flungouttaspace:highkeygay:boyonboy:gachimuchisimo:boyonboy:The gay desire for muscle gods came out
flungouttaspace:highkeygay:boyonboy:gachimuchisimo:boyonboy: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.Please elaborate!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. 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.As 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. 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 is true and I don’t think many realize how true it is. An artist by the name of David Goldstein had most of his friends pass away during the height of the epidemic in San Francisco. Many of his friends and the men around him subscribed to this subconscious belief/paranoia of the day regarding “appearing” healthy. 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. It’s stained with hours of sweat.This is a good write up about the series/David. 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. Each piece in the series is named after the machine from which its skin comes–Incline, Hack Squat, Bench. Until recently, the goal of exercises performed on these machines was the creation of the attractive and healthy body. But AIDS has severed the link between these twin concepts.For 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. 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.A picture of one of the pieces. It’s eerie. -- source link