Looking good, feeling good: the embodied pleasures of vibrant physicality

Abstract

Social scientists of medicine have largely, although by no means exclusively, focused their research on illness and sickness thus obscuring social scientific investigations of positive health and wellbeing. Undoubtedly, important reasons exist for this but the relevance of studying ‘healthy’ bodies requires emphasis and wider acknowledgement within the newer (embodied, non‐dualistic) sociology of health and illness. This is necessary because the concrete corporeal manifestations of ‘health’ in everyday life – components of and preconditions for embodied social practice – may, paradoxically, erode bodily capital while simultaneously contributing to it. Using qualitative data generated during an ethnography of bodybuilding subculture, this paper contributes to the sociology of ‘healthy’ (transgressive) bodies. It describes the somatic representation of health and youth, the so‐called erotics of the gym and the perceived benefits of anaerobic exercise for everyday pragmatic embodiment. Contra critical feminist studies, it furthers an appreciative understanding of ‘risky’ bodywork in post‐ or late modernity and underscores the value of bringing healthy lived bodies into medical sociology.

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