Gamified bodies and the illusory meaning of muscle

• Main Author: WOODS, Orlando
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: feminist geographies; gamified bodies; metabolic infrastructures; muscle; Singapore; Asian Studies; Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/122
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This paper foregrounds the agency of the body to explore how it is “gamified” in the pursuit of a desired self-image. Gamified bodies are those that are tricked into metabolising in ways that suit the representational aspirations of the self. The aspirations that I consider in this paper are those of muscle, and how individuals trying to build muscle pursue various metabolic tricks to try and overcome, or otherwise suppress, the in-built agency of the body. Exploring and understanding these tricks contributes to feminist understandings of the body generally, and of muscle specifically, and its unruly nonconformity to the gendered expectations of the self in/and society. I illustrate these ideas through an empirical exploration of Singapore-based body builders. I consider how they are caught within the intersecting gazes of Singapore’s socio-familial structures, (inter)national norms of gendered representation, and the agentic phenotype of Asian body sizes and musculature. By exploring how these characteristics coalesce, creating a dynamic that is constantly being negotiated through the gamified body, I advance an understanding of how muscles become imbued with illusory, rather than manifest, forms of meaning and value.