The Gym Body and Heroic Myth

• Published in: The Gay & lesbian review worldwide 2001-07, Vol.8 (4), p.14
• Main Author: DICARLO, JOHN
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Advertisements; Beliefs, opinions and attitudes; Body image; Body, Human; Disorders; Early second language learning; Exercise; Gay men; Gays & lesbians; Human relations; Interpersonal communication; Men; Musculature; Myth; Mythology; Personal appearance; Personal relationships; Physical fitness; Physiological aspects; Portrayals; Recreation; Self image; Sexual behavior; Sexuality; Social aspects; Social conditions & trends; Society; Sports; Time; Youth
• ISSN: 1532-1118

Before I start to wax rhapsodic about this physical ideal or its real-life manifestations, let me admit that I'm ambivalent about the place of this body ideal in gay life. I myself work fairly hard to achieve this ideal, and I look for it in others, but I'm not talking about my personal taste or style here. "Ripped," "swimmer's build," even "football type" (as defined in the gay world) -- all are heading in the same general direction. I am more concerned about the motives behind the impetus to build this type of body in the first place. Of course it's shallow to care whether a man (including oneself) has a layer of fat around his middle. No doubt this body obsession can lead to commodification and manipulative advertising, steroid use and eating disorders. But while critics have pointed to these negative effects, they have often ignored the subjective experience of the men so engaged, assuming their motives to be purely sexual or narcissistic ones. For a gay person, entering the gay community after the experience of the closet can be both liberating and terrifying, like being rescued from drowning by a pirate ship. For the most part, young men are socialized in the bars and clubs -- our version of "boot camp" -- and this is true even today. When they arrive in the city, they desperately want to fit in, to find a place in some kind of community, perhaps for the first time in their lives. They enter this world hungry for attention, over-defended and mistrustful, and what they find can be rough. Leaving the closet and entering this new world means taking up an opposing set of myths, and the body is a focal point for the "little Stonewall" of each person's coming-out experience. To counter the closet's myth of effeminacy and weakness, the muscle body has become a central symbol in the rite of passage into this new world. On the crudest level, muscles can serve as armor to defend against the harsh conditions of the larger society -- and those of the gay world itself. The Fountain of Youth myth, second, is a desire to be youthful again in order to accomplish the tasks left incomplete in the closet. Many gay men had a disastrous adolescence, not really developing as they should because they were living inauthentically. So life is postponed until at least one's early twenties. Acquiring this body is often a way men link up with rites of passage that have otherwise passed them by. Other adolescent behaviors such as serial dating, preening, and clothes shopping can