When did guys commonly having or striving for rock hard, muscular bodies become a thing?

Another image.

During AIDS, as a 'look, me so healthy I cannot have plague.

I feel like the 80s with the beginning of the workout craze.

Hippies don't exactly seem like the type to be pumping iron. Then or now.

I'll tell you exactly when it started: 10/26/1984... the day "Terminator" opened.

I believe gay adonises were a taboo in the early cinema era, and limp wristed buffons were preferred as a representation of male homosexuality. George Platt Lynes and Paul Cadmus showed us the gay muscular male.

It's always been there. Look at old Tarzan films. It is usually an unattainable look, hence . Muscles, less body fat, et al. is what most men want. To achieve it is another story. And genetics play a big role. Looking good, having a nice muscular body is an art.

Combo of the fitness age in the 80's, movies with Sly Stallone and Schwarzenegger, and I have to think the AIDS crisis. But thankfully the huge muscular look for gays is mainly over - although there are a few guys who continue to look ridiculous.

Superman, the Silver Surfer, Incredible Hulk, the Phantom.

I used to like seeing this old ad in comics.

More naked hippies.

Where's Guitarzan?

You are comparing the stoned out druggies at Woodstock to a norm?

Sorz

I think they were ore or less representative of young men’s bodies fifty years ago.

Not musclebound. No cum gutters.

Also, not so fucking fat.

Like many things about the US in 2018, things have hot polar extremes all over the place.

I remember in the 80s it was all about Sly Stallone then Arnie. And having big balls was desirable although steroid users now don't seem to care as much.

I know the 80’s was a great time with strong emphasis on working out. I was the pioneer. How do you think these guys got such hot bodies?

Bruce Weber’s Abercrombie campaigns, et al.

I blame Olivia Newton-John!

Mt T

Rocky Balboa

I started going to the gym in 1979, after seeing Michael Ives and friends in a swimsuit issue of GQ. I'd had a gay boss who went to the gym two years earlier, but at that time, I was still happy looking like one of those Woodstock hippies. Maybe AIDS had something to do with it, but I had an easier time getting laid before I had a "rock hard, muscular body" that was "a thing."

To me, it's the Calvin Klein and his underwear ads in the 80's. The same era also brought back money worship and narcissism. Every decade since has amplified these trends.

When we started consuming GM food, burgers and pizzas, carbonated drinks and cereal for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I blame Marky Mark.

When did steroid misuse and roid rage become a known thing?

Big muscles can be a real turn off. The muscles a farmer might get from a hard days work, that's nice.

It began in the 1980s but that decade was lost to circuit machines like nautilus which did little to help you pack on muscle. So the look became more prevalent in the 1990s.

Um, hello?

This, too, shall pass.

Blame Dolph Lundgren

I'm from Baltimore/DC. Mandatory Muscles began around 1990 here. Why?... popularity of steroid use...Bruce Weber...HGH...'Exercise For Men Only' and 'Mens Fitness' magazines...International Male/Undergear catalogues...Greg Louganis and Bob Paris...slutty club wear...gay men evolved from aerobics to Nautilus to weight lifting to bodybuilding.

I thought it was an anti-AIDS look myself.

But I long for and prefer the old-fashioned 'good body' looks: less exaggerated and more natural.

Those are endangered as people's lifestyles have changed and become less healthful overall.

When I was a teenager (70s) most of my classmates had trim, fit bodies, but it's not like they spent a lot of time at the gym. We had a couple of chubby guys, but I don't ever remember seeing anyone I could classify as muscular. Boys back then participated in various sports, and many of us rode bikes, and walked a great deal. I really think all the hormones we now consume in our food have caused most of us to beef up unnaturally. So guys (in the US, at least) now have to choose between being beefy but undefined, or defined. The younger Euro guys still seem to be able to remain trim and fit.

I agree with the notion that the Bruce Weber/Calvin Klein collaborations had a huge impact on the male ascetic to the public at large.

I think it's more of a US thing. European clothes are cut for slim, non-muscular male bodies. You do see muscle guys around, especially in summer, but it's not a mainstream ideal.

Living in Europe we have switched from the bulky to the lean muscular look.

It was always a thing. We put so much value on physical strenght, because we are still trapped in this belief that strenght helps to (serve,) provide and protect. Wars need strong men as foot soldiers (more like cannon fodder). Strong looking men can mate with the most fertile women (like in the animal kingdom where the males perform their elaborate mating rituals in order to attract females). Strong men being able to handle the (physical) curve balls life throws at them.

