Jamal Shaikh, Editor, Brunch, picks his favourite read of 2021
Michiel Baas’ book chronicles how the obsession with fitness among some young Indian men has shown toxic masculinity the door and clarifies that muscular men are actually focused and disciplined
At the peak of the pandemic, in the pre-reels era when poorly-lit “Instagram Lives” were the order of the day (the ring light, also called the TikTok light in India, hadn’t yet been discovered), I received a request from a publishing house asking if I’d do an online chat with Michiel Baas. The anthropologist/author was just out with a book called Muscular India, and as the former editor of Men’s Health India, would I be keen to add my perspective?
I didn’t do the “Live” solely because I didn’t find the time to read the book!
A few months later, some friends texted me snapshots of the page where Baas had credited Men’s Health for the increased interest in six-pack abs and a muscular physique among Indian men. But it was only months later, when a former colleague praised the way the author had drawn parallels between the aspirations and frustrations of the Indian middle class, that I got down to reading it.
Muscular India is now amongst those books that will stay on my bookshelf for years to come. One: It understands the many levels of the middle class India that I grew up in and reflects correctly the constant need to belong. Two: It clarifies that muscular men are, in fact, not symbols of uncontrollable strength, but focused, disciplined, and waiting to be noticed. And three: It chronicles how the obsession for fitness has shown toxic masculinity the door.
Baas’s book tells us how the love for bodybuilding doesn’t contribute to the problem of sexual violence; that it, in fact, takes the idea of masculinity away from it.
It is disappointing that it took a non-Indian author to give us such a great reflection of how “getting in shape” showcases the young Indian man’s ambition and frames his sense of discipline, while also bringing the acceptance that nobody would have expected from a steroids-fuelled obsession.
This is one book that I wish I had written myself.