ABSTRACT

The gym-built body that made Eugen Sandow famous also made him rare-few men of his time possessed the muscular symmetry of Michelangelo’s David. A lot has changed: today the gym-built body is present everywhere and displayed not only by circus performers or strongmen as was the case 100 years ago, but by an ever-growing number of mainstream men from students and professors to waiters and accountants, and men in just about every profession, occupation, and trade you can think of. This phenomenon confirms the fact that a new ideal has risen: the muscle boy ideal. Although this ideal is not the exclusive domain of gay men, it is now more prevalent in gay culture than in any other subculture or cultural group. Ideals travel and incorporate themselves into the mainstream by several methods: of these, the most influential one is media-ranging from informative and medical to entertainment and erotica. In this chapter I take a look at how muscle media has propagated into the hands, eyes, and minds of modern men-while at the same time pointing out just how much the modern ideal of man has been influenced and shaped by gay culture. In doing so, this chapter traces the steps of homosexual influence in the various types of muscle media by which the muscle boy ideal has traveled in modern times: photography, print, film, television, and its most powerful vessel yet-the Internet.