I live in Europe and prefer the ideal here. People tend to not eat fast food, and they walk a lot more/use public transport, so they are naturally slimmer. They also tend to play sports or swim as exercise, instead of spending hours pumping iron.

So yeah, European guys tend to be slim and lean, which is a look I like. Bulky muscles and roid looks are a total turn off.

I would have taken every load available in OP's pic.

Italy here. The ideal is strong developed legs and ass...but with a lean torso. Bulky muscular guys are kind of looked down upon.

...there's no business like SWOLE business , Like SWOLE business I know! Everything about it is appealing.....

I grew up in the 80s. I think it became culturewide then, from 80s teen movies to Ahnuld to Olivia Newton-John to Soloflex to professional wrestling—oiled up musclebound DBs were the thing to be. I can see the argument for it becoming a gay thing as a way of advertising “I’m not wasting from AIDS!” but it does seem more pervasive than that. My childhood friend Nick’s mother and stepfather were bodybuilders who had giant bottles of supplements all around their house that said “100% steroid free strength!” or something (can you imagine what that might have been back then?), and magazines of grotesque oily, overly tanned bodybuilders everywhere.

The 80s was a decade of cocaine-fueled excess. Shiny red sports cars, big money, big shoulder pads, big hair, loud colors, big muscles.

I think that looking at Woodstook photos is a poor reference, though. Even in the 80s when “bigger is better” was the general mentality, male rock stars from Bon Jovi to Bret Michaels and Axl Rose were lean and ripped but not muscular, and many music fans built themselves in their images. Marky Mark and LL Cool J did become musclebound icons for 1990s young guys, so that did probably push it farther.

I graduated from high school in 1996, and I remember few people of my era being obsessed about having a gigantic musclebound body. I remember a few guys in my HS who were wrestlers and gigantic in that way and I think everyone kind of saw them as extremists and kind of dumb.

I would say that the BIG, “swole” type of bigger-is-better phenomenon in general among American guys happened with the resurgence of the Atkins diet, which made body obsession mainstream, and the advent of creatine and Muscle Milk and similar supplements. Today’s America is like ancient Sparta in that it seems people have their children bodybuilding by their pre-teen years, so that kids are more muscularly developed by 17 now than I knew anyone could be before his 20s. And it’s really only over the past five to eight years that I became aware women are commonly into not only working out but getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I worked with a young woman who seemed like a nerdy, quiet researcher and then she slowly “came out” as a competitive weight lifter, and then one day she wore a sleeveless shirt that revealed she had tattoo sleeves to her elbows. She and I butted heads twice because she had explosive episodes of what may have been some kind of “roid rage”—very much an Incredible Hulk-type sudden explosion of uncontrollable anger—and I had to remind her that she is a grown adult, in a public work space and that actions in such environments have consequences, and she had to go away and calm down. She quit before long and I wonder if she was taking steroids or testosterone supplements or what. Either way, she was into power lifting, meaning a lot of weight and at least in part for the purpose of putting on a lot of bulk.

I also used to walk home in the same direction of a young women who was probably about 5’ or 5’1”, and she had a very pretty face, gorgeous long, shiny hair, and she wore very tight fitting dresses and heels—feminine packaging—but she was built like a female linebacker. She definitely was not transgender, but her shoulders, arms, thighs, even her pecs bulged under her dress and it just confounded me.

It’s a different world today. People want to look like livestock. And so be it.

Ten years ago if a guy saw a woman’s ultra-femme face on Instagram (not understanding what an Instagram filter is or how the art of selfies had been so perfected), and then met her and she had the body of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger, he would probably freak out and run away. Today, that’s the ideal woman for a lot of Millennial guys.

R34, I lived in DC then, and I was doing all of that throughout the 1980s.

Except not the steroids or HGH.

Re Europe - I saw three guys whom I assume were models at a fashion party in Milan. They looked like 10 year old boys on stilts. No shoulders, no chest development, thin like the thinnest female models, and quite tall, with hairless feminine faces.

It is the same as the unattainable perfect woman image. Muscular men are thought of as more manly and thus more attractive.

Nowadays American portion sizes are double what they were in 1968. And people who go to the gym, usually ineffectually, reward themselves with even more food and drink than they would have not going to "work out."

