Muscle

A big, visibly built gay man, or the type itself: on a profile, muscle means seriously built, and being into muscle means you like your men big.

In gay slang, muscle is both a body type and a type of man: big, built, visibly strong, the guy whose arms strain the sleeves and whose chest arrives a second before he does. On a profile, "muscle" means he is seriously built, not just in shape. "Into muscle" means you like your men big.

It is a word about size more than anything else. A muscle guy can be smooth or hairy, young or older, bearded or clean-shaven. What he is not is slim: if the body is lean and toned rather than big, he is fit, a jock or a gym bunny, but not muscle.

Where it comes from

Gay men have been talking about muscle men for a long time, and the slang has gone through several outfits. Green's Dictionary of Slang lists a whole family of gay terms for the bodybuilder: muscle boy, used by Christopher Isherwood in 1954; muscle gay, in John Rechy in 1967 ("He's a muscle gay, I mean guy"); muscle queen from 1973; and muscle Mary, first in an Australian gay paper in 1992.

The fascination is older than any of these words. In the decades when gay images could not be printed openly, physique magazines with oiled bodybuilders in posing straps were one of the few ways gay men could look at male bodies, under the cover of health and fitness. The muscle man has been a gay icon ever since.

The muscle family

• Muscle Mary or muscle queen: the gay man devoted to his physique, said with a wink and a bit of camp.
• Muscle bear: the hairy, heavy version from the bear world.
• Muscle daddy: an older man with a big, built body, often gray-bearded.
• Twunk: a young-looking, smooth man with muscle.
• Hunk: the classic handsome, well-built man, a broader and gentler word.

In porn and on the apps

Muscle porn is a category of its own, from big bodybuilders to muscle worship, a fetish in which the attraction is the muscle itself: touching, admiring and flexing are the point. On the apps, muscle is a common request and an even more common boast: a man's "muscle" in a bio and in person are not always the same thing.

Related terms