Gym functions as a place for all individuals to do bodybuilding. Every individual who acquires membership is admitted to the premise, homosexual, heterosexual, men or women. Duncan (2007) suggests that gay culture and gay male communities place emphasis on physical appearance and body shape. Thus, people start to associate gym and bodybuilding with gay individuals, and this phenomenon is attributed to gay gym culture.
The onset of male body aesthetics can be found in ancient Greece, where homosexuality was a part of gay gym culture then as it is today. In terms of ideal body physique, it was characterized by well-defined muscles that are developed without being overly bulky, symmetry in the upper and lower body, and an absence of body fat, as can be seen from sculptures or paintings. Gay gym culture is a
contemporary phenomenon with ancient and homosexual roots. Homosexuality has not just influenced gym culture- it is heavily responsible for its creation.
Friends or boyfriends meet after work and work out together, and others can count on running into their friends here. For many, the gym is only part of their social life, but for others it is their only interaction with the gay social world.
Testosterone is in the air, and so is sex.
As depicted by Alvarez (2010), gym offers as a social venue and provides plenty of functions. In urban gay America, the gym is now an extension of gay social (and sometimes professional, recreational, and political) life. It has become the nucleus of gay life.
I had no idea gay men could look like that; when I was younger the only way for men to be gay was to be sissies. - Cecil Franco (pseudonym, a seventy-nine-year-old man, interviewed by Erick Alvarez)
I thought having a muscular body and being masculine is just a part of being gay. – Brendan Eaton (pseudonym, a gay twenty-year-old college student, interviewed by Erick Alvarez)
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From these two amusing comparison, we can see the discrepancy about gay image among different generations. Before gay liberation, gay men who were masculine concealed their homosexuality. However, many of the early pioneers of gay liberation contested the “sissy” stereotype: gay men were now just like other men and were present in every position and career track. The movement accepted
femininity and reclaimed masculinity; also, the spread of AIDS helped this “gay muscle revolution” set a standpoint. Doctors suggested those gay AIDS patients do workouts and exercise, which resulted in their bulky physique. This became the new model for gay community. Effeminate, frail, and weak images were replaced with muscular and rugged appearance. Gay individuals flocked to gyms for bodybuilding.
Thus, in the 1970s the gay gyms started becoming social center for gay men;
meanwhile, they also started influencing gay culture and literally transforming the image of gay men, both physical and cultural. The influx of gay group changed the atmosphere of gym industry.
For many straight men, the gym is only a place to work out, a tool they use, and it is completely separated from their social lives. Nevertheless, for gay men, gyms are an extension of gay social life. The gym has become a meeting place for gay men;
friends visit while working out, and gay couples will often meet each other at the gym after work or go to the gym together. The gym also provides the opportunity to meet potential partners, either a long-term relationship or a temporary and romantic encounter.
Testosterone makes gyms filled with erotic atmosphere. Masculinity is now displayed and perceived as an invitation for sex (Alvarez, 2010). When eyes meet, a sudden sparkler may arise. The possibility of meeting partners is sometimes what draws some gay men to the gym – a long-term or single-serving relationship. Locker
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room sex is often seen in the gym. A sexual encounter is facilitated in the locker room for two simple reasons: the involved parties are naked, and men get sexually
stimulated quite easily. Alvarez (2010) suggests that 41 percent of total survey respondents admitted having engaged in any type of sexual activity while in the locker room of any gym. Such sexual encounter can be aroused by strong male hormone and testosterone in some erotic spaces like gyms.
In all, gay individuals care about their body physique more than straight men.
After gay liberation, muscularity and masculinity have become prevalent in gay community. Gay men dare to display their results of ascetic bodybuilding and enjoy being watched. Gyms then become a new gathering premise for gay men. They feel secure work out there, meet friends there, and even start their gay social life there.
Gym provides a venue and gay men utilize gyms to establish a “gay gym culture”, which bestows gyms a different meaning and commence a so-called “gay aesthetics”.
Gym culture is significant to gay men in Taiwan. Gay men in Taiwan are oppressed and at times discriminated. They dared not to expose themselves in public;
rather, they tended to maintain their social life or meet their partners in dark, private spaces. Therefore, that is the reason why New Park was prevalent in gay community.