R2 got it right. It was a response to AIDS. All of a sudden, gay men had to change their focus from taking drugs and dancing all night to maintaining their health.

There are all sorts of the usual exceptions and ancillary concerns that exist in every in every circumstance. But the hard muscled gym body moved from the fringe to center stage in the mid-1980's, just as AIDS was mowing down people right and left.

The 80s definitely. I grew up thinking the bodybuilder type was the most atttractive type. Which sucks when you are naturally skinny and can’t build muscle easily. I used to hate my body but I’d have it back now that I’m Middle Aged and FAT!

I was naturally skinny, but muscular. I never wanted to be "the bodybuilder type." Still, I was never able to perceive even the slightest change in my body.

All of the above. It's a sad trend that doesn't seem to have an ending.

Ironically, I think gay men are more forgiving on physiques. For breeder women, of course they all want to see six-pack abs when he takes his shirt off now. Anything else is a disappointment.

There was an article about this in The NY Times I think, and they did the same thing, they compared the 90s Woodstock body to the 60s Woodstock body with pictures, and questioned what created the change.

Oddly enough, male fashion models are now skinnier, when before they were buff.

Vic Tanny & Jack Lalanne started it all, then later came Arnold and "Pumping Iron" and more mainstream interest in bodybuilding. I still see far more unfit slobs and regular looking people than I do muscular bodies...but maybe if you live in a select few highly cosmopolitan pockets of the US and don't venture outside their borders very much, it's a different story.

It's really been from the early 2000s on that guys across the board have become obsessed with body image. I blame the media and advertising....and obviously the rise of the gays aesthetic. When I was young in the mid 80s six packs were almost exotic

To continue from my last comment I think before the late 90s bodybuilding and gym going was still fairly niche in the general public.

This looks interesting on the topic.

bullshit, r54. "breeder" women do not all want a 6 pack on a man. i view those as a sign of mental illness, and someone who spends way too much time at the gym or obsessing over looks.

actually, the "ideal" physique i want to see is much more like Cary Grant and his boyfriend frolicking in the pool at home, or Sean Connery in early Bond. fit, but not unattainable by most.

When the SoloFlex craze started, and people wanted to be more healthy.

That's around when I started, r61, but "be(ing) more healthy" was never my motivation.

It was a new hyper-competitive contest in 30Something dating. This desire to build muscles that don't perform any real-world function was given a venue that generates a shit ton of income.

You could say when Arnold Schwarzenegger became a household name, but bodybuilding didn’t really catch on till Scott Madsen started promoting Soloflex. Then, every guy wanted to have a hot body.

Btw, Scott did do prison time for embezzlement. Sad, but true.

First it was you have to look pumped in order to stand out and get other people's attention and respect (or being feared and intimidated by them - because nobody picks on you when you look intimidating). Now you have to look like that in order to fit in or be the odd, scrawny or fat geek out.

[quote]Scott did prison time for embezzlement.

And then he died.

In the 1970s, everyone wanted a body like Bruce Jenner. Now? Not so much.

Wasn't there an article a few months ago about how this expectation for boys to look like Instagram models is sorta jacking up their self esteem?

I thought the opposite was the point, r68.

Sorry.. meant fucking up their self esteem.

I like both body types.

Hippies 50 years ago had luxuriant full bushes. Muscularity and depilation trended together.

Wow, didn’t know Scott died!

[quote] Hippies 50 years ago had luxuriant full bushes.

I'm jealous about the bushes. I went to HS and college at a time when shaving was becoming de rigueur, but pubes and chest hair have made a comeback in the last couple of years thankfully.

Rock Hard bodies were the rule in olden times. We had become soft by the 60s and despite muscle worship today, most people are shapeless blobs.

r74 Once you shave, they never grow back the same. You can always tell.

Thankfully, R76, I never shaved.

Some of the Woodstock guys in the first picture are yummy, especially the guy at the lower left of the photo with the necklace . I love slim guys with natural bodies. No tattoos, no piercings, no rings , no shaved public hair.

R78 has taste.

I agree R78., and I’m 27. Those pretty, naturally lean guys without tats are perfect. It’s pretty tough finding guys like that now. I’m not anti tattoo either— the fad has just gone overboard and crossed into ugly territory now. One or two meaningful ones on hot pretty hippie are just fine :)

R80 GQ magazine had a maxim—

'A tattoo should never be larger than your penis'

78- here. Thank you 79 and 80. I agree it is hard to find guys like the ones in that first Woodstock picture nowadays.

