When considering the O-1 nonimmigrant visa, the category you apply in can make a huge difference. Why? Because even U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) acknowledges that the standard for extraordinary ability in the arts (O-1B) is lower than the standard for extraordinary ability in athletics (O-1A).
And this is the topic I want to talk about today…athletics versus art. Or maybe we should say, performance versus aesthetics.
Specifically, I hope to answer the question, should bodybuilding be considered an art or a sport? And how does this relate to the O-1 petition process? For those who think the answer is straightforward or easy—you might be surprised.
I’m Mike Pulcinella, an independent agent acting on behalf of international talent and their employers in filing O and P nonimmigrant visas.
I’m also a filmmaker with several bodybuilding documentaries well known to aficionados. My Raising the Bar series, starring my national level bodybuilder brother Dave Pulcinella, has been ranked among the best bodybuilding films of all time, ranked highly with the better-known Pumping Iron on some lists
https://www.teamstrengthspeed.com/recommended-documentaries
http://ironzoobyfrank.blogspot.com/2011/02/truly-applause-bodybuilding-documentary.html
I’ve also created documentaries such as OVERKILL, REDEMPTION, A Day In The Life Of A Bodybuilder and many shorter mini-documentaries (all available to view on my Mike Pulcinella YouTube Channel) with pros at the highest level. I’ve followed world-renowned bodybuilders Kai Greene, Victor Martinez and others through their training and then backstage and onstage at the most prestigious contests, the Arnold Classic and Mr. Olympia competitions, to see what it takes to perform well at the pinnacle of competitive bodybuilding.
https://www.youtube.com/user/gatomjp/videos
Having spent most of my life immersed in bodybuilding I have a special insight into this difficult endeavor that few others have. Having also spent my professional life since 2004 presenting bodybuilding to the world through my documentaries I feel uniquely qualified to discuss the implications of bodybuilding as it relates to O-1 non-immigrant visas.
More specifically, how should bodybuilders be classified in an O-1 petition? And why do certain classifications matter?
Let’s start by looking at dancing as it relates to the O-1 process and then compare that to how bodybuilding is perceived by the public and by USCIS.
Almost everyone would consider “dancing” to be an art form, right? Certainly, something like ballet dancing or modern dance are widely considered to be art forms.
However, there’s a fairly well-known case where a ballroom dancer was denied an O-1B visa because USCIS ruled that ballroom dancing was a sport, hence in the “athletics” category, requiring the more difficult to obtain O-1A visa, rather than an O-1B visa.
Read about it here…
bit.ly/429Ab3M
If you’ve ever seen videos of professional competitive ballroom dancing, you can see what they mean. I would agree with USCIS here, this is less like what we think of as dancing and more like a gymnastics floor routine!
I don’t recall ever trying this move back in my disco days!
It also didn’t help the petition that competitive ballroom dancing is known as “DanceSport” in the industry, and is regulated by organizations at the national and international level, such as the World Dance Council and the World DanceSport Federation.
But more than that, USCIS pointed out in its denial that the International Olympic Committee, no less, has formally recognized DanceSport as a sport under consideration for inclusion in the Olympic games.
The petitioner tried in vain to argue that DanceSport is “not really” an athletic sport despite its name, its competitive nature and its Olympic recognition, as well as the intensive physical training and fitness requirements equal to other athletic endeavors.
Their argument didn’t work and needless to say, the petition was denied.
Now let’s turn to a sport I am more familiar with, bodybuilding.
Did I say sport? I meant art!
In fact, the debate over whether bodybuilding is a sport or an art has been raging in the industry and in popular perception for years; quite vehemently, in fact. Merely mention on any social media platform that you think bodybuilding is a sport and you will receive some not-so-polite corrections of your mistake.
I have experienced this personally in the comments section of my YouTube channel where I have been posting long- and short-form bodybuilding documentaries since 2005.
I have witnessed and engaged in a quite a few very…let’s say, spirited discussions over the proper definition of bodybuilding. I’ve gotten many comments that say something like,
“Bodybuilding is nothing more than a pumped-up beauty contest.”
Or, “It’s a freak show. Let’s see them run or catch a ball.”
Or, “All they are doing is strutting around and posing. How is that a sport??”
And the debate is ongoing. (I mean, it is the internet after all.)
But the critics of bodybuilding do have a good point. Setting aside the fact that bodybuilding posing, i.e. flexing every muscle in the body while gracefully moving from exacting pose to exacting pose, is extremely taxing on the body and takes a fair amount of athleticism to do well, a bodybuilding contest can be said to be more like a Miss America pageant or an art exhibition than it is like an athletic competition.
If you’ve never tried it, this is harder to do than you think!
