The Making of a Masculine Body: Lay Expertise, Commodified Desire, and Steroids in Professional Wrestling

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 7: Culture, Labor, and Meaning Making at Work

Abstract

Given the dramaturgical nature of professional wrestling—where choreographed performances of athleticism, storytelling, and exaggerated physicality are co-constituted alongside their broader social contexts—wrestlers’ bodies must not only endure rigorous physical demands but also embody culturally-specific narratives of power, gender, and identity. Drawing on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Mexico City and Chicago, as well as interviews with former and current professional wrestlers, I examine how performers navigate pressures to modify their bodies—particularly through steroid use—to embody hegemonic ideals of masculinity that enhance their marketability and career longevity.

Extending the conceptualization of cultural objects to include embodied forms, I argue that wrestlers’ bodies are not merely biological entities but commodified objects molded by transnational circuits of performance and desire. This approach reveals how bodily transformation in professional wrestling is driven by social, economic, and technological forces, where the use of steroids is not merely an individual choice but part of an industry-wide system that structures opportunities and success.

Wrestlers operate within informal yet highly organized backstage networks, where lay expertise on steroid use circulates among performers, family members, and industry executives, blurring boundaries between official and unofficial medical knowledge. This project illuminates the contours of these informal networks, particularly in how wrestlers acquire, apply, and distribute steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Additionally, I explore how shifting transnational aesthetic standards shape expectations of the wrestling body, revealing how global exchanges influence the legitimacy of particular masculinities.

By bridging insights from cultural sociology, science and technology studies, and the sociology of gender and sexuality, this project situates professional wrestling as a critical site for examining the intersections of materiality, performance, and commodification in the making of hypermasculine bodies. Wrestlers’ bodies, I argue, are not merely sites of physical labor but are actively produced and maintained through relational networks of human and non-human actors.

Author

• Miguel Chavez, Northwestern University