TheBodyguard’s BodyBlog

Bodybuilding is a sport where we wear our uniform everyday it’s a suit of armor made of muscle, to others involved in fitness it’s obvious what we do, I personally have been a Bodybuilder for some 20 + yrs save for a few yrs sidelined by a Drunk Driver but that is for a differant post entirely.

Throughout my life the basic man/woman on the street Jo Blow, Ms. American pie has not recognized me as a Bodybuilder I realize it’s still considered a freak show to some and a fringe sport at best to others despite the leaps and bounds and giant strides we have made.

Yet I usually have recieved a variation of the following "Hey Youre pretty Big!", "do you play football?", ‘What do you do are you a Bouncer?", "Are you a cop?", "you look like a cop!" of course intermingled with these is the inevitable "Make a muscle", "How much do you bench?" and the ever popular query from someone who doesn’t want to sound like they don’t know what they are talking about the generic "So how much can you lift?".

I have also been called Hecules junior, Brutus, Bruno, Bruiser, the obligatory Big Guy etc.

And alot of not so nice insulting and misguide comments as well I walked into a office one day and I swear a woman looked at me and said "So do all those steroids actually shrink your nuts?" as if this was perfectly ok to ask! I have been blindsided by ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?" "So what’s the deal with Steroids?" "Youre not one of those Body Lifters are you?"

I have worn my suit of armor with pride yet I have often just dreaded the rediculousness of me being my size and looking the part but not being recognized as such and weathered the verbal assault on my manhood and my ego and my conciet etc cause you know we are all vain have small genitals and are dumb as rocks and are so narcissitic we can’t have meaningful relationships and if we did we’d ruin them because we would roid rage our way into a broken relationship!!!!!!!!!

And I admit sometimes I give it right back not necesarily in anger but in a sort of smart assed way admittedly still I wear my armor with pride, yet the recognition usually isnt there unless it’s someone else in the industry.

Several week ago prior to me embarking on a week long emersion into fitness industry related happenings again a story for another blog. I took my youngest son who is 7 to get a haircut the ladies in the shop love him he is always on and the world is his stage he has a enormous vocabulary and lives his life as a superhero fighting the forces of evil from the time he wakes up till he lays his precious head down for the night. He was regailing them with conversation about the latest developments in upcoming Marvel Comics related movies and discussing Transformers and the like.

When in the middle of the conversation he turns around to the woman cutting his hair and points to me and says "That’s my dad he’s a Bodybuilder he looks like a Superhero!"

All of a sudden I flashed back to all of the times I wished someone had just said "wow youre a bodybuilder thats cool!" And I realised that one of the only people who I really cared about what they thought just laid it out for everybody!

Well I guess I’ll still get stupid comments about steroids and I’ll probably always get asked if I wrestle. But I am a Bodybuilder and I wear my suit of armor with pride and and my son thinks I look like a Super Hero so I’ll take the heat cause I’d rather look like a Super Hero to my son than justify my Armor to anyone else.

Take pride in what we do in all the world we are unique we are Bodybuilders and we wear our uniform everyday.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.