Burn It Down: Why We Need Queer-Centered Bodybuilding Now

What we need right now is queer-centered bodybuilding.

My definition of queer-centered bodybuilding: It's the pursuit of health and aesthetics that embraces a broader, more inclusive range of people than what the mainstream bodybuilding world currently supports. Queer-centered bodybuilding is expansive. It allows people’s identities to inform how they approach the art and sport of bodybuilding. It is also intersectional. It refuses to leave behind BIPOC, trans folks, or people who are differently abled. It makes room for everyone.

I had to write my own definition because after more than 15 years in this world—as an amateur bodybuilder, designer of bodybuilding fashion, entrepreneur in the industry, and active community member—I’ve had enough of the bullshit that permeates the sport and the culture surrounding it.

The Harm Runs Deep

The ironies are endless. If you spectate or participate at the elite levels—open, 212, classic, physique, bikini, figure, wellness—you’ll find misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and racial bias still dominate, even though bodybuilding is supposed to be a celebration of the human body in all its forms.

Take men’s bodybuilding: the culture is one of the most homoerotic on the planet, and yet queer and gay men are routinely excluded, ostracized, blacklisted, or shoved into the closet. Why? Because queerness is seen as a threat to the fragile masculinity of competitors, judges, coaches, and spectators—people whose identities are often built on internalized shame and a need to distance themselves from anything perceived as “other.”

After years of anecdotes, conversations, conflicts, and disappointments, I’m done.
I don’t want to be coached by someone who can’t see or support the realities of queer clients.
I don’t want to set up a booth for my gym fashion line at the Arnold or any other mainstream show, because I know the culture there doesn’t welcome me—or people like me.

I’m ready to burn down the status quo.

A few months ago, I put out a call to find bodybuilding coaches who are queer—and who center queer and BIPOC folks. It still feels like searching for a needle in a haystack. Yes, I’ve come across gay cis coaches. But even among them, the internalized homophobia and transphobia runs so deep, I can’t work with them.

Be the Change

Let me say this again: bodybuilding as an art, hobby, and sport belongs to everyone who is human.
And yet, the industry, the practitioners, and the spectators continue to uphold systems of tribalism and othering. They turn difference into a threat—often harming their own in the process, as is the case with so many closeted bodybuilders.

Even if our queer-centered bodybuilding community is only a dozen people strong, it will still be a community. And in that community, we will not judge someone for how they present. We won’t exclude them for having a gender identity that challenges the sport’s tired binaries. We won’t require whiteness, Christianity, or conformity.

You go to the shows.
You train in the gyms.
You have the conversations.
You watch the YouTube and scroll through the IG feeds.
You know how broken this culture is—how much it enables systems of oppression.

Haven’t you had enough?

If you’re ready for change, be the change.
Call out the injustice.
Share your time and space with people who welcome every human body into bodybuilding—and who are willing to think creatively and radically to reshape this sport so that it finally includes everyone.