Short abstract:

This paper examines chemical imaginaries and practices in gyms in Medellin, Colombia. It considers international flows of chemical materials and discourses, and ways that "gym chemistry" entwine with local architectural practices essential to self-authorship and agency, as well as gender.

Long abstract:

Whilst not always concerned with “health”, biomedicine and pharmacology have long been central to the practices and cultures of “fitness”. Today, non-medical gym professionals and users increasingly understand “body projects” (Giddens 1991) in terms of chemicals (both endogamous and exogamous, legal and illegal, traditional and high-tech). In my fieldsites in Medellin, Colombia, my interlocutors inject testosterone and human growth hormone and drink potions of protein, creatine, and vitamins to enhance muscle mass; they consume caffeine and amino acids to stimulate increased workload; they talk of “endorphin highs'' and supplement this with the buzz of marijuana.

Drawing on fifteen months of ethnographic research, this paper traces and discusses international flows of chemical materials and discourse. I argue dietary supplements and hormone therapies legitimize fitness as “scientific”, position the gym as a “lab”, and allow practitioners to embody the modernity, rationality, and productivity they associate positively with the Global North (and against decadent Latin-ness). I then move between material scales, examining how fitness entwines with local architectural practices of “autoconstruction” (building one’s own home). These are not just rhetorical metaphors; they reflect and prompt material practices. My interlocutors engage with protein and creatine as they do bricks and mortar, creating selves, bodies, and homes and enunciating agency. I will close with some remarks on the radical potential of the “gym chemist” as postmodern self-experimenter/hacker (/junkie, after Preciado (2008)), and find that fitness is gender affirming practice--whilst typically one used to emphasize genders assigned at birth.