What it’s really like to be gay at the gym, according to queer workout bros
The same gay teen who dreads the school gym can grow up to become a gay adult who frequents a fitness gym—whether it’s to attain a certain physique, log some cardio, or cruise for hookups. (Sometimes those assignations go only as far as the locker room, as one WeHo Crunch location bemoaned.)
And for all the hetero dudebros you might encounter while doing your reps, American fitness culture “has always been bound up with gay identity, and today’s gyms, from CrossFit to Curves, would be unrecognizable without it,” as Natalia Mehlman Petrzela wrote in a 2018 Slate essay.
“In the pre–Stonewall Era, sex-segregated fitness clubs could be spaces of sexual and social discovery for LGBTQ people prohibited from openly socializing elsewhere.”
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As Petrzela wrote—and as Mark Harris pointed out in a recent New York Times Style Magazine essay—the line between gym and gay nightclub can get pretty blurry.
“If you’re a gay man, there’s a good chance … that you will end up, sooner or later, sweating in a large space with a lot of other gay men and loud music and way too many mirrors, hoping it doesn’t end in embarrassment,” Harris wrote. “It might be a dance club or a workout room; it almost doesn’t matter.”
In fact, as Petrzela noted, it was gay nightlife promoter John Blair who opened a gym called Body Center in Los Angeles in the 1970s. “It was L.A.’s first gay gym,” Blair told The New York Times in 2012. “The first Nautilus machines, tiny shorts, tube socks and Abba all day long.”
Related*
Just like nightclubs, gyms can be rife with attractions and anxieties. From what these X users report, there’s a lot to distract gay gym-goers from their presses and curls—whether it’s the music playing in their headphones, the furtive glances they’re getting from other iron-pumpers, the confusing behavior of cishet customers, or the distress that they’re coming off dudebro themselves!
Enjoy the tweets below… and consider supporting your local LGBTQ-owned gym!
