"ACCESSIBLE
PROSE AND EXPERIENCED INSIGHT . . . . Provides the reader
with a timely idea: the importance of the gym in allowing gay men a
place where they can find each other and, most significantly, themselves.
This VERY READABLE book politely kicks sand in the faces of those who
impugn the gym as anything other than a unique, healthy, surprisingly
diverse communal culture worthy of study, comment and maybe even membership.
. . . This INSIGHTFUL history gives voice to the countless gay men who
found the strength to assert themselves and in doing so redefined masculinity."
- Tom Cardamone, Author
of The Werewolves Of Central Park
"AN
INFORMED HISTORY AND BREEZY ANALYSIS OF GAY MEN'S THIRSTY INTEREST IN
BODY IMAGE. . . . Athlete Alvarez is a trainer who leaves
his muscular signature on this entertaining book that covers early physique
magazines, steroids, and pro athletes like Dave Kopay and Tom Waddell,
inventor of the Gay Games. As a longtime gym-insider, Alvarez writes
about what he knows. He captures the mystery and history of gay gym
culture, of self-fashioning notions of masculine identity, and how gay
muscle flexed gay power and uncloseted our Platonic Ideals into straight
mainstream advertising."
- Jack Fritscher,
PhD,Author of "Gay Sports" in Gay San Francisco: Eyewitness
Drummer - Sex, Art, and the Salon around Drummer Magazine
"ALVAREZ
CLEARLY KNOWS HIS TERRITORY."
- The Gay & Lesbian
Review
