Natural bodybuilding: An account of its emergence and development as competition sport

Abstract

Natural, i.e. drug-free, bodybuilding has been rapidly developing in different parts of the world as a distinct body culture with its own practices, discourses, organisations, key figures and focal points. A central aspect of this has been natural bodybuilding’s emergence and development as a competition sport. The present article traces its tentative articulation in the late 1970s, its formation as part of a broader natural movement in bodybuilding in the 1990s, and its consolidation and global expansion from the 2000s to the present day. In sketching this trajectory, natural bodybuilding is situated in the context of the bodybuilding industry and its historical transformations, as well as of the broader phenomenon of performance- and image-enhancing drugs and the reactions the latter has provoked in sport and wider society. The aim of the article is to offer an initial overview of a previously uncharted competition sport and in the process contribute to an exploration of bodybuilding as a varied and evolving phenomenon.

Keywords

doping drug-free sport natural bodybuilding performance and image enhancing drugs

Introduction

Natural, i.e. drug-free, bodybuilding has been developing in different parts of the world as a distinct body culture with its own practices, discourses, organisations, key figures and focal points. In recent years numerous federations and associations of natural bodybuilding have appeared for the first time and/or expanded internationally; natural bodybuilding competition events, participants and promoters have multiplied and received media coverage; new terms, such as ‘natties’ meaning ‘natural bodybuilders’, have been popularised in international gym lingo; and a series of products and services are being branded as ‘for’ and ‘by’ natural bodybuilders. At the same time, quite intense and popular debates are taking place in the wider gym and fitness industry with reference to the meanings, identities and motivations pertaining to natural bodybuilding: questions such as ‘What is natural?’, ‘Who is natural?’ and ‘Why be natural?’ are frequently asked and negotiated in training environments and on social media. The posing and answering of these questions along with the aforementioned activity on a structural level point to natural bodybuilding as a fast-developing body culture that has, thus far, been little researched in the social sciences.

The present article comes out of a larger research project that set out to explore natural bodybuilding as a response to a dominant, pharmacologically assisted model of bodybuilding that has up until now nearly monopolised public attention and scientific analysis. My focus here will be on a central aspect of the constitution of natural bodybuilding, namely its emergence and development as a competition sport. I will attempt to trace its tentative articulation in the late 1970s, its formation as part of a broader movement of natural bodybuilding in the 1990s, and its consolidation and global expansion from the 2000s to the present day. In sketching this trajectory, I will situate natural bodybuilding in the context of the bodybuilding industry as well as the broader phenomenon of performance- and image-enhancing drugs and the reactions the latter has provoked in sport and wider society.

My aim is to offer an initial overview of a previously uncharted competition sport and, by extension, of the wider body culture of natural bodybuilding it has helped shape and disseminate. Although in such an undertaking considerable description is necessary, I will attempt to combine this with analytical insights that will hopefully contribute to a theoretical exploration of bodybuilding as a varied and evolving phenomenon that reflects transformations and tensions among different sporting embodiments. The narrative I offer is substantiated largely with reference to male bodybuilding. Although there are common relevant themes in male and female bodybuilding, such as the escalation of drug use in the early 1990s especially at the elite competition level, significant differences exist in how this drug use is negotiated by both bodybuilding practitioners and organisations. A more detailed investigation of these issues lies within the scope of future work.

Background

Bodybuilding’s evolving and wide-reaching cultural resonance over the span of three centuries has probed research across the social sciences spectrum (Budd, 1997; Bunsell, 2013; Fair, 1999, 2015; Heywood, 1998; Klein, 1993; Locks and Richardson, 2012; Lowe, 1998; Monaghan, 2001). Much of bodybuilding’s imprint owes to its association with the larger phenomenon of human enhancement through pharmacological means. Shifting and competing notions of ‘nature’, ‘development’ and ‘health’ central to this phenomenon are forcefully inscribed on the materiality and imagination of the physical self in bodybuilding. At the more ‘extreme’ side of the continuum, the ‘monstrous’ built body has become a widely recognised figure of manipulation of the human organism (Savulescu and Bostrom, 2009). Originating in a late-1960s US context, the production of this body for formal competition events has been dictated by a corporate model of sport that prioritises winning and packages the spectacle of ‘superhuman’ performance as an entertainment product. In this context, unbridled experimentation with human enhancement technologies transpires not as deviant but as a logical necessity for transcending natural limits (Locks, 2012). At the more mainstream side of the continuum, and irrespectively of whether people self-identify as bodybuilders or not, bodybuilding’s training and diet systems, vocabularies and body projects have been popularised amongst recreational exercise populations across the globe (Andreasson and Johansson, 2014).

