ON A WARM SUMMER NIGHT, August 7, 2007, Barry Bonds hit the 756th home run of his
career, passing Hank Aaron as the all-time Major League Baseball home run leader (SaduharoOh of the Yomiuri Giants in Japan remains the world record holder with 822 in his career).
Hitting a 90-plus-mile-an-hour fastball 400 feet in the air takes a significant amount of
power—but also eye–hand coordination, catlike reflexes, and remarkable agility.
Perhaps it also takes drugs. For the last few years of his career, Bonds has been plagued
by accusations that he took anabolic steroids to increase his size, bulk, and power. Some
have suggested that his record have a
permanent asterisk affixed to note
that it was not accomplished natu-
rally. Photographs of his early years
compared with his later career show a
body that has changed as much as
Michael Jackson’s face over the same
amount of time.
The public debate about Bonds’sachievement almost inevitably turns on either/or questions: Did he take steroids or not? Did
he “really” break the record or not? But to the sociologist, the lines are never as clear. After
all, virtually every athlete uses some form of chemical elixir—from Gatorade to surgery—to
enhance performance. And steroids may increase size and power, but they do nothing
about speed or eye–hand
coordination.More than that, these
debates indicate something
deeply social about our bodies.
On the one hand, we may expe-
rience them as private posses-
sions, over which we exercise
complete control. From child-
hood, we’re taught that no one can touch our bodies without permission and that respecting
others means respecting the sanctity of their bodies. That our body is our own property isThe Body and
Society: Health
and Illness
521There are few things more personal
and private than our bodies, and few
things that are more shaped by social
processes. Our bodies are ourselves, as
the women’s health handbook told us,
but they are also profoundly social.