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Masculinities in Hardcore Bodybuilding

Article  in  Men and Masculinities · February 2008

DOI: 10.1177/1097184X07304809

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Men and Masculinities OnlineFirst, published on September 18, 2007 as doi:10.1177/1097184X07304809

Men and Masculinities

Volume X Number X
Month XXXX xx-xx
© Sage Publications
10.1177/1097184X07304809
Masculinities in Hardcore http://jmm.sagepub.com
hosted at
Bodybuilding http://online.sagepub.com

Bryan E. Denham
Clemson University

In his definitive ethnography of hardcore bodybuilding in Southern California, Klein

(1993) examined gender construction in a narcissistic subculture characterized by
deceit and excess on many levels. In the present article, I compare my own experiences
as a strength athlete and bodybuilding author with some of the observations Klein made
at Olympic Gym. Like Klein, I address ironies associated with hardcore bodybuilding
and discuss the nature of deviance in the bodybuilding subculture.

Keywords: bodybuilding; masculinity; physical culture; deviance; drugs of abuse

L ike many individuals who become dedicated inhabitants of hardcore bodybuild-

ing gyms, I entered the “iron game” following the rehabilitation of injuries sus-
tained in other sports. In my case, during my sophomore year in college, I reached
career double digits not in scoring, assists, or saves, but in cumulative number of
shoulder dislocations, putting an end to my days on the pitch. But where keeping
goal on the soccer field tended to induce more stress than it relieved, I found work-
ing out with weights an ideal pastime for reducing the anxieties and releasing the
tensions that I, like most college students, grappled with on a daily basis. I began
working part-time at a local health club, adhered to a lifting regimen grounded in
basic exercises like squats, bench presses, and deadlifts, and became a student of the
human musculature, focusing on how barbells, dumbbells, and Nautilus machines
challenged the muscles through progressive resistance. I read Muscle & Fitness mag-
azine each month and studied the nearly flawless physiques of those who appeared in
its pages. As a journalism major with an emphasis in magazine article writing, I also
took note of those who penned monthly columns for Muscle & Fitness, envisioning
myself doing the same.
I competed in several physique contests during my undergraduate years, placing in
the middle of the pack most of the time. While I always showed up with one of the
more athletic, proportionate physiques, I never arrived with one of the more massive
structures—nor did I seek to. At twenty, I simply wanted to continue competing in
some form of athletics, and the daily bodybuilding workouts substituted perfectly for
daily soccer practices. Moreover, in the gym, I avoided the kinds of collisions, erratic
movements, and awkward falls that had led to multiple injuries. Lifting weights

Copyright 2007 by SAGE Publications.

2 Men and Masculinities

offered a kind of solace that I had not found in other sport pursuits, and I especially
liked the fatigue and tranquil state of mind that followed intense workouts.
After graduating from college in May 1989, I departed the Midwest for Southern
California, the Mecca of bodybuilding and physical culture. I had lined up summer
employment at an adolescent weight-loss camp. When I wasn’t playing basketball, soc-
cer, or softball, going swimming, or bicycling, I was shuttling camp attendees to the
likes of Laguna and Newport beaches, Disneyland and Universal Studios, and of course,
to the popular walkway at Venice Beach, where people roller-skated with electric gui-
tars, juggled running chain saws, and contorted their bodies into remarkable positions.
The outdoor weight-lifting area, where bodybuilders such as Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Franco Columbu, Dave Draper, and Frank Zane had once trained, continued as a popu-
lar tourist attraction, although it had lost some its novelty by the time I saw it.
In 1991, I enrolled in a graduate program nearby. While a grad student, I made
the rounds to several bodybuilding gyms in the Los Angeles area. I also began to
write training articles about bodybuilding, submitting them to Muscle & Fitness and
a few other magazines. Over the next decade, I contributed upward of forty articles
to Ironman and the Canadian-based MuscleMag International, as well as a few more
mainstream magazines such as Men’s Health and American Health & Fitness. After
fifteen years of lifting in gyms nationwide, I’ve come to believe that the terms
“health and fitness” and “hardcore bodybuilding” have little in common.