As part of this picture, an array of legal and illegal performance- and image-enhancing drugs (PIEDs), which once addressed the closed, experimental subculture of bodybuilding insiders, are now at the core of a worldwide trade of considerable proportions (Evans-Brown et al., 2012). Traded substances range from drugs to nutritional supplements, although the distinction between the two is often blurred due to shifting pharmacological definitions, false substance descriptions and product contamination in a poorly regulated industry (Baume et al., 2006; Evans-Brown et al., 2012). Examples include an array of hormones – anabolic androgenic steroids most notably – and hormone antagonists, stimulants and diuretics that are used to build or maintain muscle, gain strength, lose weight, darken the skin and/or get rid of body fluids.

The potential harms the use and abuse of such substances carry for the individual and society are believed to be wide-ranging (Pope et al., 2014), even though the relative lack of a robust evidence base means there is little consensus on how to assess and address them (Kimergård and McVeigh, 2014). From a policy perspective, the approaches at work in different national contexts are varied and sometimes incompatible. Depending on whether the issue of such PIED use outside the confines of elite sport is framed from a public health or anti-doping perspective, policies range from harm reduction and the provision of health services for targeted user populations to regulation through criminalisation and/or testing and sanctions (Christiansen, 2009). When considering the complexity of the phenomenon one should also take into account the different legal frameworks that exist in different countries and the challenges this poses to regulation (Paoli and Donati, 2015; Van De Ven and Mulrooney, 2016b).

My objective has been to explore natural bodybuilding as a globally developing body culture that is framed in response to a dominant bodybuilding model of drug-assisted enhancement. As I have found in the process of doing this research, ‘drug-free’ is one way of defining ‘natural’. For the purposes of the present article I will keep this as a working definition, largely because it is a prevailing one in the field even if it does not always hold the exact same meaning for all who use it. For example, different definitions of drug-free status exist based on the kinds of substances one has not used and how long for. In their explanation of ‘drug-free’, most of the people that participated in this research used the term ‘drugs’ to mean performance- and image-enhancing substances that can be legal or illegal.

Drug-free practice can, in fact, be viewed as the default position in bodybuilding’s modern trajectory beginning in the 1850s. Yet, it is only in the last four decades that it has been articulated as an integrated alternative. This is precisely at a historical juncture where dominant bodybuilding and the wider paradigm of pharmacologically enabled human enhancement it represents have both exploded and come under increased scrutiny. Although the concept of the ‘natural’ body in bodybuilding has been examined often in the literature (see, for example, Aoki, 1996; Balsamo, 1996; Mullins, 1992; Wesley, 2001), natural bodybuilding as a distinct body culture and sport has typically been touched upon only in passing (Bunsell, 2013; Locks, 2012; Monaghan, 2001).¹

Methodological and analytical approach

The present article builds on my previous research on the genealogical trajectory of dominant bodybuilding culture (Liokaftos, 2017). In trying to make sense of how the extreme, ‘freaky’ built body has come to stand for bodybuilding in the present, I have tried to demonstrate how it is the product of a very specific cultural and historical setting, and that other body ideals have existed in bodybuilding over the course of its 130-year-old trajectory. Rather than earlier stages or less evolved versions of the freaky body, these other ideals often represent different paradigms for building, representing and imagining the body.

This article comes out of a multi-method, qualitative study of natural bodybuilding over the course of 24 months that has involved archival research, fieldwork, participant observation and interviews with people involved in natural bodybuilding. In sketching the background and initial emergence of natural bodybuilding in the present article, I have drawn on my own and other scholars’ historical research in institutionally and privately owned archives of bodybuilding and related body cultures.² My main sources for data collection regarding natural bodybuilding’s trajectory up until the present moment have been print and online natural bodybuilding media, websites of natural bodybuilding organisations and social media. Although it is not within the scope of the present article to directly present and analyse in depth my fieldwork data, the discussion I offer is informed by recurring observations and themes I have come across in my interviews with 50 research participants involved in natural bodybuilding and my visits to bodybuilding gyms and competitions in England, Scotland, Greece, France and Hungary. Given that the article’s focus is on the emergence and development of natural bodybuilding as a sport, much of the discussion pertains to organisations. As a result, after surveying the field, I have chosen a representative sample of organisations to trace the development of their structures and analyse the content of their mission statements, public communications, and policies as well as published statements of their key representatives.

The primary focus of much of the present discussion is on a US and central and west European context. This reflects the core nuclei of bodybuilding culture as they have developed historically and the subsequent appearance of natural bodybuilding in those territories. However, the argument is made that in recent years, and partly owing to internationalisation strategies of established organisations based in these regions, natural bodybuilding is rapidly becoming globalised both as sport and body culture. Apart from a method to chronologically organise the discussion, the periodisation I propose reflects a genealogical approach I adopted gradually in the process of gathering and trying to make sense of the research data. Following this approach, I have identified certain distinct periods in the development of bodybuilding culture in general, and of natural bodybuilding in particular. The changes that mark the shifts from one period to the next are quantitative and qualitative in nature, even though important continuities also exist.

