"Mr. Ukraine" Konstantin Ruzanov

It's very disappointing when a bodybuilder, especially a very good looking one, walks away from bodybuilding as Konstantin Ruzanov did. He was a "natural" and left the sport when he saw what it took to succeed at the higher levels, chemically speaking.

I say, good one on you, Konstantin! The insane quest for size, the bizarro "hardcore" bodybuilding grunt culture personified by MUSCLEMAG, has to end somewhere. The days are long over where bodybuilding was a masculine, healthy pursuit: it's funny how Reg Park and Steve Reeves outlived many that came after them. Besides, natural bodybuilders look better anyway: better proportions, zero 'roid bloat.

If Konstantin Ruzanov ever made it in movies, I have a feeling he'd play bad guys, or do costume dramas. If he's any good as an actor, he'd make a great Count Vronsky in ANNA KARENINA. On the other hand, I can see him as a "Conrad Veidt" type: a guy best known for playing the Nazi heavy in movies like CASABLANCA despite the fact he left Germany because of the Nazis.

Incidentally, I had a Konstantin Ruzanov pic as my desktop wallpaper for a few days (I change it, on average two or three times a week, and I almost never have beefcake pics). I was working on a research assignment with a fellow grad student, a girl that was the daughter of immigrants from Trinidad.

When I went to show her my work on my laptop, as it booted up, she approvingly looked at Konstantin Ruzanov and said, "wow, now he's a black woman's kind of white guy."

I have absolutely no idea what she meant by that, but it's worth noting that in her own apartment, there was only one "sexy" pin-up poster: a white wifebeater clad Justin Timberlake. Hmmmm...!

A few YouTube vids:

Artist Roundup: Mbbbbb

Visit his Gallery Here

In the alternate art universe of DeviantArt where sloppy asskissing is the normal means of interaction and true, serious critique is discouraged by all the fragile, insecure young egos of all those teenaged girl artists, it's actually very rare to actually see someone truly improve or get better from the start of their gallery to the end. An exception is the tragically named Mbbbbb, who obviously improves from the start to the end.

His early work is stiff and blocky.

Compare that to how fluid and natural this image looks:

Mbbbbb's focus is on the combination of sheer, intense and masculine massiveness and definition with youth and an almost feminine beauty. Those of us that like muscle guys for the "boy toy" fantasy are often disappointed by the fact that often most bodybuilders are scruffy faced Biker types, often in their forties and older. Arnold once argued that bodybuilding reduces the aging process, but that's only from the neck down, and no amount of muscle makes an ugly man beautiful. For that reason, Mbbbbb's art is a really successful fantasy in that way.

He obviously loves the thrill of domination, of comparison, of a muscle stud overwhelming others with their size and sexual potency and power. He is fascinated by the look of dramatic, jutting pecs and bowling ball sized shoulders in too-tight t-shirts, the wrinkles they assume with excessive tightness to the point of breaking. He loves their effortless success at physical contests.

Mbbbb's faces are simple as his bodies are defined. His drawings could be drawings of anybody, which is a surprise. My favorite part of his less-is-more attitude is the amazing way, after having seen some of these kinds of artists work, that they could do two or three strokes and suddenly they've got an eye. Whoa!

Mbbbbb, like Renaisssance artists, puts most of his energy into his sexual, beautiful men. Most of his women are a lot less interesting, depressing Clydesdale types.

Yes, Pecan!

I wouldn't be human if I didn't gloat about the Obama inauguration just a little bit.

My favorite part was watching it on the BBC, where the Brits are a lot less mealy-mouthed about these things than we are. When Barack gave that bit about how it is a false dilemma between our values and our security, they cut immediately to a reaction shot of the C-Plus Augustus and the announcer cried with his formal broadcast "BBC English," that "That line was clearly a stinger missile homed in on his predecessor."

Chief Justice Roberts fed him a bad version of the speech, of course, which may be payback for Barry voting against Roberts' confirmation to the court. Other low points included that boring poem that sounds like something I'd write at age 19 read by the least-firebrand orator this side of that teacher from FERRIS BUELLER. If I was freezing my body Cuban behind at the Inauguration, that was the moment I'd pick to get a mineral water at the concession stand. The music by John Williams was particularly limp as well, a soothing panacea for sleeping infants and not at all what I expected from the guy that composed the "Raiders March."

Finally, we had that cool old black preacher busting out into unexpectedly awesome turn of phrase with "yellow getting mellow." You could tell in his eyes that he was thinking "Yeah, motherfuckers, this is what I marched for!"

The same goes for the rest of us too. Congrats, Barry!

Artist Roundup: HelloFriday

Check out HelloFriday, an artist that fills his youthful stallions with an obvious, intense blue collar manliness and hardness that drips testosterone. He especially deserves credit for his unusual and non-typical poses.

Visit his DeviantArt page here.

Maps of Tarzan's Africa

Here's something for you fans of the ultimate muscle alpha stud, Tarzan (sorry Hercules - the #2 slot isn't too bad, though). I found these fantastic illustrated maps of his surreal, dreamlike version of Africa, which is clearly as imaginary as Middle Earth. I have to admit, I'm a sucker for these kinds of maps ever since as a girl I got AN ATLAS OF IMAGINARY PLACES for Christmas.

Click on the images to blow them up.

Behold the Men

Sorry about the long absence. I've had computer trouble that made blogging a real pain in the neck. Now that I've got everything fixed, I should be posting more regularly.

For those of you interested in the psychology of male body image and how the "ideal male body" is created in our culture, read Edisol W. Dotson's BEHOLD THE MAN: THE HYPE AND SELLING OF MALE BEAUTY IN MEDIA AND CULTURE. What I found surprising about this book is that it didn't just zero in on the usual topics: eating disorders, cosmetic surgery, and magazines like GQ and MUSCLE & FITNESS. Rather, the book took a total view on how the male body image is constructed, and talked about a few very surprising things: for instance, the role of the obsession with physical fitness in Nazi Germany and most interesting of all (especially from the point of view of this blog) the creation of men as objects to be packaged and sold in soap operas and romance novels (for women) and gay pornography (for men).

Intriguingly, the book even mentions the vampire phenomenon, although they exclusively link it to Anne Rice (the book was published in 1999). It would be interesting for the publishers to release a revised edition with information on the colossal TWILIGHT phenomenon, which is centered around the desirability of an idealized male figure.

The trouble with the book is, it lacks a certain historical perspective. For the evolution of the male body image, especially from the 19th Century, read HOUDINI, TARZAN AND THE PERFECT MAN: THE WHITE MALE BODY AND THE CHALLENGE OF MODERNITY IN AMERICA by John F. Kasson. The great part about his book is not only the liberal references to our coolest president, Theodore Roosevelt, but also why it argues the male physique became so important in that era. With the West settled and no outlet for men to prove their maleness, the growth of faceless, huge cities that threatened autonomy and individualism, and finally the perceived threat of suffragettes and women's independence to masculinity, the body became a way for men to prove their manliness. The 5'2", 100 pound Houdini sounds like the odd man out in the title, but he really isn't: Kasson argued that Houdini's escapes was a symbol of heroic masculinity, a release from confinement.

One of the biggest and least analyzed historical trends was the idea that a return to the wilderness was necessary for men to really become men. This was the era that saw the rise of Summer Camps, which sought to turn boys into little Indians (hence the Indian names), and the Boy Scouts, that sought to turn boys into little soldiers.