Now, don't get me wrong. I'm all for buff and bodacious bodies, but your Gym Dandy wants to get a wee bit serious here. Labels like Gym Queen underscore a schism that exists within the gay subculture and, to a lesser extent, the heterosexual world. We live in an increasingly stratified community in which those who exemplify the societal image of beauty depicted in movies and magazines are at odds with those who do not conform to the perceived ideal. Gyms provide one very obvious example of the widening divide.
Let me explain. As a consequence of HIV, the fitness craze and mainstream acceptance of male eroticism, we have learned to devalue the variety of shapes the human body naturally takes. We reacted to the physical horrors of HIV by attempting to create a super-exaggerated healthful image. Logically, we knew this didn't mean we were free of the virus, but it provided emotional security.
The 1980s ushered in the idea of the human body as machine. Advances in medicine, training techniques, and in understanding human physiology contributed to the notion that our bodies were something quite separate from our minds, something that could be modified and reshaped. Science allowed us to cast off the Christian ideal of the sacred body. Now we could control it, shape it, make it better than it ever had been before.
Popularized by such cultural phenomena as Tom of Finland's hyper-masculine drawings and later by mainstream advertisements for the Gap and Calvin Klein, homoeroticism paved the way for the mass consumption and commercialization of the male physique. The male body has achieved universal sex appeal not seen since the days of Socrates and Hadrian.
These forces have made it increasingly troublesome for gay men in recent years to get under their skin and muscle. But lest we forget, the fact that homosexuals come in a Baskin-Robbins variety of sizes, shapes and colors is one of our greatest cultural, political and community strengths. As the saying goes, "we're everywhere." Every race, every creed, every social class, every nation. And every body type.
I know I sound like the worst pontificator, but it irks Gym Dandy when we live in divided camps, in cliqish physical clubs of have and have-nots, when we values ourselves so prominently on physical appearance alone. Let's not sink to the level of male chauvinist hetero pigs who find sport in reducing women to objects of sexual desire and nothing more. And let's be cautious about giving and receiving validation based purely on our physical attributes.
- Douglas Robson, J-School '95