Bodybuilders - Part 3

Bob Paris

In 2006, Bob Paris was described by the magazine of the IFBB, the organization that runs many of the world's top bodybuilding competitions, as the most aesthetically pleasing athlete in the history of bodybuilding.  Above, Paris at the Mr. Universe competition in Singapore, 1983, which he won.

Here he is behind the scenes at at that Mr. Universe event.

Bob attracted the attention of photographer Herb Ritts, who photographed him in 1984 at Paradise Cove, above.

Bob's rise to the top was not smooth.  He was born in 1959 in rural southern Indiana.  His father kicked him out of the house at age 19, and he went to Santa Monica, California, the bodybuilding capital of the world at the time.  At first, he lived hand to mouth, sleeping in his car.  Then he found work in neighboring Orange County.  After two years he started winning bodybuilding championships like Mr. Los Angeles and Mr. Southern California.

He became an outspoken public figure who insisted that bodybuilding competitions should do drug testing. 

In 1989 Bob came out as gay, the first male athlete in history to come out while still competing professionally.  He received death threats by phone and by mail.

That same year he married Rod Jackson, an amateur bodybuilder, in a Unitarian service before same-sex marriage was legal.

Above, Bob Paris (left) and Rod Jackson (right) in the Los Angeles Pride parade in 1993.

Herb Ritts photographed the couple in 1990 for a book called Duo.  Above, one of the photos from Duo.

Another photo from Duo.  There was plenty of nudity in the book ...

but no frontal nudity.  Above, another photo from Duo.

Here's a photo of the two of them in 1994 by Tom Bianchi.

They became a famous gay couple and were in demand as public speakers.  They are the kissing sailors in the 1994 Diesel Jeans ad (above), which was a take-off of a famous Eisenstaedt photo of a sailor kissing a nurse celebrating Japan's surrender in 1945 that ended World War II.

Behind the scenes, they were growing apart.  The couple split up in 1995.

Paris met Brian LeFurgey, whom he describes as the love of his life, in 1996, and they married in a legal same-sex marriage in 2003 in British Columbia, where they now live.  Above, Paris (left) and LeFurgey in a recent photo.  Paris is no longer a muscle god, but he describes himself as "the fittest and healthiest I've ever been, and certainly the happiest."