Entre espelhos e telas: o corpo na sociedade do desempenho

Abstract

In contemporary society, the body occupies a central place as a field of dispute, traversed by social norms, media discourses, and practices of care, discipline, and display. Fitness culture, especially weight training, is configured as a privileged setting to investigate these dynamics, involving gender issues and the growing influence of social media in the construction of bodily and emotional subjectivities. Anchored in the perspective of the anthropology of emotions and employing cartography as a method, this study aims to understand the emotional experiences of people who practice weight training in the contemporary context, influenced by gender issues and social media. The research was conducted with eight young cisgender adults residing in Campo Grande and Dourados (Mato Grosso do Sul), who regularly practice weight training and consume fitness culture content on social media. Semi-structured interviews were conducted predominantly online. The results revealed that weight training, as a central practice in participants’ routines, is permeated by marked affective contradictions. Many accounts simultaneously express feelings of pride, joy, and belonging, alongside intense internal demands, bodily dissatisfaction, and frustration with performance. This duality affects the relationship with the body and training, configuring weight training as a field of tensions between pleasure and suffering. Social media, equally ambiguous, function both as sources of inspiration and motivation, and as spaces of comparison, surveillance, and insecurity, amplifying emotional challenges related to bodily care and exposure. These tensions are also shaped by gender, which molds the experiences significantly, with women facing intensified surveillance through rigid aesthetic norms and male gazes, while men manifest a complex relationship involving performance, competition, and vulnerability. These nuances reinforce the complexity of affective and gendered processes present in contemporary bodily practices, highlighting the importance of understanding the multiple dimensions that constitute bodily care and exposure, especially through the lens of dispositives of gender.