He’s huge on the outside. He’s draped in a tank top with impossibly tiny straps and holding a flask of highly nutritious grey sludge. He’s not an alien, just a young man eager to build muscle. He’s a gym bro.
And while he’ll often chat about what’s involved in looking like he does, what lies beneath the muscle is territory rarely discussed.
Gym bros aren’t just 100kg mounds of thoughtless flesh; they have a deep inner world. In fact, the gym bro is a pressure point of modern society, being the literal and figurative embodiment of power and dominance. They have enough time to spend hours a day at the gym, as well as enough money to eat protein-fuelled food in large quantities. They believe firmly in the power of hard work and aspire towards discipline over themselves and others.
Perhaps out of everyone, they’re the ones most in thrall to the sort of tropes our society deals in, the dominant philosophies lurking behind much of what goes on, ideas of patriarchy and neoliberalism.
It’s a lot for a young man to carry, to unpack, and buckling under these strains, young male body builders often suffer hugely with mental illness, substance abuse and body-image issues. Gym bros create the illusion that they’re the epitome of success, but this metric of success might be what’s making some of them so miserable. As the men’s mental health movement gains traction, inspecting the inner lives of men and the forces that act upon them is increasingly relevant.
Many young men find their way to body building from being insecure about their weight as a child. Blake Leahy, who’s now 21 and studying computer science, is no exception. He was a slightly chubby kid, but when he was diagnosed with chronic migraines at 12 years old, he was in and out of hospital, unable to exercise properly and overeating. At 15, he asked his mum to get him a trainer, and soon he was training six times a week, tracking every kilogram, calorie and cardio.
"I was even tracking like, random half an hour walks," he says.
He lost 35kg in a year. To him, the discipline involved in losing the weight is what he’s most proud of.
"I hated it to begin with. I vividly remember being on certain machines and thinking about people looking at me, at what was jiggling, feeling all these eyes on me. I was an anxious wreck."
Now, the gym is a therapeutic place in Blake’s life.
"It’s almost like this ape-like release where I’m, like, nothing matters, it’s just pure testosterone, just anger."
Blake is adamant that getting in shape has been pivotal for the success he’s found in all other areas of his life. He says that if he hadn’t started working out, he wouldn’t be where he’s at now academically, saying he was bottom of the class previously. It’s also a way for him to control his mental health, saying that the gym is a fail-safe option for making him feel good.
"It honestly helps, and a lot of people say, ‘oh, it’s just ignoring your problems and not confronting them’. F*** no. I’m claiming now, from my experience, it really can help."
The gym also provides a stable community where support can always be found. He says that the friendships he has with training partners have been "a bond unlike anything else", where they push themselves to the absolute limit together. He describes this like a spiritual connection, where "neither of us go to those places without each other".
At the same time, ideals of individualism and control are laced through the body builder experience. Blake says that "if everything’s crashing down, I have this one thing where every part of it relies only on me, every bit of it. No-one else matters, there’s no external factors." His body is his life’s work, almost in the same dissociative way David is to Michelangelo. "It’s like an art sculpture. I see building the body as an art form, and then on stage, posing, like an art exhibition."
Bodybuilding competitions are in the future for Blake, and he’s already planning on taking steroids for them.
"The way I see it is, yes, it has negative health effects, yes, it’s going to take a bit of time off your life, but if there is something that you’re that passionate about, it’s worth it in my eyes."
It mirrors the age-old question pondered by women, "how many years of your life would you swap for the perfect body?".
His dream body is Mr.Olympia, a person who has controlled their mind and body better than any other human on earth.
"The whole idea of becoming more physically and emotionally fit in order to maximise your economic potential and all that kind of thing, that goes along with neoliberalism," Prof Brickell says. "It runs parallel to notions of fatness and laziness."
"Think about those associations of being flabby with being weak and unsuccessful. That notion of becoming disciplined is connected with being successful," he says.
Indeed, the discipline involved in building a highly efficient body comes with associations of material wealth.
Blake vouches that "bodybuilding helps with other areas of life".
"Look at these guys I look up to, on the side they have huge businesses. They are, you know, very successful."
Prof Brickell remembers a campaign that a Wellington gym ran in the 1990s, which read "become some body".
The idea that by developing your body you become someone is such a neoliberal idea, he says with a laugh.
A cursory glance at the ideal bodies of the second half of the 20th century prove the point. In the ’60s and ’70s, David Bowie’s and Mick Jagger’s slimness was desirable, suggestive of a rock ’n’ roll drug habit. Then in the ’80s, the market became aware of the commodifying potential of male bodies, and Arnold Schwarzenegger rose to fame. Finally, Brad Pitt’s impossibly toned Fight Club body characterised the early 2000s.
