Chus Martinez On Muscle Worship

Muscle worship is a social behaviour, usually with a sexual aspect (a form of body worship), in which a participant, the worshiper, touches the muscles of another participant, the dominator, in sexually arousing ways, which can include rubbing, massaging, kissing, licking, “lift and carry”, and various wrestling holds.

The dominator is almost always either a bodybuilder, a fitness competitor, or wrestler—an individual with a large body size and a high degree of visible muscle mass. The worshiper is often, but not always, skinnier, smaller, and more out of shape.  Muscle worship can include participants of both sexes and all sexual orientations.

The amount of forceful domination and pain used in muscle worship varies widely, depending on the desires of the participants. Sometimes, the dominator uses his or her size and strength to pin a smaller worshiper, forcing the worshiper to praise the dominator’s muscles, while in other cases, the worshiper simply feels and compliments the muscles of a flexing dominator.

Male and female bodybuilders offer muscle worship sessions for a price in order to supplement their low or nonexistent income from bodybuilding competitions. Paid sessions sometimes involve sexual gratification, even when well-known competitors are involved, they offer fans the chance to meet in person and touch a highly muscular man or woman.

Muscle Worship is a widespread practice amongst gay men since they sometimes view bodybuilders as sexual objects, and bodybuilding is common in the gay community. Some gay websites offer paid for muscle worship sessions with well-known male bodybuilders. Some bodybuilders enjoy the practice and get sexually aroused by it, and therefore engage in it for the sake of the thrill.

The 2001 documentary film Highway Amazon chronicles the life of female bodybuilder Christine Fetzer and shows several of her clients engaging in muscle worship. More recent documentaries covering the practice include the American Beauty segment of an HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel #160, and Channel Five’s 2007 Muscle Worship documentary (part of their Real Lives series), profiling in depth the lives of female bodybuilders Lauren Powers and Gayle Moher.

Muscle worship engenders a specific type of pornography, often produced professionally, but also web cam sessions, an underground erotic literature, and specific Internet discussion forums like the #gaymuscle IRC channel. A (possibly fictional) account of muscle worship by H. A. Carson combines it with infantilism.

The entry for wrestling in The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices lists sthenolagnia (“sexual arousal from displaying strength or muscles”) and cratolagnia (“arousal from strength”) as paraphilias associated with the practice of wrestling for erotic purpose. There appear to be no studies about these proposed concepts; Anil Aggrawal’s 2008 monograph does not go beyond defining the terms, with the same meaning, in a list of over 500 similarly terse definitions encountered in the scientific and lay literature. The British tabloid The Sun listed sthenolagnia second in the Top five freaky fetishes after doraphilia. The Sun describe it as a “condition” where men find “hugely sexually attractive… mega-bronzed muscle-bound ladies in those weird bodybuilding competitions”, and who also “like to be wrestled, lifted up and even carried around by their big iron-pumping dreamgirls”.

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