Att bygga manlig kropp och identitet : Mediabilder av bodybuilding i 1960-talets Sverige

Sammanfattning: This study is about how bodybuilders in the 1960s are produced in the Swedish media image. The purpose of the study is to clarify how the male, muscular, body and identity is portrayed in the media image. Through an analysis of how daily- and evening newspapers reported, negotiated and linguistically produced bodybuilding and its practitioners, I hope to access these representations which together can be considered to form a specific discourse about bodybuilding. The language used by journalists, columnists, muscle bodybuilding and other people represented in the material formed the analogies, dichotomies and symbols that shape bodybuilding's identity in the 1960s. I have tried to show how the creation of meaning about bodybuilding and its practitioners construct the bodybuilder’s identity during the period in question as well as what the bodybuilder represented and what value the practitioner and his activities were attributed by and also how the gender norms can be distinguished from the actual material. I have chosen to call this period the legitimation phase of bodybuilding and by this I do not mean whether bodybuilders become an authorized representative of a masculine ideal, but rather the fact that through the media image of meaning negotiation he receives specific characteristics and cultural connotations that are maintained and renegotiated through language. Through the 1960s media image the bodybuilder is neither intelligent, beautiful and he has no soul, he also has feminine attributes and a passive muscularity. On the other hand, because of the positive qualities emphasized in his defense he is also handsome, intelligent, he has a soul and he has an active male body. This is also a part of his identity.