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Homophobia at a CrossF is a good time to remember that gym culture wouldn’t exist whout queer people.

#IndyPri activists and their alli were ultimately affirmed both by swift rporate actn om above—CEO and founr Greg Glassman told Berger to “shut the fuck up, ” addg that he is “crazy proud of the gay muny CrossF” —and om the grass roots: After days of staed prott, the affiliate permanently shuttered. But 2018, LGBTQ people’s achievement of a basic level of regnn at the gym is tged wh more than a ltle irony: Amerin fns culture has always been bound up wh gay inty, and today’s gyms, om CrossF to Curv, would be unregnizable whout .

Still, mors of homosexual “perversn” swirled around the (mostly) men so attentive to their bodi, a preoccupatn nsired effete. In a historil moment when homosexualy and pedophilia were nsired practilly terchangeable, a 1958 statutory rape sndal led lol nservativ to shut down the outdoor gym, nouncg as “an attractn for perverts” and “followers of all three sex” who equented this “favore haven of the sexual athlet and queers of Southern California. While gyms were hardly the homosexual huntg grounds alarmists portrayed, is te that the pre–Stonewall Era, sex-segregated fns clubs uld be spac of sexual and social disvery for LGBTQ people prohibed om openly socializg elsewhere.

Johnson wr how the gym uld operate abstractly through “physique magaz, ” that enabled midcentury gay men livg far om ci to participate a natnal gay nsumer culture that tractors rid as “the homo tra” gradg “clean physil culture by peddlg pornography. Gay liberatn and the fns craze simultaneoly seized 1970s Ameri, strippg gyms of their seeds and stigmatizg unfaiar gay subcultur. Cal Pozo, a gay man who traed women Pilat New York Cy, told me that while his sexualy remaed unspoken, “there was somethg unrstood” by his female clients’ hbands that ma them fortable allowg him to do hands-on bodywork wh their wiv.

Dis brought visibily to a gay dance-club athetic that fed the newly boomg mastream workout culture. Evokg this blissful abandon, 1974 Richard Simmons found the Anatomy Asylum, the Beverly Hills headquarters of a spangled fns empire where those alienated om mastream athletic and athetic culture—notably, many gay men and fat women—rell first feelg “seen. ” Simmons, who often drsed short shorts and full makp, has never publicly discsed his sexualy, but many rell how his prence on VHS, morng shows, and later cise ships mystified gay mp far beyond the stud.

The nnectns between gay nightclubs and health clubs uld be explic: Party promoter John Blair opened The Body Center early-1970s Los Angel, which he scribed as “the first gay gym: Ntil mach, ty shorts, tube socks, and Abba all day long. Gay culture— what some would ll s most superficial form—flourished fns clubs, but also engaged straight men and women creasgly untroubled by the gyms beg fixtur liberal body-nsc ci.

By 1983, straight actor Richard Gere was photographed the Los Angel Tim at the Body Center whout any mentn of s origs as a gay gym. Magaze 1981, Gloria Steem celebrated the homosocial—but not at all homosexual—“sual togetherns” of women appreciatg each other’s naked bodi the “timate pany” of the gym locker room.

The stctual associatns between gyms and gayns died hard, however, doggg straight men who spent more time sculptg their bodi: In 1977, bodybuilr Arnold Schwarzenegger explaed fensively, “Men shouldn’t feel like fags bee they want to have nice-lookg bodi. Durg the HIV-AIDS epimic, stud owner Molly Fox explaed to me, gyms beme “third spac:” Gay men were pathologized as their muni were ravaged by the myster “gay plague”—Blair rells most of his origal gut list died and he stggled wh addictn—and the gym uld provi brief rpe om a horror the print refed to even acknowledge. Even today, the gym remas a refuge for some HIV-posive gay men: Bill, saved by protease hibors troduced the 1990s, explaed:.