Body Builders

Body Builders

After reading the article, "Against Ordinary Language: The Language of the Body" by Kathy Acker and listening to the interview named “Roxanne Edwards is Superhuman,” I’ve gained a whole new perspective about bodybuilding. I always had an opinion about body builders. I always knew they had to go through a lot to get to the way they look and have worked very hard for the body that they have. I resect what they do very much but personally after listening to the interview and looking through all the pictures, I have generated some new thoughts. What really struck me when I was looking through all the photos from DIS Magazine was that in class we talked about how John Berger’s famous quote was, “Skin without biography." The quote means that everybody had a story that can be told from their skin like scars, birthmarks, stretch marks, freckles, tattoos and piercings. Once I saw the pictures of Roxanne I realized that muscles can also be a way to tell a persons story about how they live there life everyday. I could always tell that bodybuilders would obviously need to have a planned and healthy diet. Roxanne talks about how she takes multi vitamins to keep her body on track and how many bodybuilders do have a day-to-day planned meal. Also a main thing that I noticed from the interview was that to me Roxanne seemed a little over confident. She states, “The people that actually don’t like me are the ones that are out of shapes.” What this reminded me of was our discussion in class about how a part of Patrick Batemen’s personality from American Psyco was very over confident and thought he was better than everyone else. Also how he was self obsessed and overly crazed about the way he looks. Just like how Roxanne thinks that her body is so ideal that anyone that wouldn’t like her appearance must be someone that is out of shape. Besides her over confidence what I really found shocking was when Roxanne was talking about women bodybuilders still trying to be feminine. She said, “They expect the women would obviously has all this muscle to still have breast and then judge her against someone that go an implant and say you weren’t feminine enough.” I was really surprised when she said that the judges takes points off for not being feminine enough because what comes with being a bodybuilder is an abnormally large body with huge muscles and veins popping out everywhere. This is normally not seen as the socially acceptable body for a female. They are seen as dainty, small and fragile. After listening to Roxanne say that it reminded me about an event that occurred in my middle school. In middle school most girls are growing and developing which can cause many girls and even boys to become self-conscious. A girl named Emily had a locker next to me and I could hear her talking to her friends and she seemed upset. She was saying that another girl was making fun of her because she was shaped weird and didn’t have as big of breasts as the other girls. This came to mind because people shouldn’t be judged on their outside appearance if they are feminine enough. People that may not look very girly can still like to do girly things. So hearing Roxanne say that should remind people not to judge people before you get to know them. This all relates back to bodybuilding because even though they may look manlier on the outside doesn’t mean they aren’t feminine.