body, culture and masculinity: a sociological study on the preservation of body building as a masculine field

Body building is both a branch of sports and a social field that reinforces gender inequalities. muscled body is accepted as ideal body and related to hegemonic masculinity in most societies. therefore body building is an important field in respect of the construction and reconstruction of masculine identity. drawing upon the data of a field study, this paper aims to reveal the strategies that body building men use to constitute and preserve this field as a masculine one, and to examine this phenomenon with sociology of gender perspective. the field research, using qualitative method and phenomenological design, was conducted in five different cities in turkey in 2019. the data was gathered by semi structured interviews from 18 male body builders, who either joined or about to join a body building competition. the interviews were transcribed, descriptively and systematically analyzed and interpreted. the findings show that body building men use biological and cultural strategies to preserve body building as a masculine field. in the frame of the biological preservation strategies, men -due to their assumed testosterone hormone- regard themselves as the natural masters of body building and exclude women from the field. cultural preservation strategies are related to gender roles and symbols. these include two claims, that women lack masculinity-related qualifications such as discipline, hard work, determination and passion, which are necessary for body building, and that women who are successful in body building lose their femininity and end up with a body that men don’t find attractive. findings also show that participators regard body building women as deviant individuals, although they respect their desire to reach a male goal. the intention to exclude women from body building, through either biological qualities of women body or gender stereotypes shows that body building sport is a field that preserves and reproduces the cultural capital of hegemonic masculinity.