Abstract
This article presents an ethnographic critique of the corporeal experiences of women as self-proclaimed natural bodybuilders. Drawing on detailed ethnographic work and interviews with 10 female naturals, a bricolage of multiply gendered identities and affiliations is produced. The analysis questions how in working to a “natural ethic,” while desiring a “deviant aesthetic,” the female bodybuilder is paradoxically repressed by a “natural gendered order.” The narrative draws reflexively on psychoanalytic theory and transgendered perspectives, to examine the cultural concept: natural as a “queer” and “uncanny” paradox in which gender and identity are made and simultaneously dislocated.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
