(the) American (Novel of)

The Breathing Breach of Etiquette
as “big clit.” Female hardcore bodybuilders also sell Altoid mints and
commodified academic work as in the “Picturing the Modern Amazon” exhibit
in New York City in 2000. The question that has yet to be answered
about hardcore bodybuilding is how it could subvert dominant power relations:
patriarchy, labor/capital, white supremacy, and so on. My own suspicion
is that like other forms of transgression, this one may not only do nothing to
challenge power relations but may more effectively keep power relations in
place. The consumption of transgression in the rise of extreme sports, suvs,
violent action films, and so forth, relates to the decline of actual transgression—acts
that threaten the social order. That is, the fantasy of transgression
seems to actually replace transgression. The question remains whether transgression
is possible any longer as a progressive political stance, and if not,
whether the guise of subcultural radicality now in fact does little more than
function as the ultimate ideological tactic.
3. Baudrillard, Jean, Fatal Strategies (New York: Semiotext(e), 1990),
p. 29.
4. Quoted in Lipsyte, Robert, “Extreme is in the Eye of the Beholder,”
New York Times, October 11, 1998, p. A13.
5. Muscle & Fitness, September, 2001, p. 110.
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