In trying to understand the constitution of any sporting activity, it is helpful to situate it in a series of interrelated contexts. In the case of natural bodybuilding, I have tried to contextualise it in terms of the larger bodybuilding industry and some of the historical transformations it has undergone, as well as the PIED phenomenon in elite and recreational sport, and the responses it has provoked within the sports world and in wider society. Theoretically, I am inspired by Bourdieu’s (1984, 1994, 1999) sociology of sport and culture and draw on certain of his key concepts and analytical categories. Specifically with regard to the production and transformation of fields, I have looked at antagonisms amongst established and new players as well as struggles for power, legitimacy and distinction that often include competing definitions of a given activity. Exploring the ideological positionings as well as the practical feel for the game that players in the field develop, I am interested in both the structural developments that testify to the constitution of natural bodybuilding as organised sport and their meanings in historical context. Some of these key developments include institutionalisation, autonomisation and internal stratification, most notably the production of a scene of elite practice and competition. In an attempt to map the discourses surrounding the central stakes, agendas and relations that make up the sport of natural bodybuilding, I have tried to identify the terms in which these are framed and to what effect at given junctures. Discourses, thus, are approached as a central element in the antagonisms and shifts inside bodybuilding and the ways these are influenced by or mediated through wider developments outside bodybuilding.

Early bodybuilding and the natural body ideal

Bodybuilding as a body practice, philosophy and formalised spectacle first appeared in central Europe and soon spread into west Europe and the USA at the end of the 19th century. In this formative period, it was often defined by contemporary anti-industrial discourses that attributed a series of health and well-being problems to modern, urban lifestyles. Many of bodybuilding’s influential early proponents advocated weight training, a diet based on unprocessed foods, exposure to the elements, and avoidance of tobacco and alcohol consumption (Roach, 2008). For some, modern medicine and the orthodox medical establishment were part of the very problems they denounced, as evidenced in reactions against vaccinations, synthesised prescription drugs and practices of ‘pill-pushing’ in the first decades of the 20th century (Roznowski, 2009). In promoting ideas and practices for restoring the ‘natural’ body, bodybuilding can be appreciated in conjunction with contemporary forms of natural therapy (Budd, 1997; Hau, 2003; Wedemeyer, 2000).

Early bodybuilding competition events, although irregular and with no coherent structure or governance until the late 1930s and early 1940s, were meant as public demonstrations of what bodybuilding could do to reverse the corrosive effects of modern times for both the individual and the social body. As in other forms of representing built bodies, such as photography and medical or artistic modelling, in bodybuilding competition, too, emphasis was placed on not only creating but also presenting and performing the ‘natural’ body. Notions of grace, ease and naturalness were thus paramount in how contest participants exhibited their bodies.

Introduction of PIEDs in strength sports and initial responses

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, PIEDs were introduced in the family of strength sports, namely weightlifting, powerlifting and bodybuilding. At the time, these activities typically lied under common governance and shared many of their body practices and focal cultural points. This early use of PIEDs was experimental and facilitated by sports doctors and officials alike, which can be at least partly attributed to the demands of international sport competition in a cold war context, as well as to a broader cultural fascination with technological advances (Fair, 1999; Todd and Todd, 2009). By the late 1960s and early 1970s, growing numbers of practitioners in these sporting activities were engaging in heavy and undirected PIED use as well as polypharmacy. Anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) could be combined with stimulants in efforts to enhance athletic performance. In turn, to calm the body and mind down, a series of other substances could be used, such as sedatives or recreational drugs. As Fair (1999) argues, such use patterns make sense in a broader contemporary culture of drug use and experimentation in the west.

This is the time when the first public debates on PIED use took place inside the strength sports world. The main avenue for these debates were the print magazines which at the time were the main carriers of the culture and often functioned as the official voices of governing bodies.³ AAS, referred to as ‘bodybuilding drugs’ or ‘growth drugs’, proved a particularly controversial issue. In their critique of them, elder sports officials and entrepreneurs focused on how such drugs undermined the work and competition ethic as well as the moral and physical health of sportspeople. For some of these figures, attention to AAS and their performance enhancing properties was also risky in that it diverted interest and prestige from sports food supplements that had developed into a burgeoning business and touted as the secret of athletic success. On the contrary, a younger generation of athletes and sports writers welcomed AAS as a sign of technological progress that served well the objectives of higher athletic performances. Reflecting a larger generational shift in notions of authority and subjectivity, the defence of AAS also drew on discourses of self-determination and free choice over one’s body (Fair, 1999; Roach, 2008).

Popularisation of PIEDs and first initiatives for drug-free bodybuilding

By the mid-1970s and early 1980s, use of PIEDs in bodybuilding, and in particular at the elite competition level, had spread substantially. As explored in more detail elsewhere (Fair, 2015; Liokaftos, 2017), a number of interrelated factors contributed in this direction. The most significant ones were a move towards autonomous governance for bodybuilding;⁴ the conceptualisation of the appearance of the body as a type of sports performance that became increasingly specialised; the introduction of professional bodybuilding competitions; the emergence of a new type of cultural consumer, namely bodybuilding fans who demanded ever higher performances; and the gradual onset of a sports entertainment paradigm that partly emerged from competition amongst old and new players in the bodybuilding industry. Even though measures against doping were introduced in the wider world of sport, such as testing for AAS at the 1976 Summer Olympic Games in Montreal, bodybuilding’s marginal status as organised sporting activity meant that dominant organisations were under little pressure to put analogous policies in place.

