Natural bodybuilding: An account of its emergence and development as competition sport

Abstract

Natural, i.e. drug-free, bodybuilding has been rapidly developing in different parts of the world as a distinct body culture with its own practices, discourses, organisations, key figures and focal points. A central aspect of this has been natural bodybuilding’s emergence and development as a competition sport. The present article traces its tentative articulation in the late 1970s, its formation as part of a broader natural movement in bodybuilding in the 1990s, and its consolidation and global expansion from the 2000s to the present day. In sketching this trajectory, natural bodybuilding is situated in the context of the bodybuilding industry and its historical transformations, as well as of the broader phenomenon of performance- and image-enhancing drugs and the reactions the latter has provoked in sport and wider society. The aim of the article is to offer an initial overview of a previously uncharted competition sport and in the process contribute to an exploration of bodybuilding as a varied and evolving phenomenon.