Now, even Silicon Valley billionaires are ballooning out, with Jeff Bezos transforming himself into a Hollywood body and Mark Zuckerberg preparing himself to cage fight.
Gym bros also buy into patriarchy, a system of male domination, which is embedded into ideas of control and power that are pervasive in gym culture.
Harrison Pope, author of The Adonis Complex, theorises that because of advancements in gender equality, men find it increasingly difficult to prove their masculinity. The workplace, domestic sphere and leisure activities are less unequal than in the past, leaving men’s muscular bodies as the last place where they can differentiate themselves from women.
Prof Brickell says male insecurity can be attributed to the fact that men still feel pressure to provide, but because of our increasingly harsh economic climate, they don’t have the means to do so.
"I don’t think the idea of the breadwinner has entirely gone away. And yet the access to those things for younger, straight white men is not as easy as it is for older straight white men. In terms of things like housing, retirement support and education."
Men’s access to economic success is withering, and rather than this being blamed on structural issues, it’s often attributed to men themselves, or the feminist movement.
The philosophies of controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate exemplify both these viewpoints. The influencer coaches young men on how to become "high-value men". He emphasises hard work over everything. In terms of bodybuilding, he’s been quoted as saying "the temporary satisfaction of quitting is outweighed by the eternal suffering of being a nobody". In addition to having complete control over their lives, he urges men to have complete control over the women in their lives. The self-described misogynist has famously said "I think the women belong to the men".
Tate is currently awaiting trial on charges of rape and human trafficking.
Blake says he was a fan of some of Tate’s perspectives, "on his day-to-day routines, his discipline and just life perspectives fully unrelated to women".
When asked whether there could be a relationship between a culture of grinding towards domination and violence against women, Blake stares into space for a long moment.
"I’ve never thought about that," he says, finally. "You’re right though."
The dangers of patriarchy for the body have been recognised by feminists and lots of work has been done to address body insecurity in young girls. However, there’s been little recognition that young boys suffer with similar issues.
In the Journal of College Counselling, Carla Davey, of the University of Utah, writes that "adolescent boys take steroids and other pills, powders and supplements in order to gain muscle, thereby doing irreparable damage to their bodies in much the same way adolescent girls vomit, abuse laxatives and stop eating".
Women work on making their bodies look as childlike and delicate as possible by shaving their hair, favouring shortness and starving themselves to achieve a weak and submissive role. Similarly, men bulk up their muscles and favour height to assume a position of dominance. Feminism emphasises that both these gender roles are toxic, and that for men, domination does not mean freedom.
For hooks the question was "why haven’t men responded to the series of betrayals in their own lives with something coequal to feminism?"
Prof Brickell says "there’s still that association between masculinity and stoicism, and not with working out exactly why it is that things feel a bit f***** up and trying to do something collectively on that basis".
He again references neoliberalism, saying "our social bonds aren’t as strong as they’ve been before. Social media can become quite individualising and alienating, so that sense of a bigger social cohesion isn’t as strong".
Blake thinks that what’s needed is "a whole new movement that is genuinely about equality for men and women. Not a movement that’s transitioned to ‘f*** men, men are pigs’. It swayed away from what it is, what it should be."
Blake is referencing an emerging culture of misandry found especially online, populated by women who have given up trying to communicate with men in a constructive way. Their actions are discussed, but the reasoning behind those actions is rarely touched upon.
Prof Brickell agrees, saying "we never really ask them anything much, and it can be a difficult population to access in terms of research too".
The gym bro, especially, is a character in society that goes largely unquestioned.
Blake says "people assume that you’re fine and don’t consider that you’re also human. You feel exactly what they feel, you know."
He recounts a time in high school when someone thought he was stupid because he was buff. Then they got to know him. "I thought you were just a stereotypical dumb jock," they said, "but you’re actually really nice and smart."
It could be that this stereotype of big powerful men being mindless hunks of meat is contributing to society’s continual ignoring of men’s mental health, because of this assumption that they have no inner world.
Or, this myth can be seen as a way of letting men off the hook. A person can’t truly be responsible for something if they can’t think.
The gym bro’s body is a pressure point of society, where different political and economic forces meet. They’re getting bigger and bigger trying to meet the demands of a society that expects more and more from them.
Keep an eye out next time you’re in public — you might just spot a gym bro. If you have any in your life, give them a hug — even the hulk needs a bit of love sometimes.
