FBBs: The Ultimate Feminists?
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Date
2016
Type of Work
Department
Communications
Program
Bachelor's Degree
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Collection may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To obtain information or permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the Goucher Special Collections & Archives at 410-337-6347 or email archives@goucher.edu.
Abstract
The following paper is the term paper for my Understanding Popular Culture class. The assignment was to examine a subculture and how it negotiates popular culture. I chose female bodybuilders due to my curiosity in the sport. Over the past summer I witnessed my first female bodybuilding contest, Ms. Venice Beach. My own fascination with the abject led me to the subject. From Shirley Peroutka: Erin wrote this fine paper as a final assignment for Communication 213 Making Sense of Popular Culture. Students were asked to thoroughly examine an American sub or counterculture, paying specific attention to the relationship between the sub/counterculture and the dominant culture--our system of generally accepted myths, values, and norms. Erin's apt choice, the subculture of female body builders, allowed her to examine dominant notions of femininity and masculinity and then to document how the subculture of female body builders appears to reject dominant culture notions of femininity but ultimately, she suggests, this potentially oppositional culture is co-opted by standardized consumerist and commodified attitudes toward the female body and femininity. This subculture, she points out, has withered at the vine 1.)for lack of institutional and commercial support and 2.) because of the overwhelming hegemony of the dominant popular culture. Erin's excellent paper is very nicely researched and composed. The essay crafts a coherent and convincing picture of this subculture and its relationship to the dominant culture.