Paper short abstract:

This study of the internet celebrity and known steroid user Zyzz and his international following suggests a local moral world where performance and image enhancing drug (PIED) use is normal and not considered a moral issue. The presentation focusses on how gender-making practices inform PIED use.

Paper long abstract:

The Australian Crime Commission report that the detection of performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) by the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service has seen a five-fold increase since 2009. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some Australian needle exchange services are now servicing more PIED users than users of any other drug. The increasing "steroid problem" has been largely approached from a performance perspective, but now that young men aiming for image enhancement make up the vast majority of steroid users this performance framework is less appropriate. PIED use has also been approached from an illicit drug framework which may not be appropriate given that my multi-sited online ethnographic research suggests that PIED users do not see themselves as drug users, but instead consider PIED use part of a healthy lifestyle. The evidence I have collected suggests that PIED users operate in a local moral world where PIED use has been normalised, and in fact may not consider PIED use as a moral issue. This presentation explores how the gender-making practices of bodybuilders who are fans of Zyzz (Aziz Shavershian, a known PIED user) inform and reflect on-the-ground shifts in morality.