Homosexuality in bodybuilding

Homosexuality in bodybuilding: Debunking stereotypes about gays being more into fitness and heterosexual bodybuilders engaging in homosexual services for pay.

Homosexuality in Bodybuilding

Bodybuilding and homosexuality form a peculiar duality. On one hand, bodybuilding epitomizes masculinity and macho behavior driven by testosterone. On the other hand, we see fully shaved men oiled up and in thongs standing on stage or posing for photos that would likely not be out of place in homoerotic magazines and websites.

In this article, I won’t delve into the supposed number of homosexuals in bodybuilding because frankly, I find it utterly uninteresting. They exist, period. It seems logical given that statistically, you can assume there are homosexuals in any sport practiced by more than 25 people. This is based on the assumption of the 4% of men who have been “exclusively homosexual” since puberty and have never been attracted to women (since puberty). If you look at the percentage of men who were only “exclusively homosexual” for a period, that percentage is already between 8-10 percent. If you look at the number of men who have “had a homosexual experience resulting in orgasm” it apparently goes up to 37%. At least, that’s what this research found in 1948 [1].

To claim with such statistics that there are no homosexuals in bodybuilding, you would have to be even more ignorant than René van der Gijp when he said there are only one or two homosexuals in football. Speaking of homophobia: The fact that I have often said, “The metrosexual is dead, long live the macho,” does not mean I am homophobic. I am metro-phobic and have more trouble with straight men wearing scarves in the summer and enjoying shopping with a woman than a gay couple holding hands on the street. The latter has no influence on me, whereas those so-called metros made it impossible for a man to claim that he just naturally hates shopping and isn’t interested in fashion.

But well, that was a bit off-topic.

Mike Mentzer on Homosexuality

In his last interview dated 10-01-2001, five months before his death, Mike Mentzer said the following [1]:

And it’s also true that there’s a lot of homosexual hustling going on. It’s been going on since the inception of bodybuilding in the early part of the century*. It appears that there’s a faction of homosexuals who find bodybuilders irresistible and are willing to pay them considerable sums of money for sexual favors. I know a number of bodybuilders who have done this, too, but for obvious reasons I’m not going to reveal their names.

Mike Mentzer

*20th century

“Gay 4 Pay”,”Homosexual Hustling”

Now onto something completely different.

I already mentioned the contrast between the ultra-macho physique of pro-bodybuilders on one hand and the fact that they stand on stage in rather unmasculine posing slips, brown and shiny from tanning. Unfortunately, you can no longer just stand on stage in swim trunks like in Arnold’s time. “After all, the glutes must be clearly visible.” The necessity for tanning can also be well explained from a competitive standpoint. Everyone wants their muscles to be as accentuated as possible, and a dark, shiny skin helps with that.

That this looks gay says nothing about the sexuality of the bodybuilders on stage. In fact, for many, it may have been a reason to hesitate to participate in a competition. For me personally, it was one of the reasons never to compete. Roelly Winklaar, the best-performing Dutch bodybuilder at the moment, also said in the documentary “Generation Iron” that he initially thought: “No way!” at the thought of standing on stage like that. However, many overcome this with the thought that this is simply a necessary evil to be successful in bodybuilding.

Bodybuilders who promote themselves via social media often receive requests from homosexual men to pose in certain ways for payment. However innocent the poses themselves may be, the fact that they are done at the request of someone looking to satisfy their homosexual desires makes this fall under the category of “gay 4 pay.”

The most famous example is probably Kai Greene, about whom I’ve written before that many think he will never become Mr. Olympia because he once accepted such requests to put bread on the table. This would make him not the right “poster boy” for bodybuilding. However, given his enormous popularity, few seem to care. He is also certainly not the only one. The chances of making a good salary and securing a pension with professional bodybuilding are even smaller than those of doing so as a pro footballer. However, it takes more time and money to reach that level as a bodybuilder.

If someone offers to pay you for what you normally do on stage, the barrier is very low. You are not doing anything homosexual yourself if someone with a muscle fetish happens to climax at the sight of your muscles. However, if more and more requests become increasingly erotic, the money involved may be tempting enough for some to abandon certain principles.

Wrong? Does that make you gay, or as they would say in Jamaica, a “batty-bodybuilder”? That obviously depends on your definition of gay and the services they are tempted to provide.

Why Should Women Be Allowed and Men Not?

When it comes to internet pornography, men are simply larger consumers compared to women, both heterosexual and homosexual. Women in the fitness industry have learned to capitalize on this fact, although they wouldn’t claim to be active in the sex industry. Think of women like Jenny Selter (“Instagram’s famous buttocks”) and Paige Hathaway. Both women have millions of followers on Instagram and Facebook, not because they are in the top 5 of women participating in fitness or bikini competitions. They are popular because they post many photos of themselves online. Photos that they claim motivate other women, but in practice are mainly admired by men. However, the fact that many men’s hands become more active by seeing their photos does not make them “sex models,” just as a bodybuilder is not gay because a man masturbates to his images.

The big difference between the two is that these women have such a large following that they don’t need to entertain further requests to earn money from their appearance, whereas for men who don’t have a sponsorship deal, this may be different. The same goes for female bodybuilders who allow men to pay for “muscle worship.” Because far fewer men are interested in this, they generally “have” to go further than bikini models to earn money from their appearance. This was well depicted by Louis Theroux in one of his documentaries.

In a previous article, I wrote about the fact that men often have a too muscular ideal of the man as perceived by women. In other words: If they were as muscular as they would like to be, most women would not find this attractive. For homosexual men, this may be different. Although the emphasis generally lies on being slim, it is quite possible that they still find a certain amount of muscle mass attractive, whereas a woman would see it as too muscular. After all, they are also men themselves.

References

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