Initiatives for drug-free bodybuilding in the form of associations, publications and contests with some form of drug testing appear for the first time in the late 1970s, set against the aforementioned dominant trend that was directly or indirectly promoted by the most influential players in the USA and Europe. Examples of these pioneering attempts in the American context include the Natural Bodybuilders Association (NBA, formed in 1978) and the Natural Bodybuilders of America (NBBA, formed in 1979), both holding Natural Mr America contests in 1978 and 1981 respectively, as well as the periodical publication Natural Bodybuilding (inaugurated in October 1981). Partly due to the limited growth of the bodybuilding industry and the relatively low visibility of doping as an issue in sport and wider society at the time, these initiatives were for the most part sporadic, short-lived and with little organisational reach, resources and momentum.

The ‘natural movement’ in bodybuilding

The emergence of a broader natural movement, as it was called by its proponents, in bodybuilding can be located in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Two contexts are crucial for understanding this development. The first one is the place of PIED use in the public sphere. The high visibility the issue comes to enjoy in this period is largely linked to doping scandals in elite sport that have received widespread media attention, such as the Ben Johnson steroids case at the 1988 Summer Olympics. Yet, the ensuing debates and policies do not concern only the world of high-level athletic performance but reach far beyond it. In the US, strict regulation of AAS is introduced with the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990, while the first prevention programmes are put together with a school/sport focus.

The second key context for situating the emergence of the natural movement is that of the bodybuilding culture and industry. Following a decade of unprecedented economic expansion and cultural acceptance, tendencies of radicalisation and insularity appear in bodybuilding in the early 1990s. These tendencies have been interpreted as a reaction to the adoption of bodybuilding by metropolitan and gay culture (Richardson, 2010) and a culmination of a corporate sport paradigm that had taken hold in the industry (Liokaftos, 2014). Spoken within the bodybuilding world as ‘the era of the freak’, this period is qualitatively different to earlier ones as bodybuilders, particularly at the advanced competition level, use larger amounts and complex combinations of drugs to enhance their sport performance. Substances such as human growth hormone, insulin, diuretics and IGF are regularly added to the staple of AAS. This is also the time when critical health issues faced by drug-assisted bodybuilders also begin to get more widely reported. The premature deaths of professional bodybuilders Mohammed Benaziza in 1992 and Andreas Munzer in 1996 were directly attributed to substance abuse in preparation for competition. These high-profile cases are regularly pointed at inside bodybuilding culture as reflective of the early and mid-1990s radicalisation of performance enhancement.

Although dominant governing bodies engage in anti-doping initiatives, most visibly with the introduction of AAS and diuretics testing at top professional competition events, these have proved to be very short-lived.⁵ In addition to these developments regarding PIED use, the world of competition bodybuilding is characterised in this period by the institutional and financial dominance of one governing body, the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness (IFBB), and the industry players it represents. This translates into a near-monopoly at the professional level in the US and also international control, as many IFBB affiliates become the state-recognised governing bodies for bodybuilding in their respective countries.

Natural bodybuilding as an integrated alternative

It is in the aforementioned context that natural bodybuilding gradually transpires as a clearly identifiable trend inside the bodybuilding industry. The natural movement manifests itself in a series of developments. New bodybuilding media dedicated to natural bodybuilding appear and existing ones are explicitly reframed in this direction. Examples include Natural Body and Fitness magazine (inaugural issue: April 1988) and Natural Physique, subtitled ‘the world of drug-free bodybuilding’ and featuring articles such as ‘The birth of natural bodybuilding’ in its inaugural November 1988 issue. Also, in February 1997, almost 33 years after its inception, Muscular Development magazine is renamed All Natural Muscular Development and for a period regularly enlists famous bodybuilding champions like Steve Reeves and Bill Pearl in its promotion of the natural movement. Concomitantly, literature specific to drug-free bodybuilding training and nutrition grows, while sports products, such as food supplements, are marketed specifically for natural bodybuilders.

In terms of organised sporting activity, individual event promoters hold contests explicitly advertised as ‘natural’ and/or ‘drug-tested’ while still being sanctioned by dominant governing bodies. More significantly, a number of governing bodies dedicated to natural bodybuilding are constituted, most of which – along with the international contests they hold – are based in the USA. Examples include the Amateur Bodybuilding Association (ABA, 1988, USA, renamed the International Natural Bodybuilding Association [INBA] in 1994), the Association of Natural Bodybuilders (ANB, 1993, UK), the Swiss Natural Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation (SNBF, 1997), the World Natural Bodybuilding Federation (WNBF, 1990, USA-based), Musclemania (1991, USA) and the Australian Natural Bodybuilding Federation (ANBF, 1991).

