Muscle In The Age Of Instagram

For social media’s bodybuilding stars every post is a potential source of profit and a chance to perform for millions of followers. But how did bulking up become such big business? And are we in danger of prizing form over function?

- Daniel Kunitz

As soon as Sadik Hadzovic walks through the door of Powerhouse Gym in New York, two young men accost him. “It’s swole time!” they announce, pulling out their iPhones for selfies. For Hadzovic, who has 2.1 million followers on Instagram, this kind of greeting has become an everyday occurrence; he is having the windows of his BMW M6 tinted because men keep knocking on his windscreen. He loves his followers and is generous with his time, but being an Instagram star can be exhausting. For several weeks, Hadzovic ignored my emails requesting an interview: he’d assumed they were from yet another stalker.

Though he has won several bodybuilding titles and was twice the runner-up for Mr Olympia, the stage that matters to him most is the one in your hand. On social media, Hadzovic is a symbol of self-maximisation – a man who has not only enlarged himself physically but has built up his body into a brand. His profession is “fitspiration”, a word that was recently recognised by Oxford Dictionaries. But while the jargon may be new, Hadzovic is part of a tradition of holding muscular male physiques up for adoration that dates back at least to the ancient Farnese Hercules statue.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s boyhood idol was Reg Park, an English bodybuilder-turned-actor whom he first saw in the 1961 film Hercules and the Captive Women. Arnie himself helped to initiate the bodybuilding craze of the 1980s with Pumping Iron and Conan the Barbarian, the latter a homage to Park’s swords-and-sandals movies. But today’s Herculean role models have left the multiplexes and found a new home online, where tags such as #aesthetic and #motivation provide forums in which body artists can flaunt their work.