Wednesday 27 January 2021

Brief 65: Big men

This is just a weird little thought I recently had. There was a point 15-20 years ago, a few years after rugby union had turned professional and the players had been able to devote more time to fitness and gym work, when I looked at the players on the pitch and just thought "Something's wrong here ... they're too big". Where rugby players had, in the amateur, pre-expert nutrition, era been a bit of a ragtag mixture, from the rotund to the relatively skinny, they were all now varying degrees of built, even naturally normal-sized men like Brian O'Driscoll and naturally little men like Shane Williams.

And it was wrong. And it was dangerous. And so it proved. Rugby is a concussion time bomb just starting to explode. Massive men like that shouldn't have all be thudding into each other all the time without the right protocols in place.

And what's this got to do with anything else?

Well, I've had the same thought nagging about young Hollywood male stars - they've all got these professional rugby physiques. Not enough of them look normal.

Sure, in the past you had your Stallones and Schwarzeneggers. but they were "muscle men", that was their calling card. Even Cruise was a normal shape, even Willis, let alone Hanks, Ford, Clooney etc.

Now it's all of them, all doing their groundwork in the gym, playing their superheroes and their occasional "look, I'm sensitive and can really act" role, then going on the chat show circuit trying to make out they're normal, or a bit kooky.

Naming no names, shit is weird with some of them. However they got those physiques, whatever. It's not healthy.

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