(the) American (Novel of)

42 Kenneth J. Saltman
Hardcore bodybuilders identify with Gods, animals, machines, and money.
And this is what they become.
Hardcore bodybuilders do not identify primarily as consumers,
workers, family members, religious followers, or citizens. Yet, it is hardly
the case that hardcore bodybuilders are outside of capitalist social relations.
In the legitimate economy they buy gym memberships, supplements,
magazines, sportswear, and cures for steroid-induced baldness,
impotence, and high blood pressure. In the illicit economy they buy
steroids by the barrel. However, while they do consume commodities
and services specifically marketed to them in a niche economy, do
hardcore bodybuilders follow the proper codes of behavior, social norms,
and etiquette that assure the necessary regular, stable, and predictable
consumption and production patterns and social groupings of individuals
in the present form of capitalist economy? The untempered individualism,
the antisocial tendencies characterizing the market and
hardcore bodybuilding’s performance of it are best exemplified by the
greatest ever of the fold, Arnold Schwartzenegger: “Whatever I thought
might hold me back, I avoided. I crossed girls off my list—except as
tools for my sexual needs. I eliminated my parents too.” 1
Schwartzenegger, and perhaps more properly Joe Weider’s media
empire (he currently publishes Muscle & Fitness and Flex, both of which
advertise Weider supplements), pioneered the extremity of the sport of
bodybuilding not merely by inventing new exercises and nutritional
regimens but by transforming barbell culture from what was once associated
with “health and Christian living” from the days of Bob Hoffman’s
York Barbell Company, to a hyperindividualistic, image-oriented, and
highly competitive sport geared toward ever bigger competitors. And
there could be only one winner. One Mr. Olympia judged by size. The
Weider/Schwartzenegger era of hardcore male bodybuilding was monotheistic.
There could be only One God and He had to be the biggest. 2
Hardcore bodybuilding has its own rules, its own etiquette, and
these have principally to do with building a more massively muscular
lean body than anybody else. It is about being the biggest and the best.
Hardcore bodybuilders will destroy not only their personal relationships
but their health as well. Stacking steroids, they gladly trade kidneys and
livers for an inch on the tricep, swap hair and normal testicle and
clitoris size for an inch on the latissimus dorsi. The prime principle of
hardcore bodybuilding is the same as that of capitalism: growth at any