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Bodybuilding is a body technology that involves the building of muscle through hard work lifting weights. Although technologies like bodybuilding can reify dominant constructions of gender. I suggest that bodybuilding also reflects the attempts of participants to be active agents in the choices they make about their bodies. This article addresses the body as a work in progress and uses in-depth interviews with male and female bodybuilders to examine the ways that gender identity is consistently negotiated as participants reshape their bodies. This ongoing identity negotiation is reflected in the ways participants assess various body technologies, like bodybuilding, muscle-enhancing drugs, and cosmetic surgery as natural or unnatural. Based on the responses, I explore the idea of a natural/unnatural continuum as a framework for understanding the ways that the participants fluctuate in their assessments of hugely built and other technologized bodies.

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Women who participate in outdoor recreational activities reap many physical and emotional benefits from their experiences. However, gender-related feelings of objectification, vulnerability, and fear in this space limit women’s participation. In this study, the authors investigate how women pursue their enjoyment of urban outdoor recreation at South Mountain Park in Phoenix, Arizona, despite their perceptions and experiences related to fear of violence. Through surveys and interviews with women who recreate at South Mountain, the authors look at the ways the women cope with their fear using various strategies. This study reveals the gender-related conflicts that persist for participants, who grapple with their appreciation of uncompromised nature and their need to feel safe in this environment. Ultimately, they illustrate how an ongoing negotiation exists for the women as the authors balance choices and concerns related to their outdoor recreation and what aspects of surveillance and control they consider, reject, or accept.