MAKING SENSE OF MUSCLE 317 Making Sense of Muscle: The Body Experiences of Collegiate Women Athletes* Molly George, University of California, Santa Barbara Using ethnographic research, this paper explores the experiences of elite women athletes on a Division-I college soccer team. I draw on existing literature in the sociology of sport, sociology of the body, and interactionism to inform my analysis. With this approach, I illustrate the complicated relationship women athletes have with their bodies in relation to physical competition and dominant notions of femininity today. Key refer- ence groups influenced the players’ self-perceptions and encouraged the women to closely monitor their own appearances and actions. While undoubtedly affected by these inter- actions as well as their place in the gender hierarchy, many women athletes subtly resisted notions of idealized bodies and constructed their own meanings about their bodies and experiences. Investigating the day-to-day body awareness and negotiations of women athletes reveals the gendered nuances of sport and the complicated relationship between cultural ideals and female embodiment. After scoring the winning goal in the Women’s World Cup in 1999, U.S. soccer player Brandi Chastain tore off her jersey in spontaneous celebration, revealing her strong, muscular body. Her image was featured in countless magazines and newspapers along with comments both on her risqué action and on her well- defined physique. The world was thus introduced to the powerful image of an elite female athlete. The fact that Chastain received such a tremendous amount of media attention may be attributed in large part to that fact that she represented the new ideal for female beauty. Numerous scholars have suggested that the past feminine body ideal of ultra-skinny has changed to one which now requires women to not only be slender, but muscular and toned (Bordo 1993; Duncan 1994; Markula 1995). The athletic body type has become the latest standard for female beauty. While there remains a continuum of body ideals, a recent social trend has made muscu- lature for women not only acceptable, but desirable. The fit woman has become ubiquitous in popular culture. Once largely invisible or negatively portrayed in the media, women athletes have recently been embraced as cultural icons (Heywood and Dworkin 2003). However liberating that sounds, it is not easy to obtain the new toned slenderness ideal embodied by these athletes. This physique requires most women to rid themselves of all fat through exercise and diet and then train to build just the right amount of “sexy, feminine” muscle. Negotiating the precise amount of muscle adds another interesting dimension to this body ideal; having too much muscle is a violation similar to excessive body fat. For female athletes at the Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 75, No. 3, August 2005, 317–345 © 2005 Alpha Kappa Delta