marksimpson.com

by Mark Simpson

(Adapted from an essay which first appeared in Out magazine, May 2006; re-written and expanded for The V&A’s ‘Fashion V Sport’ Exhibition Catalogue, June 2008, and updated for my Berlin lecture/slide-show June 2009)

You might think that it was Italy’s greater ball skills, or stamina, or team spirit that won them the last World Cup. But you would be wrong.

Clearly, explicitly, thrillingly, what won it for the Italians was not so much their sporting spirit as their sporno spirit. In the run-up to the tournament, some especially fit players from the Italian team took time off from their training and did something much more useful: they recruited Dolce & Gabbana (or was it the other way around?) to produce a spornographic fashion shoot of them all oiled-up and ready for us. In hindsight, we can see that the world was already grovelling at their feet from that moment on.

Sporno, the post-metrosexual aesthetic that sports and advertising are using to sell us the male body is, well, irresistible. Even for the French – who were, let’s face it, a much plainer bunch. First Portugal devastate England because Ronaldo is better looking than Becks and far swoonier than Rooney, then Italy trounce France because the punters would much rather celebrate with the sweaty Italian stallions in the locker-room. The best men definitely won.

In a spornographic age it’s no longer enough for the male body to be presented to us by consumerism as merely attractive, or desiring to be desired, as it was in the early days of nakedly narcissistic male metrosexuality. This masculine coquettish-ness, pleasing as it is, no longer offers an intense enough image. Or provokes enough lust. It’s just not very shocking or arousing any more. In fact, it’s just too… normal. To get our attention these days the sporting male body has to promise us nothing less than an immaculately groomed, waxed and pumped gang-bang in the showers.

But of course, because this is sporno and not actual pornography, it remains just that: a promise. Advertising and fashion are less interested in making a fetish of the potent male body than its underwear: commodity fetishism is usually the name of the sporno game.

However, the homoprovocative nature of sporno is much less easy to overlook than it was in metrosexuality, which could pretend when it wanted to that it was ‘straight’ and something entirely for the ladies. Where metrosexual imagery stole slyly from soft gay porn, sporno blatantly references hard gay porn.

Sometimes you might be forgiven for thinking sport is the new gay porn. Sportsmen are now openly acknowledging and flirting with their gay fans, à la David Beckham and fellow footballer and coquettish Calvin Klein underwear model Freddie Ljungberg. Both of these officially heterosexual thoroughbreds have posed for spreads in gay magazines (Ljungberg appeared on the cover of Attitude in April 2006, Beckham in 2002), albeit sporting more clothes than they usually wear when appearing on the side of buses. Beefy England Rugby ace and married father of two Ben Cohen has explicitly marketed a calendar of sexy (PG) pics of himself at gay men, and talks of ‘embracing his gay fans’. Some, like Becks and smoothly-muscled Welsh Rugby ace Gavin Henson have even argued over them (Becks recently admitted that Henson had stolen a lot of his gay fans and he wanted them back because ‘I miss them.’).

Being found desirable by gay men, once a source of ridicule by others and often violent anger from the desired, now seems to mean you are worthy not just of love but also of large amounts of cash. A whole new generation of young bucks, from twinky soccer players such as Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo, who has modelled for Pepe, and Chelsea’s Fabulous Frankie ‘Legs’ Lampard, to rougher prospects such as Joe Cole and A.C. Milan’s Kakà posing for Samsung and Armani jeans respectively, and the naked, pneumatic rugby ‘pros’ of the legendary Dieux du Stade calendars, seems to be actively pursuing Beckham’s and Ljungberg’s male sex-object, more than slightly tarty, status.  The sportsman as erotic symbol.

Being equal opportunity flirts, today’s sporno stars want to turn everyone on. Partly because sportsmen, like porn stars, are by definition show-offs, but more particularly because it means more money, more power, more endorsements, more kudos. Sporno exploits the corporate showbiz direction that sport is moving in, as well as the undifferentiated nature of desire in a media-saturated, mirrored-ceiling world – and inflates their career portfolio to gargantuan proportions. Why is Euro soccer star Beckham a household name in the United States, a country that generally has less interest in soccer than socialism? Why did his recent move to the US to play for a team most Americans had never hear of provoke so much breathless coverage in the US media? It was not down to his soccer skills, but rather his sporno skills. Pictures of him semi-naked in Vanity Fair, or in W magazine, sporting skin-tight trousers that nevertheless seem to be somehow pulling themselves off, or that naked campaign for Motorola, in which the mobile phone dangles tantalizingly between his pert nipples, seem to be more ubiquitous, not to mention more stirring, than images of him actually playing football.

