When I was a kid I would forage used book stores for old National Geographics (sold for a dime apiece)for articles that might contain photos of half naked muscular men.. yes, Superman comics also provided delicious bodybuilding advertisements every month, but always the same one.
My radar picked up any article that vaguely suggested a warm climate so articles about Asia, Africa, Oceania, Central America.. you get the idea. What can I say? We didn’t have Instagram back then. I would secretly cut out blurry photos of Japanese gymnasts with their mighty arms and shoulders from the sports page, and kept them for decades.
These are good times nowadays😳
Even the slightest hint of muscle was game, so I ended up with a significant collection of NGs. The old issues were better, with real-time photos back from the days when a lot of people in hot climates actually did have to work naked.
During a recent visit to a museum in Taiwan I came across this photograph in an exhibit of “early days in the port.” This tiny depiction of a “coolie” (an old Chinese word for manual laborer) jumped out at me as he rolls bundles of soy meal.
His great-grandson is probably doing good business as a personal trainer and/or physique model. But the old candid shots have a charm all their own.
Even nowadays, in more traditional settings like marketplaces, fishing harbors, informal building sites, you can still see the occasional unselfconscious man with a perfectly chiseled fat-free muscle-stacked build do his job shirtless without a care in the world. These are still good times we are living in…
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