Zheng-zhe Lai (Lai, 1998) indicates that there are 13 types of spaces that are considered as publicly social places for gathering in gay community: parks, public toilets, gay bars, porn movie theaters, gay saunas, some specific beaches, gay
associations, some specific hot-spring hotels, some specific gyms, some specific cafes, some specific restaurants, some specific bookstores and pubs holding gay night events, most of which offers opportunities for gay men to display their body. Gay men’s need to watch other gay men’s body can be satisfied through these channels, openly. In the 90s or even in the early millennium, while the society seemed improving in every
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aspect, gay community still survived with huge stigma and discrimination. In 1998, a squad of policemen broke into a noted gymnasium, "AG club", well known among international and local gay men, in Taipei downtown, Taiwan. Two men were found caressing each other in a small compartment, and were arrested by the police. The charge was obscenity in public, although in that small compartment everything was so private, without disturbing anyone else. The policemen asked the 2 arrested men to show how gay sex was performed, to show how they have sex as they did it 5 minutes before, and the police wanted to photograph gay sex in action. The police also
arrested a bodybuilding trainer at the club, and both he and the gym's owner were later charged with providing customers with equipment (rooms and condoms) for the alleged obscene acts. The Taipei district court found two gay men not guilty on charges of indecency in 2000, calling it a case of justice delayed. This raid on a fitness center allegedly fronting as a gay brothel and the subsequent arrest of three men has highlighted the divisions between gay rights activists and police; also, it showed how gay men were still discriminated in the late 90s.
Nevertheless, gym has changed this oppressive phenomenon during the past decade. The first franchise gym, California Fitness Center, was launched in Taipei in 1995. California struck up a brand new era for fitness industry. The following year, Gold gym set up a branch in Taipei, heating up the gym industry. Such gyms provide exercising machines and aerobics classes, with chic interior design. Also, with the uprising sense of being more muscular, gay men start to “occupy” gyms for social occasions. Deprived of public spaces, gay men found an alternative place where they can live like heterosexual individuals. Thus, gay men’s life circles stepped out of shadow and walked into a more bright and public sphere. Sexual flings among gay community spread in gyms and gay men long for other men’s body (Qiu, 2001). In
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the speech given at the Gay Pride in Taipei in 2011, Zheng-zhe Lai said that gay men can express the genuine self in gyms with teasing and gay terms in contempt of other heterosexual members, which has never been seen in other premises (Lai, 2011).
Alvarez (2010) concluded in his book that across socioeconomic levels, cultural, ethnic and racial lines, and age differences, gay men seem to have one thing in
common: their attraction for muscle boys. This affinity for a well-muscled body is the one constant, which in turn, brings men of all ages, races, colors, and body shapes under one roof-the gym. Gym is not only a social establishment in gay culture today but also a space where gay males feel secure and accepted by the society. This research will also examine where gay men in Taiwan go for bodybuilding and why they opt for certain gyms rather than others.
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Crossley (2001) argues in his book The Social Body: Habit, identity and desire that we are never in complete possession of ourselves. Our perceptible being is captured in schemas of collective representation. From the moment of birth, and even before, our anatomical state and embodied visibility are made to signify social meanings and we, accordingly, are positioned in social place. (p. 141)
Drawing on Romanyshyn’s theory of “mirroring”, which states that we use the mirror to style the self we want to be; to create the image which will make others see us as we want to be seen, Mead argued that human capacity for choice and tendency towards reflection is acquired through experience in the form of habit. We have reflective and reflexive habits. The structure of the social world is incorporated within habitus. Mead exemplified his theory with games and the meanings of playing during one’s childhood. Habit is the process through which one comes to view themselves through the eyes of a “generalized other” and forms the basis of self-identity (Duncan, 2007). In this way, we see ourselves from outside like a “looking glass”, through the eyes of others, and the schemas of collective representation that order and make meaningful the particularities of our embodiment (Crossley, 2001; Duncan, 2007, 2010).
Crossley (2001) synthesizes previous research, suggesting that reflexivity and reflection are themselves rooted in habit. He views reflection and reflexivity as achievements of a process tending form the individual or particular, towards the universal and social. We acquire the habit of self-objectification and reflection by way of our involvement in the social world. Sociological objectification extends that form of self-objectification, which gives us a sense of me, the objectification rooted in our incorporation of the role of the other, further extending the possibility of