As someone who came out in the early 90s and lived through the period pre-cocktail, one of the other signs of an HIV- status that circulated was bodyfat – since many HIV drugs caused fat loss, particularly on the legs and other areas. And these things never ramify in only one direction. So there was suddenly much more supply in the market.īut as deadlifts-and-derrida notes, no single explanation alone is sufficient. Moreover, many HIV+ men who had prescriptions for steroids and who were no longer able to work would sell their roids on the black market to other gay men as a source of income. Indeed - HIV/AIDS and the bodybuilder aesthetic were closely tied together in the late 80s and 90s, not least because many doctors in gay urban centres began to prescribe steroids to their patients, both HIV- and HIV+, to help them bulk up and build muscle mass while they were healthy and/or negative, so that any muscle-wasting that may happen at some point due to seroconversion would start from a place of signifcantly increased muscle mass. Think the physique pictorial magazines of the 1950s and 60s - bodybuilding / interest in ‘health’ was the veil of respectability homoerotic desire wore in American culture at that time. I feel it’s important to remember muscle fetishism long predates the catastrophe of the AIDS epidemic. This is true, but as always no single explanation is alone sufficient. Reblogging again for the added commentary Goldstein alludes to these oppositions in his series title: Icarian is the name of the work-out machine manufacturer whose benches he’s skinned, but it also refers to the mythological youth who briefly soared, and then fell.Ī picture of one of the pieces. But AIDS has severed the link between these twin concepts.įor the HIV-infected the goal is likely to be the creation and maintenance of the attractive, healthy-Iooking body as a signifier of normality in the face of a frighteningly abnormal condition. Until recently, the goal of exercises performed on these machines was the creation of the attractive and healthy body. Each piece in the series is named after the machine from which its skin comes–Incline, Hack Squat, Bench. Goldstein collected his skins from the Muscle System, a San Francisco gym located in the predominantly gay Castro district, the epicenter of the American AIDS epidemic during the eighties. This is a good write up about the series/David. He later created a series of works of art, The Icarian Series centered on the leather from workout benches in an SF gym that many gay men frequented during the time. Many of his friends and the men around him subscribed to this subconscious belief/paranoia of the day regarding “appearing” healthy. An artist by the name of David Goldstein had most of his friends pass away during the height of the epidemic in San Francisco. This is true and I don’t think many realize how true it is. While muscle-bound physique tends to be the preferred norm in today’s society as a whole, the role it became as the “gay image” would not be so dramatic if not for the AIDS epidemic. ![]() This combined with AZT’s propensity to induce a lack of appetite during its height meant many people with AIDS were unable to lead a healthy life, especially in regards to muscle mass.Īs a way to counteract the “image of AIDS,” gay men in the 80s and 90s (continuing into the 2000s, etc) became infatuated with body builder physique as a means to determine immediate who was sick and who wasn’t. ![]() When AIDS allowed for opportunistic infections to occur, many PWAs (people with AIDS) would find it near impossible to keep weight on, often resigned to wasting disease and constant gut infections. ![]() The gay desire for muscle gods came out of the AIDS epidemic as a shallow means to determine who was healthy and who was not.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |