"Deep Inside Every Man Desires the V-body. For the Looks": Formations of Masculinities in Bodybuilding

The quotation above presents a belief that is widely adopted among male bodybuilders. They claim that there is no man on earth, who has not desired the V-body at least once in his life. Bodybuilding was promoted already in the 1920's to "give back the dissipated manhood". ln May 1998 a gym in Helsinki asks: "Are you going to be a mouse or a MAN this summer?" ln the persuasive rhetoric of bodybuilding the ripped and hard body has always been naturalized to represent the highest form of masculinity. In atavistic movements of masculinity it has been essential feature of an ideal type of man (Klein 1993, 4-5). Therefore bodybuilding can be interpreted to reassert the persistence of the traditional mode of hefemonic masculinity. But, in the age of steroids, and plastic surgery the centricity of looking like a super-caveman risks bodybuilding to be categorized as overtly masculine activity