Classifying a bodybuilder as an artist rather than an athlete is further aided by the bodybuilders themselves.
In a famous outtake scene from the seminal bodybuilding documentary Pumping Iron, which brought bodybuilding into the mainstream and introduced us to one of its most iconic stars, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold and two other major bodybuilders of that era, Frank Zane and Ed Corney, put on a live exhibition of their physiques at the Whitney Museum in New York in 1976.
Their bodies and poses were judged by a panel of art experts and attended by a crowd of onlookers that overwhelmed the expectations of the filmmakers, who were the organizers of the exhibit.
This was the wider public’s introduction to bodybuilding, not as a sport which required skill, endurance and athleticism, but as a visual art which differentiated it from athletic competitions and competitive games.
That widespread perception has remained to this day. Most people see bodybuilding as a kind of strange “beauty pageant”, and beauty, as we know, is always subjective. In my opinion it is not an unwarranted view.
Ask any amateur or professional bodybuilder and they will tell you that they see their body as an abstract form to be molded, exactly as a sculptor does a block of marble or wood, according to artistic values of balance and proportion.
Just as a visual artist uses marble, clay, wood, metal or even ice as their media for expression, bodybuilders use their very own bodies as the canvas or media to express their art.
Yes, they use weights and exercise, as athletes do, but these are simply tools to shape the muscles, no different than the chisel and hammer used by a sculptor.
Even though the training can be quite rigorous, again the ultimate goal is not to attain a higher level of performance, as a powerlifter, football player, Olympic diver or ballroom dancer might desire, but rather to attain an aesthetic ideal which is then judged on highly subjective artistic criteria much like the criteria used to judge a painting or sculpture; composition, contrast, balance, form, etc.
The final lineup at the Mr. Olympia competition - the BIG boys!
In addition to being judged on the size of their muscles, (yes, bigger can be better, but not always) bodybuilders are evaluated on symmetry, proportion, the shape of the individual muscles (flattened or rounded), how and where the muscles join the tendons and insert into the joints, as well as conditioning. A lot of this is pre-determined by genetic factors, but it is brought to fruition, given its fullest expression and consciously molded through rigorous training methods.
That last bodybuilding criterion, conditioning, refers to an extreme lack of fat and water in the body, which thins the skin and enables the judges and audience to see every muscle fiber. Lack of proper conditioning is often the undoing of many a competitive bodybuilder who, despite a superior physique, fails to get the highly scientific “dryout”, as it is called, correct on the day of the show.
This is what conditioning done well looks like. You could also knock him over with a feather right now.
In this depleted, dehydrated and very difficult to achieve state (a necessity to win) the competitors are barely able to walk on stage and pose without becoming lightheaded, let alone perform any athletic act normally associated with sports. Some have been known to pass out onstage or backstage and, in a few tragic instances, the extremes to which bodybuilders have pushed themselves have even resulted in death.
Contrast this with the criteria for judging a ballroom dancing competition.
According to the World DanceSport Federation, ballroom dancing judges look for an interrelated set of performance criteria such as timing, rhythm, hold, movement, foot action, floor craft, as well as more aesthetic criteria such as costume and body line (the shape of the dancers’ bodies).
It is this emphasis on the performance aspects of ballroom dancing versus the largely aesthetic judging of bodybuilding that makes the former fall more into the category of sport and the latter is more like an art.
That distinction is something we can use to our advantage in an O-1 petition.
Remember, the standard for O-1A visa classification in the fields of business, education, the sciences and athletics is extremely high. So, if you are a bodybuilder looking to come to the USA to compete, do a sponsored photo shoot, serve as a Brand Ambassador, or make personal appearances, you might think the difficult “athlete” criteria applies to you, but I would argue that this is wrong.
I would present bodybuilding not as a sport or an athletic endeavor, but as an art, subject to the same requirements for an O-1B visa as any other art, which is a high level of “distinction…substantially above that ordinarily encountered” in the field of arts.
Contrast that with the requirement for O-1 athletes of “…a level of expertise indicating that the person is one of a small percentage who have risen to the very top of the field of endeavor,” and I think you’ll see why one would prefer to petition as an artist.
That’s why you want to find knowledgeable and experienced representation, no matter what category of O-1 immigration you are in. Seek out those who have an understanding of the subtleties of your field of endeavor, knowledge of the minute details of immigration regulations and have years of experience submitting successful petitions, as the firms and attorneys I work with do.
Contact me at The Pulcinella Agency pulcinellaagency@gmail.com to get started on your business immigration journey. I am not a lawyer, but I have relationships with a wide variety of experienced immigration lawyers I can turn to at a moment’s notice to help answer any questions you might have.
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