title

About the Author:

Alan M. Klein is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Northeastern University. He is the author of Sugarball: The American Game, The Dominican Dream.

From Publishers Weekly:

Sociologist/anthropologist Klein ( Sugarball: The American Game, The Dominican Dream ) spent seven years hanging out at four elite West Coast bodybuilding gyms, and his observations of this strange, hyper-masculine subculture, though sometimes shackled by academic jargon, are telling. He tracks bodybuilding's roots in Charles Atlas ads and the film Pumping Iron , then offers a taxonomy of gym characters, from onlookers to professional bodybuilders. He savvily analyzes "the political economy of bodybuilding," describing how a few entrepreneurs and promoters control the sport, and how competitors find jobs--as bouncers, bodyguards and the like--at which they can put their muscle to use. Klein finds much irony in the view that one's body is entirely in one's control, since genetics affect potential, and steroids destroy more than they add. Moreover, though bodybuilding is enshrined in the minds of its practitioners as heterosexual, large numbers of competitors survive by homosexual hustling. In contrast to male bodybuilders, female ones see the sport more as a means than as an end in itself; and many male bodybuilders, Klein suggests, find support for misogyny and homophobia in their barbell world.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0791415600
• ISBN 13: 9780791415603
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 340