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S. Department of Health reported that a quarter-million schoolboys were taking steroids in 1991, mostly in athletic programs, while almost all Olympic-competition trackand-field athletes in the United States appear to be involved. The number of teenage women using anabolics doubled to 175,000 in the 1990s, and about 3 million men in the United States are estimated to use them. I S How might we make sense of these trends theoretically and historically? Norbert Elias, who analyzes sports and social structure synchronically and diachronically, coined the term "figuration" to designate how people inhabit social positions.

Four decades later, the actor playing him redeploys the words for political purposes, cleaving to himself the persona of the original speaker. Enunciation loses historical specificity, and banality benefits. Thought disorder reigns. Such stereotypes function as ethical norms that generate new habits amongst the citizenry. Still, fissures do appear. In their analysis of Australian nationalism and the Olympics, David Rowe and Geoffrey Lawrence note that the media "break out into a nationalistic sweat" when a new star emerges.

The competitive nature of international sports has of necessity extended the form and rigor of exercise beyond polite gender divisions. Activities that previously were restricted to male gymnasts are incorporated into women's routines, thereby equating strength with grace as a sign of competence in public performances, while the male figure skater Rudy Galindo performs routines containing elements that are coded as feminine (such as displaying his ass). All of this, however, occurs in an additionally contradictory manner: Juvenile female competitors are taught to flirt with their audiences in the quest for judge and crowd appeal.