Lookin' full, gentlemen.

In honor of DOMA's timely demise last week, here's some raw man meat sourced from the strip-mall GNCs of America.

This video was one of the only fitness selections at my local public library branch. The "AllAmericanGuys.com" byline on the cover was clue #1 that it maybe didn't need to be shelved under under Health & Fitness. The back cover copy said nothing about the workout but featured short bios of the meatheads: Kyle was the face of American Eagle Outfitters' summer 2007 campaign -- as if anyone could forget it!

Steve has been featured in Men's Health, Details, and Neither Dick Nor Ass Weekly. 

And so forth.

This title seems to occupy a weird space between workout videos and pornography, one that I knew existed from all the YouTube videos of super-skinny, big-boobied, barely dressed women performing rigorous exercise (a post for another day). This is the male version, and it's one step up from getting your rocks off by flipping through a Hollister catalog. 

There's no nudity -- not even some harmless horsing around, until you get to the DVD bonus feature that shows them play-wrestling. It's just three cut-up dudes with empty thought bubbles floating above them, doing weights. There's barely even instruction. It solves the timeless problem of how to ogle guys at the gym without having to actually work out. It looks like it was made on a camera phone.

After telling his brosephs what they'll be doing in the gym today (spoiler alert: weights), Kyle leads the group in a self-conscious shedding of shirts. It's all very "no big deal; just another day looking this good." And then, I kid you not, Kyle gives his comrades the merest glance in each direction, nods his head and says, "Lookin' full, gentlemen. Loo-king full."

It's low-grade erotica or "body inspiration," depending on where you are vis-a-vis the closet. And if the flexing and huffing and puffing in gym shorts isn't enough of either for you, Amazon recommends graduating to the full monty: 

Happy Pride!

Alyssa Milano, "Teen Steam" and the Male Gaze

Ugh. F*ckin' guys. Too much of this video is thinly veiled, soft-core exploitation. Too much of it is also a boring workout that she doesn't even do. Skip to 4:05 to see the former.

And for the latter, check out 2:30 in this clip:

Since the makers of the video didn't spend much time developing the actual workout, I'll do the same and spend a minute (predictably) kvetching about the (predictable) teen sexifying going on. She was only 15 when this was made!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, based on some of Milano's mid-'90s movie titles:

Somewhere in her child-star journey, someone convinced her that having dudes want to wank to you is a strong foundation for a career. So build on that she did, shaping the non-mint-chocolate Milano brand into   perky underage sexual availability. 

And I swear, I don't come to all this tsk-tsking lightly. I was pretty excited to slap this video up and be all, "Hey! The '90s! Alyssa Milano working out with her girlfriends in bicycle shorts! She's so kewt." And she is so cute. She's kind and competent, explaining the moves well (even if she uses the word "diagonally" incorrectly and often) and addressing the viewer like a friend. But the ulterior motives of her corporate masters are just too visible, and they're distracting. The title says it all: who names a workout video Teen Steam and isn't appealing more to horny males than the girls who might actually exercise to it?

Blah blah patriarchy blah. I'm boring myself with this post. Let's forget the whole video ever existed except for the end, when she snaps her fingers to make a boy disappear -- symbolically rejecting all the male-gaze b.s. heaped upon her -- and gets sassy in the studio bobbing her head and singing her theme song. Doing her thang in the booth, "teen steam" is healthily worked-out adolescent angst, not some lunkhead studio exec's wet dream. Let's remember her this way.