He-man: ‘I have the power!’ World: ‘We’re not sure you should anymore’

I have heard quite a few bodybuilders say they were inspired by the original He-man of the 1980s. The recent Netflix Masters of the Universe: Revelation series (2021) may result in a whole new generation of bodybuilders being inspired by He-man. However, there are some important differences between the He-man of the 1980s, and the He-man of the 2020s. What’s more these differences seem to say something about how we, as a society, have changed how we think about bodies, power and gender over the last 40 years. They seem to indicate that we aren’t as comfortable with He-man having the power anymore.

‘The most powerful man in the universe’, He-man, first hit the toy store shelves in 1981. Made by toy company Mattel, he was the first truly jacked action toy.

The original He-Man action figure was conceived to make other boys’ toys look “wimpy”. Designer Roger Sweet astutely thought “an unbelievably ripped hombre like that would be compelling for boys, since every boy – or man, for that matter – would love to have the kind of anacondas hanging from his shoulders that make people draw back in awe” (as he wrote in his 2005 book Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion-Dollar Idea.) So he recruited bodybuilders to act as references for the characters in He-man.

Sweet was correct about He-man’s mass having mass appeal, and with the help of a promotional cartoon series, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, He-man quickly became one of the world’s top selling toys (even rivalling the Star Wars figurines). Decades later bodybuilders describe being inspired by He-man, and there are a few He-man inspired workouts online.

He-man has even been incorporated into bodybuilding culture through art.

The original He-man of the 1980s, the one that inspired these bodybuilders, looked to me to have the proportions of a Golden Era bodybuilder such as Arnie.

However, the 2020s version of He-man that appears in Masters of the Universe: Revelation doesn’t look very Golden Era anymore. Like the mass monsters that have come about since the Golden Age he has been hitting the slin and growth.

The He-man of today is even bigger than Big Ramy, and exceeds the limits of what is humanly possible. But the fact that He-man has gotten much more muscular is not the most interesting part. What I think is most interesting is how He-man’s alter ego, Prince Adam, and another character from Masters of the Universe, Teela, have changed.

In the 1980s Prince Adam had the same body as He-man, so when he transformed into He-man he basically just had a wardrobe change.

In the 1980s Teela was a fairly average looking woman, with no visible muscle definition.

The differences between the bodies of men and women were made hugely apparent in the 1980s Masters of the Universe.

But in Masters of the Universe: Revelation Prince Adam has basically no muscle, and Teela has developed a musculature and jawline that many men would envy.

So what’s going on here? Why has Prince Adam lost so much muscle, and Teela gone from soft and small to hard and angular? What I think is that we, as a society, have become much less comfortable with masculine power in the last 40 years, especially masculine embodied power. In a post #metoo world we seem to equate men’s power with the abuse of power, particularly the abuse of women. Thus, we’ve become much more comfortable with powerful women, than we have powerful men. It seems we now think men’s power should only be displayed and exercised under certain circumstances, such as in times of warfare, when protecting the good from evil. Hence, Prince Adam should have no muscle. He is a socially acceptable man of the 2020s who does not have any power (and thus no potential to abuse power). Only when he needs to protect the good people from the likes of evil Skeletor does he transform into He-man, gain muscle, and exercise his power.

During my research into bodybuilding I have come across so many academics who can only see masculine muscle as problematic. They talk about bodybuilders as examples of ‘toxic masculinity’. I have even been asked when I am going to write a paper about the ‘toxic masculinity’ of bodybuilding. I don’t think I ever will. Sure, I have come across a few misogynistic fuckwits during my years researching in bodybuilding communities, but they have been far outnumbered by the men who have shown me respect, and who have supported my research. For me to write a paper about muscular men as abusers of power would mean massively distorting my findings. ‘Toxic masculinity’ is not the reality of bodybuilding as I have experienced it.

Although progressive enough to announce his pronouns way back in the 1980s, it seems that 1980s He-man now represents a gender ideology we are no longer comfortable with. We are no longer comfortable with men having embodied power, unless of course we need them to protect us from evil in which case we want them to have all the embodied power possible. No wonder some men seem so confused about what it is society wants from them these days. We want them to be weedy Prince Adam and jacked He-man at the same time.