Establishing natural bodybuilding vis-a-vis the status quo

In this period of natural bodybuilding as sport, the key stake is to establish its distinctiveness, value and institutional autonomy. The constitutive Other is the culture of drug-assisted bodybuilding and its representatives who control the field at a financial, institutional and symbolic level, and in relation to whom proponents of natural bodybuilding are the dominated players (Bourdieu, 1984, 1994). Through a discourse on the ‘state of the sport’, often framed in terms of a crisis, natural bodybuilding organisations emphasise as their key mission the promotion of bodybuilding as a respectable, proper sport and lifestyle.

The anti-doping agenda occupies a central role in this, with doping controls at competition events becoming the ultimate marker that distinguishes the sport of natural bodybuilding from the status quo. Eventually other markers differentiating the sport of natural from that of drug-assisted bodybuilding also become important, most notably different criteria for evaluating competitors, which reflect different body and performance ideals and point to the emergence of a different taste and audience. Appearing to respond to an organic demand from the grassroots community of practice, natural bodybuilding organisations proclaim to address the needs and grievances of existing drug-free athletes in the industry arrangement of the time. These related to the running of sport competition events, with doping controls being completely absent or only improperly done in dominant organisations, as well as the related exposure and rewards for competitors, with drug-free athletes being relegated to lesser status compared to their drug-assisted peers. The above is most clearly articulated in places like organisations’ mission statements geared towards ‘serving the natural athletes’ and ‘providing a drug-free platform for bodybuilding athletes’.⁶

In their efforts for distinction and legitimacy, supporters of natural bodybuilding mobilise two main discourses in this period: the first one is that of choice. The argument here is that athletes should have different options when deciding how they would like to practise and compete in their sport. The creation of natural organisations, thus, comes to address an existing imbalance in a system that can only cater to athletes who choose the drug-assisted path. The second discourse at play is normative and revolves around a struggle over the meaning of bodybuilding as a sporting activity. What is argued for here is a reclaiming of the ‘true’ essence of bodybuilding that has been lost with the onset of pharmacological enhancement. References are made to core values of bodybuilding and of sport more generally, such as health, character building and the spirit of fair competition.⁷ In countries where bodybuilding drugs are controlled substances, their legal status also becomes an important part of a rhetoric of propriety and respectability vs deviance and shame. This discourse associates the natural movement with contemporary anti-doping and anti-drug movements in wider society. In the interview quote below, founder of the SNBF, François Gay, frames his organisational initiative in the context of the bodybuilding industry and the wider anti-doping fight as follows:

What we are doing against doping might seem little, but with our natural movement we show that with a firm will and unshakeable ideas we can make some interesting steps in the fight against doping. Our severely tested athletes are reliable models for ambitious bodybuilding and fitness sportsmen. […] I can understand the fact that other associations aren’t particularly pleased with SNBF and its activities, but they only have themselves to blame in the end: had they done more in the past against doping, then we would never have come to the idea of founding SNBF.⁸

At the same time, this normative discourse links drug-free athletes to an earlier, golden age of bodybuilding history before the advent of drugs. At the point where dominant bodybuilding culture adopts an extreme direction and turns inward, one of the core stated objectives of the natural movement is precisely to retain and expand inroads into the mainstream, evidenced in the pronounced adoption of a hegemonic ‘fitness’ discourse.⁹

Producing a scene of elite sport competition

The domain of organised sport competition is endowed with a vital role in establishing and promoting the culture of drug-free bodybuilding: cultivating core values, producing role models for the community of practice, stimulating the production of new knowledge pertaining to drug-free practice, and operating as the face of the culture to the outside world. Elite competition in particular is highly visible and influential in this regard. The creation of an elite scene of natural bodybuilding becomes a key objective in this early period. It is largely around this elite sport scene that a series of cultural products and the taste for them (natural bodybuilding contests and publications) as well as practices and identities (natural bodybuilding athletes, fans and prominent figures) get shaped.

Natural bodybuilding associations and federations are essential in creating the structures, rewards, networks and exposure for the whole enterprise. In the formative stages of this process, these governing bodies emerge as the driving mechanisms for creating links between elite bodybuilders, recreational practitioners and wider society. In addition to their structural functions, organisations also transpire as the tangible manifestation of institutional autonomy, which speaks both to the commitment and vision of their leading figures as well as to the distinctiveness and symbolic self-determination of the wider natural bodybuilding movement.

Natural bodybuilding in the 21st century

In the past two decades, one observes quantitative and qualitative developments in the constitution of natural bodybuilding as a sport. The key contexts for making sense of this period are as follows: firstly, the bodybuilding industry has been increasingly globalised and its corporate expansion has led to the reproduction and fortification of an otherwise extreme, dominant model of bodybuilding. In that model, represented in a paradigm of sports entertainment, PIED use becomes more pervasive and risky while still not being thoroughly addressed by dominant organisations.¹⁰ Compounds not tested for human consumption (e.g. non-steroidal selective androgen receptor modulators, DNP) gain traction, as are patters of using substances that place a greater burden on the body and its ability to recover (e.g. cruising).

