Whiners Go Home: Tough Mudder, Conspicuous Consumption, and the Rhetorical Proof of "Fitness"
Published online on February 02, 2014
Abstract
This article examines how the confluence of sports and masculinity articulates with modern capitalism in shaping subjectivities crucial to performing in the hypercompetitive corporate world. We explore how Tough Mudder, as part of a larger matrix of power relations, provides a site that allows participants to gain rhetorical proof of their "fitness" within that world. Furthermore, our purpose is to demonstrate how the logic of neoliberal capitalism is reflected within Tough Mudder challenges that culminate in an embodied performance of discipline toward that logic. We also argue that these challenges act as "functional sites" that are specifically produced and mobilized for the training of individuals’ minds and bodies to align them with the values of a dominant political and economic order.