Heckert's Typology Of Deviance

Bodybuilding began in the 1890s, from Mr. Eugene Sandow, whom the Mr. Olympic statue is modeled on. (historyofbodybuilding.org) Bodybuilders participate a sport that requires strength, commitment, discipline, passion, courage, and sacrifice. They often times have to sacrifice the “pleasures” other people get to enjoy in an effort to reach their goals. They appear in lineups, perform individual posing routines, in front of a panel of judges who rank them on criteria including muscularity, symmetry, and conditioning. Bodybuilders prepare for these competitions through dehydration, tanning, and fat loss which all work together to make their muscle definition look more distinct. On the surface, bodybuilding seems to be something that is worth the

They define negative deviance as “behaviors that involve under conformity or nonconformity to normative expectations and negative (societal) evaluations.” (Heckert and Heckert ) Negative deviance in the case of female bodybuilders is for the most part about body image that comes as a result of their exercise and diet routines. Female bodybuilders are seen as deviant due to their pre contest extreme dieting, frequent and intense workout routines, bulky muscles, visible striations, veins, loss of breast tissue, steroid use, and masculine features or behavior. They are often times subjected to gendered policing by people such as friends, family, random people at the gym, or sexual partners. The heternormative norms in our Western society dictate what the female body should look like, as well as boundaries determining how much masculinity is acceptable for a woman and when she crosses the line into negative deviance. Men are perceived as dominant and are supposed to be the “strong” person in the relationship. Female bodybuilder’s masculine features pose as a threat to men, and challenge the hegemonic masculinity norms of western society. The challenging of these norms makes female bodybuilders seem deviant. Women who choose to participate in the sport of bodybuilding risk facing malicious, and rude audience reactions and these reactions shift over context and