At the same time, one observes a growing penetration of body practices, aesthetics, knowledges and philosophies that originate in bodybuilding into a highly mediatised gym and fitness culture (Andreasson and Johansson, 2014). In this environment, bodybuilding organisations, both those marked ‘natural’ and those that are not, are faced with a growing demand for bodybuilding-type competitions by people who do not necessarily identify as bodybuilders or have a long-term subcultural immersion but, rather, use the bodybuilding method and are interested in the spectacle of bodybuilding competition as both participants and audiences. This increased interest has resulted in, among other things, the creation of new competition categories that are essentially variations of bodybuilding contests, such as Physique and Classic Bodybuilding, and which can be interpreted as a diversification tendency in this domain of cultural production and consumption. Even though these categories appear to promote a body aesthetic and presentation that is not extreme but instead suggests fitness and vitality, use of PIEDs has become increasingly evident there, too.

The second important context is the PIED-related debates and policies of the past 20 years. In the case of elite sport, the anti-doping movement has gained significant momentum fuelled by doping scandals in amateur and professional baseball, cycling, weightlifting, and track-and-field, to name a few. The creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in November 1999 has provided structures and networks that have since been endowed with increased resources and regulatory powers (Martensen and Møller, 2017). Even though anti-doping initially came out and sought to address issues in competition sport, more recently it has extended in the domain of recreational sporting practices. Of particular note is the adoption of anti-doping policies and procedures in the gym/fitness sector in countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Belgium and Norway (Van De Ven and Mulrooney, 2016a). Alongside a second wave of prevention programmes and funded research, this development is linked to widely publicised concerns around the spread of PIED use, particularly amongst younger exercisers.¹¹ Apart from their potential deterrence effect, new and/or stricter legal controls of PIEDs allow proponents of drug-free sport to frame their undertakings in juxtaposition to illegal activities and identities.

New players in an increasingly globalised field

A basic feature of the development of natural bodybuilding in this period is the proliferation of national and international organisations and competition events in different parts of the world. In the US there are presently close to 50 natural bodybuilding organisations, while elsewhere indicative examples include the British Natural Bodybuilding Federation (BNBF, 2000), the Natural Physique Association (NPA, 2004, UK), the German Natural Bodybuilding & Fitness Federation (GNBF, 2003), the Natural Bodybuilding Federation of Ireland (NBFI, 2012), the Drug Free Athletes Coalition (DFAC, 2013), World Natural Bodybuilding (2017), International Natural Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation Canada (2008), INBA Global Greece (2012), the Bodybuilding, Fitness and Powerlifting Association of Mongolia (BPAM, 2016) and the Faroese Federation of Natural Athletes (FFNA, 2016). The increased number of players in the field has been accompanied by great variation in types and degrees of organisation, coherence and anti-doping policies. Some of these organisations have been dedicated to governing bodybuilding competition since their inception, while others come out of the autonomisation of bodybuilding in countries that until recently had common governance for all strength sports;¹² there are also those that essentially represent an individual contest promoter organising events at the local, regional and/or national level. Processes of increasing formalisation can be observed with regard to natural bodybuilding contests, competition calendars, qualification structures, amateur and professional competition divisions, and judging of contests (e.g. judging criteria, training for judges). Such processes further the practical and symbolic constitution of natural bodybuilding as an autonomous and legitimate sport. Although they often build on earlier processes that I have traced in previous periods, they are adapted or created anew to suit the new context of natural bodybuilding’s expansion within and across national borders.

Building on the aforementioned structural developments, natural bodybuilding organisations engage in attempts at consolidation and recognition at both the national and international level. In different national contexts a different set of issues and objectives may be at play. In certain cases, formalising institutional structures and procedures and expanding active membership can mean that governing bodies can legitimately seek state recognition as the official representatives of bodybuilding in that country, often challenging pre-existing ones which are typically associated with dominant bodybuilding culture. Sometimes attempts at recognition for organisations are embedded in attempts for external recognition of natural bodybuilding as a sport, such as the current efforts by INBA Global to attain International Olympic Committee (IOC) membership.

Another important characteristic of natural bodybuilding in recent years is the internationalisation strategy, especially on the part of the oldest, most organised and ambitious players. This has been taking place in the form of affiliating with existing organisations or creating branches in new countries and regions. In many cases the governing bodies that emerge out of the latter process are the very first ones dedicated to natural bodybuilding in their countries. Part of the same picture is the increasing number of international events and the participation of national teams in them. Internationalisation is part and parcel of, even though not reducible to, the aforementioned struggles for consolidation and recognition. On a practical level, for example, involvement in world competition events can be one amongst other criteria sport governing bodies need to meet in order to receive state funding. On a symbolic level, internationalisation is a key source of prestige and authority for the organisations involved, and subsequently enjoys highly visibility in the culture. More broadly, it is fair to argue that, given the central role that the domain of formal sport competition plays in the production and reproduction of the wider body culture of natural bodybuilding, a good deal of the latter’s globalisation is due to this internationalisation strategy.

