Gym bunny

A gay man who practically lives at the gym and builds his life around it, from protein shakes to leg day, with the defined body to show for it.

A gym bunny is a gay man who practically lives at the gym, and whose life is organized around it: training splits, protein shakes, meal prep, progress selfies and a strong opinion on leg day. The result is usually a defined, often smooth body that he is happy to show, in a tank top or without one.

The word is teasing more than cruel. Bunny suggests someone cute, bouncy and always hopping back to the same place, and the place is the squat rack. Many men use it about themselves with a grin; when someone else uses it, it can carry a small eye-roll at the vanity of it all.

Where it comes from

Green's Dictionary of Slang labels gym bunny as gay slang for a bodybuilder and finds it first in 1998, in a personal ad in the Sydney Star Observer, Sydney's gay paper, where the advertiser makes a point of saying he is "not a gym bunny". The earliest record is a denial, which tells you the type was already well known and already a little mocked. Later citations come from Australian and other English-language writing around 2000.

The type is older than the word: think of the gym-built clone look, or the shirtless circuit boy of the big circuit parties.

Gym bunny, jock, muscle

A jock gets his body from sport and is all about the team and the locker room. A gym bunny gets it from the gym, for the look. A muscle guy is defined by size, and a serious bodybuilder may scoff at the bunny label. A muscle bear is the hairy, heavy version, the bear world's own gym rat. And a gym bunny with a pretty young face is a twunk.

How it is used today

On the apps it shows up both ways: as a proud self-description, and in the classic "no gym bunnies" line from men who are tired of the type. On Instagram the gym bunny is a genre of its own, from mirror selfies to holiday photos built around abs.

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