Backstories: A Companion to Muscle Love & Muscle Therapy

This collection is meant to be a supplement for the novels Muscle Love: Confessions of a Muscle Worshipper and Muscle Therapy: Curing My Muscle Worship Addiction. Each of the novels seek to examine a man’s love of muscular women and where that fits in to a society where that concept is taboo. In the process of writing these novels, my wife and I penned some complex back stories of some of the main characters. While the books were primarily intended to consider the hidden desires of men for these muscular women, we wanted to make the women full characters. That was of course easy with Melinda, who was based on many of my wife’s life experiences. After feeling small all of her life she desired to get muscular and to be seen as big and strong. The more she grew the more she wanted even more muscle. She heard all of the positive comments along her path, but also the patriarchal comments acceptable in our male dominated society like “you look good now, but don’t get too big or you’ll look like a man.”
Much of Josie’s back story was also based on my wife’s experiences so we had a head start on her story but we felt that we needed to formulate her character differently. That led to a series of background stories which in the end, developed her story and the reasons she desired to gain muscle. This process also proved helpful with Kristy, who was a character based on many different resources I’ve read and viewed over the years. To comprehend her actions, we felt we needed to trace her evolution prior. In the end these backstories, though not a complete novel unto themselves, contributed greatly to both novels and by following the women, told a story of their own.