Alan M. Klein’s 1993 book Little Big Men has become the quintessential text
about bodybuilding subculture. Klein spent several years in Southern California,
observing gendered communication and deviant behaviors in one of the hardcore
gyms of Venice. Consistent with my own experiences, Klein arrived on the body-
building scene having been socialized athletically along more traditional routes—the
kinds of routes that involved pecking orders based on athletic talent. Depending on
how one approaches bodybuilding, the pastime may or may not qualify as a sport;
talent, as it were, is based largely on appearance, which sometimes correlates with
intensity in the gym and at other times with staggering amounts anabolic steroids,
diuretics, and human growth hormone.
To my knowledge, three high-profile bodybuilders whose photographs appeared
with my training articles have been involved in homicides, two as the perpetrators of
murderous acts and one as a victim. While I do not believe bodybuilders, in general, have
a proclivity to commit murder, I do believe that many well-reasoned, well-intentioned
individuals who compete in state-level physique competitions lose interest after wit-
nessing the extreme behaviors and extremely narcissistic personalities of those who
become bodybuilding “champions.” A few years ago I read an article in The Harvard
Mental Health Letter that focused on antisocial personalities, and the individuals
described there bore some resemblance to a portion of those I have met in the ranks of
hardcore bodybuilding. The Health Letter (2000) described these individuals as
“Callous, deceitful, reckless, guiltless, often intimidating, sometimes violent” (p. 1).
 Denham / Masculinities in Hardcore Bodybuilding 3

I would be reluctant to characterize bodybuilders as antisocial. As textbook

narcissists—not psychopaths—these individuals show little regard for others, appear
to believe that people get what they deserve, and are usually determined to be the cen-
ter of attention. Grandiose tales of sexual conquests tend to arrive less in the form of
locker room humor and more in the form of perturbed insistence. Their word often
means next to nothing, and they typically choose a path of no resistance, allowing
others to hang in the balance. Depending on them to arrive at a certain time or assist
at an inconvenient moment will almost certainly leave one frustrated. Yet, they are not
stone-cold killers. Those who have killed arrived with that capacity; bodybuilding did
not turn them into executioners. Because bodybuilding, by definition, involves
increasing muscle mass and focusing largely on oneself, those who use and abuse
others may gravitate toward it. In the three situations with which I am familiar, infi-
delity, perceived disloyalty, and a fundamental inability to cope with emotional strain
appear to have precipitated the deadly acts. Each act involved a weapon, and each
could have been carried out by an individual of average size and physical strength.
In my view, then, steroid psychosis (i.e., “roid rage”), which has been used suc-
cessfully as a legal defense, explains only a part of homicidal actions, and a potential
part at that. Anabolic steroids may play a role in setting off violent rages, but if this
potential is to be directed at bodybuilders, then it also must be directed at steroid-using
police officers who rough up people who have behaved disrespectfully (see Hoberman
2005), and also to U.S. soldiers who leave for war as average-sized men and return as
muscular hulks, the result of using synthetic testosterone to assist in coping with war
and the possibility of perishing from a bullet wound. Crimes of passion occur among
bodybuilders just as they occur among those immersed in other subcultures. With
bodybuilders, however, their intimidating bodies and self-involved personalities often
offend those in the academic and journalism professions, making the physique com-
petitors easy targets for criticism. In reality, highly narcissistic individuals may gravi-
tate toward bodybuilding, given its capacity to create an impressive shell, but those
with the potential to commit cold-blooded murder enter the gym with that capability
already in place. Killers need not be mesomorphs. In the coming years, as men
throughout Middle America come to rely on products such as Androgel, a synthetic
form of testosterone that helps to restore lost levels of energy and vitality, defense
attorneys will have a new weapon in their arsenal of alibis.

Andreas Munzer sought to follow his idol and fellow Austrian Arnold
Schwarzenegger to the top of bodybuilding, and before dying in 1996 at thirty-one,
Munzer did become known for his ultra-ripped physique. Unfortunately, tremendous
quantities of steroids and diuretics had assisted him in his bodybuilding pursuits, and
he appears to have died from an abdominal hemorrhage and ultimate cardiac arrest,
his organs shutting down one by one. As Nack (1998) reported, Munzer died four
years after Mohammed Benaziza, of France, died of renal failure following an over-
dose of diuretics, which bodybuilders often use to help rid the body of any water
that might cloud muscle striations. Other bodybuilders have found themselves on
4 Men and Masculinities

backstage floors, fighting to survive after meltdowns induced by drug combinations

