Sports athletes too sexy for their clothes

Our very own blogger, Brian Juergens, has today's front page article, Sexing up the Male Athlete. I can't tell you how hard it was to get Brian to take on this assignment. He wanted to write something about seminary students, but after hours and hours of prodding, he finally agreed to write about the phenomenon of (mostly European) male athletes getting their gear off for female and male fans. Okay, okay, all I really had to say was, "Brian, I'm thinking we might do a story about the sexualizing of male athletes" and he said, "Mine! The story is MINE! I know all about it!" I first became aware of what was going on a few years ago when a friend sent me a clip of something called Dieux du Stade. In the clip, supposedly heterosexual athletes from a French rugby team pose in photos that put the erotic in homoerotic. Since then the phenomenon has only grown with books, calendars, videos, etc, that have made the players far more famous around the world than they would have been just keeping their clothes on and playing rugby. Brian talks with a number of folks including blogger Andy Towle, Dutch photographer Ewoud Broeksma, and others about this trend and whether or not it will eventually come to the States. Brian turns up some rather interesting ideas about how these athletes may be viewing what they're doing. So if you're curious to learn more, click here to read Sexing Up the Male Athlete. And just for fun, here is a video of Right Said Fred singing what could be the theme song for these athletes.