Some ideas formed through and after a conversation with Isa Fontbona Mola

• Marina Ambramovic called her teaching sessions “Cleaning the house” – ‘house’ stands in for ‘body’ (research https://mai.art/cth2020)

• Traditionally the idea of housekeeping includes ideas that denote female pastimes as cleaning windows and floors, buying/keeping/making food, polishing, tidying, dusting, wiping, washing and making attractive. The house/home becomes the woman’s domain. Heteronormatively, outside the home – the garden, garage, shed, bins but also inside the attic or cellar, is the mans.

• Woman are ascribed the emotional labour, this is the emotional glue of caring, balancing & making sure everyone is OK/functioning or enabling function. Prompt order and request tasks to be done – emotionally taxing – nagging. Seen, unseen (&unwanted?) labour. Got to be ‘just right’ or right enough. Supervising – overseeing – overarching role?

• Can a link be drawn between bodybuilding and the action of keeping a house/house keeping?

• How does male and female bodybuilding differ? What role does attention to detail play? Attention to which details?

• Could female bodybuilding be imaginatively linked to an extreme, extra or deeply defined attention to detail version of housekeeping?

Things to consider:

• Eating disorders
• Body as political statement.
• Not defying female, but re-presenting.
• Not male attributes, but ‘further female-ifying’
• Female fear of becoming perceived as masculine. 
• Western cultures to 1950’s definition of gender
• Goal based – what is the goal?
• Has this been done?