and/or electrolyte depletion.
Not only do bodybuilders stand to suffer physically from abusing chemical sub-
stances, they sometimes find themselves in trouble with the law on drug-related
offenses. In a recent documentary, bodybuilder Gregg Valentino suggested that
nearly every bodybuilder who uses anabolic steroids to beef up also ends up selling
anabolic steroids, at some level, as a means of supporting the bodybuilding lifestyle.
I have known bodybuilders who have been greeted by drug agents upon deplaning
commercial flights, and in some cases, anabolic steroids were but one item in the
confectionary. Valentino found himself arrested for dealing drugs, just as many
others have, not only for steroid distribution, but for other substances as well.
At the elite level, bodybuilding is saturated with drug use, and steroids are just the
first item on a menu that would astonish most pharmacists. Indeed, while the subject
of morbid obesity has received considerable press coverage in recent years, those
who spend their lives seeking the perfect body are often in worse shape than those
with severe weight problems.
Just as the morbidly obese may engorge themselves with the likes of “monster”
burgers and calorie-dense desserts, bodybuilders who appear at the top of their cho-
sen profession are often those willing to abuse their bodies with excessive amounts
of illegal drugs. While large numbers of men and women train with weights for
many years, building symmetric, aesthetically pleasing physiques, they stand little
chance of competing in physique competitions beyond the state level, and that is
where bodybuilding, as a sport, loses all credibility. Those who attend professional
bodybuilding shows expect to see “freakish” physiques, and for the most part, that
is exactly what they get.
Indeed, competitive bodybuilding has been ruined by the same demands for excess
that have plagued other sports in recent years. Major League Baseball All-Star games,
for instance, have been upstaged by home-run derbies that feature hulking power-
hitters launching 500-foot missiles into the next stratosphere. Slam-dunk competi-
tions have upstaged All-Star games in the National Basketball Association, and the
strongman competitions shown on ESPN contain a certain carnival dimension with
which basic barbells and steel plates cannot compete. Across all of these pastimes,
the focus is on individuals, not teams. Bodybuilding takes that focus to an extreme,
with competitors continually on the lookout for ways to cheat the system and arrive
at a contest with the most stunning muscle definition.
Irony associated with hardcore, or elite, bodybuilding becomes most interesting
when the androgenic properties of anabolic steroids yield undesirable outcomes. For
instance, when scientists developed synthetic testosterone to assist in cases of muscle
deterioration—that is, when they focused on synthesizing a hormone with anabolic
capacities—they did not develop the ability to eliminate androgenic side effects. The
androgenic properties of steroids pertain to male sexual characteristics, such as facial
hair, deepening of the voice, and development of the genitalia. Relative to women, men
 Denham / Masculinities in Hardcore Bodybuilding 5

have approximately forty times as much circulating testosterone in their bodies, and as
a consequence, when women use large amounts of anabolic steroids, they may experi-
ence somewhat drastic side effects, such as clitoral enlargement, decreased breast size,
and menstrual irregularities. In other words, they may experience the masculinizing side
effects of the drugs they have taken for muscle building.
In contrast, males who abuse anabolic steroids may experience the development
of female breast tissue, a condition termed gynecomastia, when their use of the drugs
becomes erratic and begins to interfere with normal production of testosterone in the
body. Additionally, men may experience a reduction in the physical size of the testi-
cles and a loss of scalp hair, among other side effects. Thus, while one might expect
individuals who appear hypermasculinized from the standpoint of muscle mass to
have more impressive male sexual characteristics, those characteristics sometimes
move in the opposite direction one would anticipate. In the case of gynecomastia,
surgery is often required to restore a normal appearance near the nipple area, and in
attending a bodybuilding competition at nearly any level, one can observe those who
either cannot afford the surgery or who have not had it performed for other reasons.
The nipple area appears puffy, and well-conditioned pectoral muscles make that
puffiness appear all the more unusual; in short, breast tissue has begun to emerge.
Male competitors thus may take on the characteristics of women, and female com-
petitors sometimes may take on the characteristics of men. Perhaps it is ironic that
gender non-conforming women begin to resemble men, while the hyper-conforming
men begin to resemble women. Perhaps the margins of hypermasculinity, male or
female, enter the realm of the transgendered.

Bodybuilding magazines have served as softcore gay pornography since the latter
years of the nineteenth century, when legendary strongman Eugen Sandow posed for
photographers while performing feats of strength and Bernarr Macfadden began pub-
lishing Physical Culture. In the middle of the twentieth century, publishers of other-
wise explicit photography aimed at gay men found that postal inspectors tended to
look less askance at publications characterized as physique, or athletic, magazines
(see Hooven 1995; Stokvis 2006). Thus, models posing largely in the nude frequently
appeared with barbells and dumbbells nearby. Written material about workout rou-
tines assisted the publishers in keeping authorities at bay, and in retrospect, my own
training articles may have served that purpose on some level; vivid color photography
is what sells bodybuilding magazines, with workout routines filling in white space.
At least two of the bodybuilders with whom I am familiar chose gay pornography
as one source of income: Chris Duffy became Bull Stanton and Bruce Patterson
became Chris Thunder. In observing the decision by these two physique competitors
to earn money by performing in gay porn films or posing for explicit magazine
photographs, I make no assumptions about their actual sexualities, as plenty of
bodybuilders have capitalized on the rather substantial demand for homoerotic mate-
rials—and sometimes more.
6 Men and Masculinities

