The Colour of Muscle: Multiculturalism at a Brooklyn Bodybuilding Gym

Abstract

I was dawdling near the reception desk of the gym, scanning the room for ethnographic inspiration, when a heated discussion broke through the cacophony of tinny pop music and clanking weights. ‘Reverend Billy’, a wiry man wearing a black do-rag and white sleeveless undershirt, was sweating furiously on the Stairmaster while shouting passionately at someone I had never seen before: a broadly muscled, magnetic African-American man with an air of mischief. This man, between sets of dead lifts (an exercise where a barbell is lifted from the floor to about waist height, keeping the back straight, and the knees slightly bent), was clearly taking pleasure in working Reverend Billy (who is not, in fact, a Reverend) into a lather. Reverend Billy’s usual workout partner, a Jamaican Israelite whom most people call Rasta, was on the next Stairmaster over, muttering and shaking his head. The argument was theological, as it usually was whenever Reverend Billy was around (hence the nickname). I walked over and took a seat on the stationary bike next to them, pedalling half-heartedly. As I knew they would, the three men turned their attention to me and I asked them, perhaps a little coyly, what they were arguing about. Regaining the momentum I had interrupted in passing through, Reverend Billy insisted that he had a duty to bear witness to the Truth of the Lord.