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Paper short abstract:

Bodybuilders create monstrous bodies, but lose control of their creations, and the monster ultimately creates them. This paper describes bodybuilding's monsters as responses to, and agents of, cultural change in the face of two crises: the 'obesity epidemic', and the 'crisis in masculinity'.

Paper long abstract:

Bodybuilders are termed such because of their pursuit of bodily change, and particularly their pursuit of the extremes of bodily composition: the highest level of muscularity combined with the lowest level of fat. To be called a 'monster' is the ultimate compliment in contemporary bodybuilding. But bodybuilding has not always been monstrous. Indeed, bodybuilding began as the search for human bodily perfection. Bodybuilding's 'monsters' first came about in the 1990s, in response to, and as agents of, change with regards bodily ideals and technologies, as well as notions of monstrosity. The shift in bodybuilding from perfectibility to abject freakishness sheds light on several contemporary crises: the 'obesity epidemic' and the 'crisis of masculinity'. This paper focusses on three freaks of bodybuilding who have self-identified as 'monsters': Rich Piana, Dave Crosland and Gregg Valentino. While these individuals push the limits of the human body in terms of muscularity, their monstrosity runs much deeper than this, and indeed they are ostracised, and 'enfreaked', by the bodybuilding community; they are the freaks' freaks. As some of the few high-profile bodybuilders to discuss suffering from muscle dysmorphia, or 'bigorexia', they illustrate how monstrosity can be both a blessing and a curse. They point to the limitless nature of extremes, and how the quest for monstrosity can take on a life of its own. Bodybuilding provides a concrete example of how humans and monsters are mutually constitutive: humans design and create the monsters of bodybuilding, but the monsters they create ultimately wind up creating them.