Still, the exchange (or replacement) isn't so cut and dry.

In India, Sandow's gospel of personal strength became interwoven with Indian nationalism and independence. In Senegal, where wrestling has its own tradition that predates European influence, the snapshots of warriors actually highlight the colonial interests of the photographers. And in the United States and beyond, models posing in men's magazines celebrated physical health and wellness, but also doubled as pin-ups for consumers of gay subculture. All of these photos generate a syncretic view of buffness that reveals the ways in which muscled men are more than stereotypical gym rats; they can also be cultural ambassadors.

The following photos and passages are excerpted from the book.

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By the early twentieth century, Eugen Sandow was recognized as the most perfect example of the male human form, as evidenced by being featured in Baillière's Popular Atlas of the Anatomy and Physiology of the Male Human Body (London, 1908). It is the strongman's face and epidermis on the outside, but various fold-out pages reveal the structures within his muscular body.

An embrocation is generally used by athletes to massage into sore muscles, and this die-cut advertising card is one of the finest. It shows a black boxer doing a one-arm lift of a dumbbell, but because the item is joined by a rivet in the middle, the figure can move back and forth. Dr. Will’s Embrocation promises to make an Olympian out of anyone who uses it daily. This articulated advertisement was made in the early 1900s when many African-American boxers were popular in Paris.

From 1946 to 1969, Henri Garsou (1914–69) ran the magazine Muscles from his home in the sleepy Belgian village of Andrimont. This cover from October/November 1959 features two models who demonstrate one of Garsou's favorite mottos: “The happy man does not wear a shirt.” The magazine purported to encourage muscle building, but there was little doubt that its true target audience was the post-war gay subculture that was attracted to physique photos.

In this stereoview from 1904, two grapplers from Dahomey (now Benin) supposedly wrestle for a bride. Western interest in this previously little-known African country increased in 1903 due to a hit Broadway show called In Dahomey—causing many to run to their maps to find it.

One African who traded on his physical attractions was Feral Benga (1906–57), shown here in a French magazine from 1934. It was said that he was the illegitimate child of a rich man from Dakar in Senegal. He was a dancer and model in Paris from the 1920s to 1940s, photographed and fawned over by just about every gay artist in France and New York (and there were a lot of them). George Platt Lynes and Carl Van Vechten both took his portrait; he was sculpted by James Richmond Barthé, painted by Pavel Tchelitchev, and appeared in Jean Cocteau’s film Le Sang d’un Poète (Blood of a Poet, 1930).