Exploring the social lives of image and performance enhancing drugs: An online ethnography of the Zy

Background

As a result of the mainstreaming of bodybuilding, the majority of image and performance enhancing drug (IPED) users are now not athletes or competitive bodybuilders, but recreational bodybuilders. Previous approaches provide little insight into how the shift from competitive to recreational contexts impacts the use of IPEDs.

Methods

In this study an online ethnographic approach is used to explore the social lives of IPEDs in a recreational context. The study focusses on the Zyzz fandom, an international online community of thousands of recreational bodybuilders who idolise the alleged IPED user Zyzz.

Results

Zyzz fans see IPED prohibition as failing, as causing harm to users, and as sexist. Their IPED use is informed by not only instrumental benefits, but social benefits such as altering gendered power relations. IPEDs have been normalised in this community, and new patterns of use are emerging.

Conclusion

IPEDS have moved through different hands, contexts and uses, and in so doing the values, norms and meanings attached to IPEDs have changed. The results suggest that intervention efforts may be best directed towards harm minimisation, and in particular towards bridging the divides between the medical and bodybuilding communities.

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