I watched My Bodyguard (1980) on Amazon the other night. Almost all of the bullies in that movie including Matt Dillon were totally slim. They were slim thugs. Matt Dillon was slim and tough in all of his movies. Slim and tough and HOT.Today tough goes hand and hand with muscular. Most guys today are either fat , muscular or both.

If you shave your crotch too much, the pubic hair doesn’t grow full as much...very sparse.

I love that, R81. Pretty much sums up my tattoo limits!

"If you shave your crotch too much, the pubic hair doesn’t grow full as much...very sparse."

As you very well know, sir! Good day to you, sir! Good day to you!

R54, no way. Gay men are WAYYYY more into the heavy muscle look on men than straight women are. It is much more common for a beautiful woman to date a fat guy than a heavy muscled gay man to date a fat or even just plain old skinny guy.

I watched My Bodyguard (1980) on Amazon the other night. Almost all of the bullies in that movie including Matt Dillon were totally slim. They were slim thugs. Matt Dillon was slim and tough in all of his movies. Slim and tough and HOT.Today tough goes hand and hand with muscular. Most guys today are either fat , muscular or both.

Right, it reminds me of the saying "you can't bench press your way to a pretty face. An ugly face is an ugly face."

I prefer this body type, whatever you may call it or categorize it as!

The 80s

I was watching To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant and he looked awful. So it must have been after that time.

Rock Hudson was very well built.

When did regular dudes start lifting?

R93 question asked and answered multiple times, read the damn thread.

The tide has turned. People work out but steroids have faded and lean and natural with a big bush is in.

Not really. See the biggest young male accounts on Instagram and TikTok

From the mid-1980s

Eighties.

January 1988

While there has long been a body builder look until the 1980s it did not become as mainstream. There was a more general aerobics/exercise social theme across the more self absorbed late 1970s American culture Some gay guys in major urban centers in the1970s may have jogged or worked out some but it wasn’t about huge bodies. Things started to change dramatically in the 1980s in the gay community with HIV/AIDS. It became a way of demonstrating health, masculinity, and strength in the face of death and powerlessness. As often happens, gay cultural trends became mainstreamed, in large part due to increased advertising from gay photogs like Weber, gay albeit closeted designers like CK, and retailers/marketers like AF aimed at the somewhat inflated belief in gay disposable dollars. Looks in movies and TV followed advertising and moved more mainstream into non-gay audiences. It continued to grow through the 2000s.

Tom of Finland.

"Pumping Iron"

Today’s women love buff bros

It became much more clear how to attain such bodies. Nutrition, chemistry, workout equipment, knowledge, everything became known about how to do it. The method to look this way and the desire to look this way grew together.

When boring dumb people figured out that working out was easy for boring dumb people with nothing better to do to occupy their time.

And, people buying into: "Hot bodies = Hot Sex".

It doesn't necessarily mean that (having a hot body doesn't automatically make you a good lover) but it's easy to market.

Marky Mark. Marky Mark. Marky Mark.

What r22 said. Here's a page from the February, 1980, issue of GQ. Michael Ives is on the far right. I had joined a gym a few months earlier. I wanted to look like those guys.

What's with the anti manscaping stuff? I don't shave my junk but trim it or it gets so thick it get tangled in my underwear. It's not pleasant to take a step and there's a snap and pop and sharp pain of a hair being ripped out. Besides, too much is just gross.

Late 1980's early 1990's men both gay and straight began hitting the gym. " I work out" became such a common catch phrase it bordered on cliche.

By late part of 1990's even many of the most fey fem gay boys also worked out. You didn't have a choice it seemed. I mean in clubs and bars everyone was buffed and ripped, so if you wanted any action....

You can see the progression by comparing covers of various men's magazines (fitness, gay porn, etc...) starting in say middle 1980's on though 1990's and 2000's. You also most certainly see changes in gay porn from same time period.

Even where a guy isn't some muscle Mary, even young gays are often at least cut, defined and fit.

I think it started become "mainstream culture" with Arnold and his bodybuilding gang in the 1970s "Pumping Iron" movies, as well as the nature foods and jogging craze, not to mention men outright finally catching up to women and sexualizing their bodies as male strippers in clubs all over (and on TV talk shows, including on "Phil Donahue"). And believe me, I wasn't complaining! :D

R106 has no idea.

Too much is too HOT, and hot in the good way.