Is Bodybuilding Ready For An Openly Gay Athlete?
I'm writing this operating under the assumption that every
one has heard the story of NBA player Jason Collins. Just in case you're a caveman and haven't heard, Collins recently made headlines when he came out to Sports Illustrated as the first openly gay athlete in a major American professional sport. What many bodybuilding fans, especially those under thirty, may not be aware of is that in the July 1989 edition of Ironman former NPC National champion and former Mr. Universe Bob Paris became the first male professional athlete in any sport to come out as openly gay while still actively competing. Paris went on to compete for two years following his announcement before ultimately retiring after the 1991 contest season. Although Collins is approaching the end of his career, his decision to take the public platform on such a personal issue couldn’t have been easy. That being said, from a purely political perspective, the timing couldn’t have been better. The most recent polling data suggests that majority of the American people support gay marriage. We’ve even began to see a shift on Capitol Hill with Minnesota now poised to become the 12th state to legalize gay marriage. Despite those facts male sports are still seen as a testosterone fueled Alpha Male, warrior society that doesn’t tolerate weakness, real or perceived. As bodybuilders we train hard and we diet harder. We are the head turning, jaw dropping, front cover gracing, physical embodiment of the Alpha Male 2.0. As a whole, I think bodybuilding has set a remarkable precedent for acceptance. . If we look back just a few generations, during a time when civil rights issues tore the country apart, black bodybuilders were not only welcomed, they were treated as equals. Men like Leroy Colbert, Sergio Oliva, Serge Nubret, and Robby Robinson became champions of the sport who inspired millions of young men to strive to achieve the impossible. It was the Weider family and bodybuilding that seamlessly blended the lines of racial and social equality in a time where intolerance was the norm. If we fast forward to the present and examine the issues of inequality when it comes to sexuality, would those same attitudes of tolerance still apply to bodybuilding?
Whenever we think of the Schmo culture that surrounds the sport, it’s always done with a laugh. We've all heard the stories about hotel room stalkers, offers to pay for worn posing trunks, or men looking to be dominated by female bodybuilders, and the list goes on and on.
The point is, in these situations, the homo-erotic requests are viewed as fringe behavior. These are requests from people outside the fraternity of the bodybuilding world, and that seems to make it a little more palatable. If we can view homosexuality as a fringe behavior-something that only the social outliers participate in- it's not really happening in our world. But what if it was? What if an active athlete came out as being openly gay? What would the response from the other athletes be? I can’t even begin to imagine what the response would be like in the nameless, faceless, accountability free environment of the internet and social media. Most of us claim to be accepting, and we claim to be tolerant-that is until an issue hits home for us. It’s not until that issue becomes our issue that we’re really forced to open up and explore what are true thoughts and feelings really are about something.
So how would bodybuilding react? Would it make a male athlete uncomfortable to be standing naked backstage getting spray tanned if he knew one of his competitors was gay? Would an openly gay athlete be judged fairly on his physique, and not have his sexuality influence his placing? Would an openly gay athlete receive the same sponsorship opportunities as his hetero-sexual counterparts? After all, sponsors have to look out for number one, and that’s their bottom line. Companies are in business for one reason, to make money, and they can't afford to run the risk of potentially losing profit by offending or alienating customers based on their decision to endorse something or someone so controversial…Can they? I don't know if an openly gay athlete would be welcomed with open arms and supported by his peers like Jason Collins has been thus far. Maybe the opposite would be true. Maybe an openly gay bodybu
ilder would be thrown into the fire with gasoline posing trunks because in the world of beautiful women and barbells, is there room for a gay man? I don't know the exact number of IFBB Pro's, nor do I know if there's a gay athlete actively competing. What I do know is this, social changes are a lot like making coffee, they percolate. They start slowly at the top and have a trickledown effect. In our small world of extremes, a world that is constantly fighting not to be stereotyped, constantly fighting negative perceptions from the outside world, inside there’s someone fighting just as hard day-in and day-out to hide the fact that he is a gay athlete. So, that brings us back to the question, is bodybuilding ready for an openly gay athlete?
