Swole
The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscle
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From a Washington Post critic and self-described meathead, a witty, incisive, poignant exploration of male body image, from the history of the gym to the politics of superheroes to the world of manfluencers
Michael Andor Brodeur is a Gen-X gay writer with a passion for bodybuilding and an insatiable curiosity about masculinity—a concept in which many men are currently struggling to find their place. In our current moment, where “manfluencers” on TikTok tease their audiences with their latest videos, where right-wing men espouse the importance of being “alpha,” as toxic masculinity and the patriarchy are being rightfully criticized, the nature of masculinity has become murkier than ever.
In excavating this complex topic, Brodeur uses the male body as his guide: its role in cultures from the gymnasia of ancient Greece to Walt Whitman’s essays on manly health, from the rise of Muscular Christianity in 19th-century America to the swollen superheroes and Arnold Schwarzeneggers of Brodeur’s childhood. Interweaving history, cultural criticism, memoir, and reportage, laced with an irrepressible wit, Brodeur takes us into the unique culture centered around men’s bodies, probing its limitations and the promise beyond: how men can love themselves while rejecting the aggression, objectification, and misogyny that have for so long accompanied the quest to become swole.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Brodeur, a classical music critic for the Washington Post, debuts with a winsome and insightful blend of cultural history and memoir that tracks the idealized beefcake body from ancient Greece to today and chronicles his own queer coming-of-age transformation from "wispy, waify string bean of a boy" to "meathead." The historical segments shed particular light on contemporary fitness culture's development, explaining how it first emerged in early 19th-century Germany in deep entanglement with nationalist principles, and was brought to the U.S. by failed 1848 revolutionaries. Throughout, Brodeur maintains a sharp focus on the way Western culture's perceived mind-body divide has shaped ideas about masculinity (during what he calls American men's "first identity crisis" in the mid-19th century, the Atlantic Monthly lamented that "a race of shopkeepers, brokers and lawyers could live without bodies"). This ideological undercurrent also surfaces in the autobiographical sections. Of his teenage years, Brodeur writes: "I longed to forget I even had a body. I started thinking of myself as my thoughts." He builds up to an intriguing hypothesis concerning today's extremist online culture of men seeking to reclaim a lost masculinity characterized by physical fitness and misogyny. Its catalyst, according to Brodeur, was the internet itself, which, by chipping away at real-life interaction, has set in motion another identity crisis over the separation between mind and body. Punchy, entertaining, and perceptive, this delivers.