In a chapter titled “The Hustler Complex: Narcissism, Homophobia, Hypermasculinity,

and Authoritarianism,” Klein (1993) discussed the double lives some bodybuilders lead as
homophobic shouters by day and hustlers for wealthy gay men by night:

Selling of sex by a certain segment of the bodybuilding community prompts four

immediate questions: Are hustlers gay? Why would the bodybuilder do this? How
many bodybuilders do this? Just what is involved? The last question is most easily
answered. As hustlers, bodybuilders are generally paid to engage gay men in a range of
behaviors that, at one end, includes simple escort services, becomes more sexually
explicit, as in appearing at gay parties (for example, popping out of a cake nude), and,
at the other end, includes the only authorized sex act: allowing a gay male to perform
oral sex on the hustler. (p. 195)

Hustlers thus are not assumed to be gay—and in the majority of instances, they
probably are not—but they are willing to use their bodies to sexually gratify gay
men. Is hustling deviant? In a state such as Nevada, where prostitution is legal, hus-
tling may be unworthy of mention; in more conservative areas, it might be consid-
ered deviant behavior.
For their part, female bodybuilders are always in demand by schmoes, who sit in
dimly lit auditoriums watching the bodybuilders pose and then approach them after
contests, often seeking to “wrestle.” I recently spoke with one elite competitor who,
when approached and asked about her price for a “session,” quoted standard rates for
personal training before realizing that the fellow who had approached her actually
sought another kind of exercise. The spectator, or voyeur, sought sexual gratification
from being physically dominated, perhaps humiliated, by an extremely muscular
female (who, incidentally, did not oblige).
Apart from hardcore pornography, sexualities and sexual favors among body-
builders are generally kept discreet. For some, bodybuilder Bob Paris broke the rules
when he told an Ironman writer, on the record, that he was gay. In his prime, Paris’s
physique represented the ideal: broad, square shoulders, narrow hips, sweeping
quadriceps, and excellent balance. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger before him, he had
an exceptional body, but not one that appeared cartoonish. One could look at pho-
tographs and believe that over the course of two decades, such a physique could be
attained by someone with excellent genetics for bodybuilding. Many of those who
wrote homophobic letters to Ironman after reading the interview with Paris undoubt-
edly admired his physique, but they also subscribed to a certain set of rules about
“public” sexualities.
In his 1991 book, Beyond Built, Paris offered both balance and sensible advice,
but when he and his partner Rod Jackson appeared on a subsequent cover of
MuscleMag, striking similar poses, the hate mail began to arrive at magazine head-
quarters in Canada. “That cover did not go over too well in the Deep South,” one editor
told me; some readers preferred certain lifestyles to be kept in the closet.
 Denham / Masculinities in Hardcore Bodybuilding 7

Powerlifters are among those who would appear to prefer that bodybuilders, in gen-
eral, remain out of view. In the mid-nineties, as I pursued my doctoral degree, I com-
peted in several powerlifting meets held across the South. Lifting in states such as
Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, I came to favor powerlifting over
bodybuilding because athletic performance—not posing—determined success. At a
powerlifting competition, lifters receive three attempts in each of three exercises—the
squat, the bench press, and the deadlift—with the top lifts in each aggregated for a
meet total. In short, he who lifts the most weight prevails, and thus powerlifting can
make a stronger case for being an actual sport. This is not to suggest that powerlifters
do not have their own set of tricks, though, for I once spoke with a meet director who
had caught a competitor wearing three bench-press shirts over a bullet-proof vest, the
front of the flak-jacket effectively simulating the pectoral muscles during each lift
attempt. On the whole, however, competitors who resort to such apparatuses are
exposed and disqualified, their athletic credibility lost in the process.

