Gymflation

September 30, 2025

Nowadays, I go to the gym mostly to stay healthy and support my triathlon training pursuits, but there was a time where I was more firmly embedded in that culture. It feels resoundingly more pervasive, but I wonder how that extends beyond the United States; I can’t forget walking around in Palermo at night and coming across what would otherwise look like a normal storefront (on the street, familiar glass windows, small footprint) if not for the gym equipment within. The equipment, however, looked a little dilapidated and very heterogenous–the plates had little cohesion and were also on the smaller side. I don’t intend this as a slight–everyone inside seemed to be having a fun time, and it’s still a regret of mine that I didn’t bang on the window and ask to join for a set (my Italian, much less Sicilian, is poor)–but that gym culture seemed dramatically different than U.S. gym culture. Of course, n=1, so I don’t mean to extrapolate. A discussion for a later date.

Perhaps shifting the locus back to the U.S., I want to focus now on the term suffusing modern parlance: “gymflation”. Simply, if you look (notably for later discussion, via photographic mediums) at bodybuilders back in the day or movies in the earlier 2000s, you’ll notice that they don’t look nearly as large as they do today. A contemporary example would be Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in the 2000s X-Men movies vs. Deadpool & Wolverine. This term accrues the most recognition on social media, and I believe this ties back into the larger discussion about contemporary gym culture (and its apparent swelling). To remain fixed, however, I want to latch onto this dissonance and reach even further back in time, well beyond the 90s/2000s. In fact, I want to reach so far as to go back to the Renaissance period, as it diffused throughout the Italian penisula and beyond into Northern Europe.

The locus of discussion will be depictions of man in the available mediums at the time (painting, engraving, sculpture – notably not photographic) with ensuing speculation as to how these depicted physiques would be emblematic of their embodied counterparts. Although the examples are quite innumerable, I’ll focus on two artists, Hendrick Goltzius and Michelangelo; say, a taste of both Netherlandish and Italian Renaissance from the later and earlier halves of the 16th century, respectively.

Goltzius’ The Great Hercules is as remarkable as it is bulbous. This surprised me when I first encountered it: what is the effect of rolling mounds of hardened muscle, burgeoning under taut skin? The figuration contains remarkable potential energy. The lion skin is imbued with animation, swelling with the wind, and his left foot is offset as to just have curtailed otherwise inexorable motion. But this virile potential seems to contrast with his doeish eyes, a measured calm inhabiting a body poised for violence. And while his musculature is almost laughably exaggerated, the men behind him are not far behind. It is a quintessential depiction of the masculine form, not notable for its mimetic quality but rather for its drama. And, while Goltzius’ Helios does not exaggerate to the height of Hercules, it crafts another remarkable figuration that is wrought with masculine potential energy.

It must, of course, be acknowledged that these figures are not mere mortals but figurations of the divine. This prevents blanket appropriations among the likes of ’every male at the time must have looked like this’ (that would recontextualize the present as a period of remarkable deflation). But, they are endowed with human forms, and the practice of art often looked to models for study (although these recorded forms could be transformed). One popular example would be Michelangelo’s Libyan Sibyl and its prepatory sketch.

The comparisons here are intended to incite a little bit of humor in this disjunction between past and present. Wolverine? Goltzius? Michelangelo? However, looking to these old depictions, especially before the photograph and its mass reproduction (although the 16th century did see the limited, by today’s standards, reproduction of art) gives some sense of recurrent dissonance between what is represented in media and what we see around us. Social media, along the Internet medium, amplifies this to unprecedented degrees; but even in the Renaissance period, before photography, we can observe the same difference in reality and representation.

I think it rings a resonate question: would you dedicate yourself to the pinnacle of a domain (the perfect human body, as Michelangelo might have sought) or its commonplace instantiation? There is an exciting allure in brushing with a pinnacle, even if you are not among its ranks. Representations today are more varied, so the answer is not necessarily unanimous. But, by positing the question, we illuminate the tension that lingers despite any final answer: there is something to ‘greatness’ or ‘perfection’ or what appellation we might bestow or heirarchy we might impose that attracts us–and probably drives our algorithimic interactions.

Michelangelo’s Last Judgement is breathtaking for a myriad reasons, but if we focus carefully on the human form, we’ll see a similar drama that resists mimesis. Simply, you will not see these figures roaming the streets of Florence, or the Vatican, etc ¹.

In the details from the Sistine Chapel (the Ignudi) and the Judgement we can observe this more clearly. The Ignudo here is more tempered, more mimetic than the other examples; it would be, as embedded in gym culture, a really good physique (especially before PEDs). Despite his pose’s dynamism, there is not the same burgeoning potential gleaned from the likes of The Great Hercules– his legs don’t have much striation. Jokes aside, it’s such a remarkably rich painting. The firm contours against the smooth, glossy skin; the tension and energy as he pushes off with his right arm and leg; he twists along the frontal plane, dips his shoulder in the transverse.

The detail from The Last Judgement returns to the exaggeration exhibited by Goltzius (though he worked after). Although this detail only captures a slice, the entire composition is wrought with the same burgeoning, musculed figures. As mentioned above, these depictions do not seek to represent the layman and, if my intention was to seriously approach a dissonance between representation and reality, it would have been very apt to consider such representations. However, I think the historical context (before the mass reproduction of the image) warrants some give. These images, although not propagated to the same degree then as today, were interacted with. They encode contexts in their composition that are noticabely different than a typical reality, but this is similar today. A bodybuilder on social media lives in a completely different context than a normal person who goes to the gym. Foremost, it is their job. This distinction does not broach the distinction between the mortal and divine, but does tend along the same path, a path of difference.

There are, however, people with unbelievable physiques or strength that do not pursue it full-time. They might still live in disparate contexts, but this returns us to the general truth that I hope to have effused here: there has always been some dissonance between representation and reality, but physiques, perhaps a product of swelling gym culture, are improving rapidly. It’s inflationary. This “problem”, although increasingly amplified, is not new. A physique, and more so, a body, has always been an expression of the individual; it is individual. As people might have compared historically, we can do so today (with unprecedented ease, granted). This does not change the problem, but only makes the solution harder to grasp.