Old discourses in new contexts

As natural bodybuilding is consolidated in old territories and expands into new ones, one observes the persistence of discourses that marked its formative period. The discourse of choice is understandably prominent in national contexts of this global mosaic where natural bodybuilding organisations appear for the first time. Offering a platform for drug-free athletes is presented as a ‘catching up with’ and ‘joining in’ an international movement that has already been advancing in other parts of the world. At the same time, normative discourses are mobilised in defining the ‘proper’ meaning of the sporting activity. Here, reclaiming the ‘true’ essence of bodybuilding acquires a new significance in light of the perceived spread of PIEDs in the wider gym/fitness industry. The identification of this trend precisely renders the creation and fortification of natural bodybuilding organisations all the more urgent and necessary. Emphasis is placed on notions of health and integrity, often through direct or indirect opposition to what are portrayed as risky and superficial practices and attitudes. Speaking of his rationale behind creating the first governing body for natural bodybuilding competitions in his country, founder and former president of INBA Global Greece Giannis Giantzoglou says in a 2011 interview:

I despaired at the fact that AAS were beginning to really spread in the culture [of bodybuilding], to the extent that in Greece you don’t anymore need to take part in competitions or be involved in anything similar to be using them, it’s just that generally people that go to the gym use them. [My objective has been] to prove to people and give them an incentive, to prove that this thing [called] natural bodybuilding exists, that we can in fact do it in Greece, too […] so that people will come who will be prepared as athletes for a bodybuilding competition by us, coaches, and who will get involved so that we can slowly build a new federation in Greece, a space where we can exercise in a healthier way and have faith in that what we do is right.¹³

The question of authenticity and authority in natural bodybuilding

Alongside the aforementioned earlier discourses, new ones appear. The most prominent is that of authenticity. Given the varied definitions of ‘natural’ that are vividly illustrated, among other places, in the anti-doping policies adopted by governing bodies, the fundamental question here becomes: ‘What constitutes real natural bodybuilding?’ Directly following from this is the question of who can authentically represent the sport. In the current opening up and spreading of the natural bodybuilding field, such discourses are typically articulated by more established players, notably those active on an international scale, and which often speak to their antagonistic relations.

The old and new discourses observed in the last 20 years or so echo the key stakes in this period. As before, establishing the distinctiveness and value of the sport of natural bodybuilding is of paramount significance, highlighted all the more in the current context of perceived PIED use and the global expansion of a dominant, drug-assisted bodybuilding culture. At the same time, establishing leadership and claiming authority inside natural bodybuilding becomes crucial. As a result, the constitutive Others that emerge in the last two decades are not only the world of ‘chemical’ bodybuilding and its representatives but also other players inside the world of natural bodybuilding. These stakes are articulated and negotiated inside natural bodybuilding with reference to its evolution as a sport, and often revolve around evaluations of its current state and direction.

A different crisis discourse can be identified that involves notions of restoring the initial vision, purity and course of natural bodybuilding. These are usually embedded in two main problematics: the first problematic is that of fracturing and the resulting discordance in the sport of natural bodybuilding, which has been observed in the case of other sports following the introduction of parallel federations.¹⁴ The proposed response is unification, typically through standardisation of procedures and common governance. The significance of this problematic and the appropriate response to it have found their way in direct or indirect ways in official mission statements and communications of organisations, and are often clearly identified by high-ranking organisation officials. It is in this spirit that, in a 2014 interview, co-founder of the BNBF and DFAC Vicky McCann speaks of her dislike of ‘the lack of direction and structure and the disjointed splintered mess that natural bodybuilding has become’ and the purpose of said organisations to ‘rebuild’ and ‘get it back on track’ (Fitter, 2014: 51).

The second core problematic of today is that of professionalism, a concept that includes many aspects pertaining to the running and promotion of natural bodybuilding as sport. Many of the claims to authority and leadership put forward by natural bodybuilding organisations are articulated with reference to that. Heavily focused on natural bodybuilding as a competition sport, professionalism is construed in terms of the needs of participants and audiences, that is the two key demographics for which the various organisations vie. Recurring topics are the athlete experience, with a particular emphasis on the necessity for adequate and fair judging in a subjectively evaluated sport, and the fan experience, with a focus on the quality of bodybuilding competitions as a distinct cultural product in a growing market thereof. A culturally privileged notion in itself, professionalism is also central to how bodybuilding organisations are perceived to be supporting and cultivating the domain of elite competition, the highest version of which is crystallised in professional contests. As I have argued earlier, the elite scene carries a distinct weight in the constitution of the culture and the image it projects to itself and the outside world.