In 1986, at age nineteen, I began lifting weights because I enjoyed the pastime and
because bodybuilding offered an opportunity to compete at a sport that did not involve
erratic movements. For the most part, the local bodybuilding contests in which I com-
peted were fun and worth the effort that went into preparing for them; most of the com-
petitors had jobs or attended college as full-time students, and few competitors
grounded their entire sense of self-worth in their physiques. Beyond the local level,
though, bodybuilding became a qualitatively different enterprise, as former high school
athletes seemed to disappear and competitors with very little athletic background began
to show up sporting massive, pharmaceutically enhanced bodies. Looking back to my
days in the gym, my path actually resembled that of many female bodybuilding com-
petitors in that the preponderance of the women who compete in physique contests have
been gymnasts, competitive track and field athletes, and so forth; in contrast, some of
the men who gravitate to bodybuilding barely qualify as athletes.
Indeed, in bodybuilding, the difference between local or regional competitions
and national or professional contests can be dramatic, as Klein (1993) observed. At
the elite ranks, drug use is both pervasive and, from a pharmacological perspective,
frightening, as individuals with no scientific training dispense advice about oral and
injectable steroids and what to do when various side effects occur. In the days when
Arnold and his fellow trainees inhabited Gold’s Gym in Venice, California, steroid
use certainly existed among some bodybuilders; however, use of steroids and other
drugs did not approach the copious amounts of chemical substances used by com-
petitors today, some of whom envision themselves as the next Arnold. The very fact
that Schwarzenegger, in particular, has succeeded so far beyond the posing dais has
led many individuals without his mesomorphic capacities and natural charisma to
give bodybuilding a shot. But rather than train year after year, performing basic exer-
cises like squats and heavy dumbbell presses, many neophytes seek a magic pill that
will expedite their path to stardom. Most, of course, never arrive.
8 Men and Masculinities

Is bodybuilding a sport? Many bodybuilders have never competed in team sports and
thus have not learned the lessons of both victory and defeat. The reality of athletics is
that some individuals have superior talent, and the reality of hardcore bodybuilding is
that few measures of that talent occur in the context of practice sessions and scrim-
mages. Bodybuilders do not have wrestle-offs or head-to-head races to determine inter-
nal and external ranks. Rather, they simply show up and hope for the best; when defeat
arrives, the capacity to cope with that defeat may be absent. Additionally, because scor-
ing in bodybuilding contests, like scoring in beauty competitions, is somewhat subjec-
tive, allegations of ulterior motives and bad intentions frequently emerge. Hardcore
bodybuilding is, finally, a pastime inhabited by extremists, who have created a
no-holds-barred subculture out of an otherwise healthy activity.
Bodybuilding magazines are a male equivalent of fashion magazines, and pub-
lishers and editors operate in a system containing considerable irony. Throughout her
tenure as editor of Cosmopolitan, Helen Gurley Brown has touted herself a leading
feminist, yet the emaciated models that have graced her magazine covers have been
criticized as helping to lead young women to question their physical measurements
and sometimes develop eating disorders and depressive symptoms. Those who sub-
scribe to bodybuilding magazines and purchase them from newsstands want to see
hulking tanned bodies, and if those who publish these magazines decided to only
print photographs of models from Men’s Health or Men’s Fitness, sales would plum-
met. Consequently, magazine publishers must strike a balance between the business
and editorial departments, such that audience members find several articles of inter-
est, as well as several photographs of popular bodybuilders. Just as the publishers of
fashion magazines do not determine how professional models remain statuesque and
slender, the publishers of bodybuilding magazines do not determine how physique
models appear lean at 260 pounds.
In sum, while bodybuilding can be a healthy and life-affirming activity, strength-
ening both the mind and the body, those who compete in its elite ranks have returned
the pastime to the carnivals where it began. Instead of building their bodies over the
course of several years, making incremental gains based on structured workouts and
intelligent nutrition, competitors have opted to develop their physiques through drug
regimens “prescribed” by self-declared experts and gurus. Modern-day bodybuild-
ing competitions have come to resemble freak shows in which competitors cheat one
another with the latest in drug cocktails, and if bodybuilding ever resembled a sport,
the likenesses have most certainly dissipated.

References
Harvard Mental Health Letter. 2000. Antisocial personality—Part I. December.
Hoberman, J. 2005. Testosterone dreams: Rejuvenation, aphrodisia, doping. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
 Denham / Masculinities in Hardcore Bodybuilding 9

Hooven, F. V. 1995. Beefcake: The muscle magazines of America, 1950-1970. Cologne: Benedikt
Taschen.
Klein, A. M. 1993. Little big men: Bodybuilding subculture and gender construction. New York: State
University of New York Press.
Nack, W. 1998. The muscle murders. Sports Illustrated. May 18.
Stokvis, R. 2006. The emancipation of bodybuilding. Sport in Society 9 (3): 463-479.

Bryan E. Denham is Charles Campbell Associate Professor of Sports Communication in the Department of
Communication Studies at Clemson University. He has held weightlifting records in several organizations,
most notably the Missouri Valley AAU.

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