Anti-doping policies and their implementation can be viewed as an aspect of the problematic of professionalism, albeit one with unique significance in the antagonisms within the world of natural bodybuilding. Aligning themselves with dominant discourses of clean sport and the anti-doping fight, organisations can claim leadership and authority both inside the sport of natural bodybuilding, i.e. in the eyes of athletes and fans, and the outside world, including sport authorities and the wider public. Even though it is not possible to examine this in further detail here, the kind and comprehensiveness of anti-doping policies and the seriousness and commitment with which they are pursued by organisations directly feed into issues of authenticity and representation which, as I have proposed before, have become central in the present juncture.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article has been to offer an initial overview of the emergence and development of natural bodybuilding as competition sport. I have attempted to trace its tentative articulation in the late 1970s, its formation as part of a broader movement of natural bodybuilding in the 1990s, and its subsequent consolidation and global expansion from the 2000s onwards. Inspired by Bourdieu’s (1984, 1994, 1999) orientation for a sociology of sport and culture, I have explored what I perceive to be some of the key stakes in the field and their transformations over time. As I have argued, in an earlier period the key stakes had been to establish the distinctiveness, value and autonomy of natural bodybuilding as a sport. This took place primarily through opposition to the dominant players in bodybuilding who not only fostered the culture of pharmacological enhancement but also yielded financial and symbolic control over the field. More recently, what has become equally important is establishing leadership and authority within the sport of natural bodybuilding. In this sense, antagonisms can be observed not only with reference to the world of drug-assisted bodybuilding but also amongst the burgeoning players in the drug-free field. Apart from a Bourdieusian angle on the production and transformation of sports fields, this latter phase in particular highlights the instabilities in defining the ‘natural’ body which are brought to the fore by the use of PIEDs (Hoberman, 2005).

In trying to make sense of the aforementioned processes, I have attempted to locate them in light of wider contexts. On the one hand, the emergence and development of natural bodybuilding as competition sport needs to be understood in relation to the historical trajectory of dominant bodybuilding culture and industry. The traction natural bodybuilding has gained can be interpreted as a response and perhaps contributing factor to the radicalisation of bodybuilding (Richardson, 2010) and speaks to the dialectic constitution of the mainstream and the marginal (Johansson et al., 2017). Its trajectory can also be explained in terms of diversification tendencies in a cultural goods market, especially within a broader gym/fitness industry shaped by consumer capitalism (Sassatelli, 2015).

On the other hand, the unfolding of the PIED phenomenon in sport and wider society is another important backdrop against which to appreciate natural bodybuilding. Key debates and policy initiatives appear to coincide with natural bodybuilding’s formation in the late 1980s and early 1990s and subsequent momentum. In running the sport as well as building legitimacy, governing bodies for natural bodybuilding often adopt procedures and discourses of the anti-doping fight in the wider world of sports. The spread of concerns and policies on PIEDs outside elite sport and into recreational exercise, particularly in the gym/fitness sector, finds natural bodybuilding in the midst of a domain that attracts growing public attention and interventions.

As I have argued, the constitution of natural bodybuilding as an organised competition sport plays an important role in the shaping and global dissemination of the broader body culture. Apart from processes of institutionalisation and internationalisation and their effects on strategic objectives of expansion and legitimacy, one can also observe the increased internal stratification of the field and the emergence of focal reference points for natural bodybuilding, such as significant events (e.g. contests), spaces (e.g. gyms), key figures (e.g. champions and leaders of governing bodies) and collective bodies (e.g. federations, associations).

The production of an elite competition scene has been instrumental for demonstrating the distinctiveness of natural bodybuilding since its formative period. It is largely around this elite scene and its events and hierarchies that a sense of community of practice, identity and taste gradually gets produced within and across countries. Drawing on prevalent ideological currents of clean sport (Dimeo, 2016) and healthism (Crawford, 1980), this elite scene operates as a showcase for a normative sporting body framed around notions of health, integrity and propriety. Although this ‘natural’ body shares an emphasis on rationalisation and productivity and a vision of the self as project (Giddens, 1991) with its drug-enhanced counterpart, it is largely produced through a juxtaposition to what are seen as the latter’s risky and deviant milieus, practices and identities (Monaghan, 2001).

This article has aimed at contributing to an exploration of bodybuilding as a varied and evolving phenomenon that highlights transformations and tensions among different sporting embodiments. In sketching a broad picture of a previously uncharted sporting activity, I acknowledge that many areas require further examination. Taking into account situated conceptions and significances of ‘sport’, future research could look into the varieties of and dynamics between models of amateur/professional and recreational/elite practice and competition, and how these may affect the constitution of natural bodybuilding in specific historical and cultural contexts. Also, it would be interesting and important to pursue a more detailed investigation of the often contested definitions of the terms ‘natural’ and ‘drug-free’, and how these come about and are mobilised by different actors. Finally, more work is necessary to explore the trajectory of natural bodybuilding in other geo-cultural contexts, as well as the complex impact of gender in the shaping of male and female natural bodybuilding.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial suport for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: The author has received funding for this research project from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 661505.

Notes

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