And what could be more American?  Sporno stars are pushy young hustlers who are happy to be ogled undressed on Times Square billboards or in Vanity Fair – advertising a willingness to put out, or at least get it out, to get ahead. In campaigns like Ljungberg’s Calvin Klein unforgettable underwear posters of 2006 or Beckham’s globally gawked Armani briefs ads of 2008, their bodies and their bulges, blown up to gigantic proportions, are rammed down our throats by advertising. Most of us don’t appear to be gagging, however.

The male body has been well and truly, not to mention tastily, commodified. After decades of being fetishized by gay men, jocks are now fetishizing themselves. It was probably inevitable. Men are traditionally the more visual of the sexes – and by far the greatest consumers of porn. So why not cut out the middle-women and pornolize yourself? Because of the fantastical masculine potency of sporno millions of boys and men around the world are excitedly buying clothes and underwear worn or endorsed by their hero. And how could a guy, any guy, not have their head turned by a sporno star? Sporno stars have everything a man could want today: youth, vigour, money, fame, looks, equally beautiful bosom buddies, glamorous partners – and the numbers for top photographers and stylists.

The people who essentially invented sport, the Ancient Greeks, certainly thought the male athlete the greatest head-turner. For them, sport was an opportunity to worship and admire the beauty of the youthful male form, which in turn represented the freedom of the human spirit. They thought it natural that men would find the youthful athletic male form inspiring and desirable, and an essential part of the pleasure of sport. Most sports competitions, including the original Olympics, were conducted naked: clothes spoiled the experience, for athlete and spectator. Much of their muscular art was a classical antecedent of today’s sporno.

Admittedly though, many Greeks would probably have been scandalized by the keenness of today’s golden young athletes to pose for images designed to inflame lust – and cash purchases. Plato for one would certainly have been aghast at the neo-classical shamelessness of Dieux du Stade (‘Gods of the Stadium’). The phenomenally successful, luxurious calendars feature the Paris-based Stade Français rugby team and various well-endowed sporting guest stars from around the world re-enacting, you may be forgiven for thinking, the plot of every sports-themed gay porn vid.  (Fashion photographers rather than pornographers take the picthures: Dolce & Gabbana favourite Mariano Vivanco was responsible for the particularly striking 2007 images.) Shot in musty locker rooms, the naked, pumped and tweezed ‘gods’, often in full body make-up, clutch strategically placed rugby balls like fat leather erections and gaze longingly into the camera, or into each other’s eyes.

Such brazen behaviour has only enhanced the careers of these rugger buggers. Frédérik Michalak and his hypnotically tattooed and geodesmic butt’s starring role in an early DVD showing the making of the Dieux du Stade calendar, has helped land him modelling contracts for Christian Lacroix, a French condom line endorsement deal, as well as becoming the expensive face of Biotherm Homme and the sporting package for a skimpy underwear line.

No doubt the Greeks would have been shocked even more by the way that women are openly enjoying these homoprovocative images too. In fact, the Dieux du Stade calendars were originally part of a marketing plan to update and widen the appeal of French rugby, particularly for women, and have proved massively popular: the 2007 calendar reportedly sold 200,000 copies. But the sporno-graphic eye of Dieux du Stade is quite deliberately, quite flagrantly un-straight. Partly because some of today’s women are being turned on to the voyeuristic charms of male-on-male action (in an echo perhaps of their boyfriends’ interest in female-on-female action), partly because it gets attention – ‘whatarethoseguysdoing!’, and partly because, as we’ve seen, the adoration of gay men is the key to the successful marketing of the male body. But mostly because this all-male exhibitionism, whomever it’s directed toward, gay/straight/bi/female/male/mineral, is so charmingly, submissively keen to please.  Especially from guys who live through action and the urge to dominate.

Check out the DDS ‘Making Of the 2004 Calendar’ DVD, or the ‘Making of’ DVD from any year really, and see them obediently adopting the gay porno poses requested of them by the photographer, head placed on buddy’s shoulders, or head at buddy’s waist, hands on his perfectly formed buttocks.

The uninhibitedness of the rugby players, in part a function of the physical intimacy of the game itself, ends up being deliciously suited to the visual uninhibitedness of our times. How things – or rather, thighs – have changed. In the United Kingdom rugby traditionally was the sport of hairy beer monsters with nowhere else to go on a Saturday. But with professionalization, players, particularly the more streamlined backs, have become younger, fitter, and self-consciously sexier and their dance-cards are as full as their biceps. Blond, buffed, green-eyed, square-jawed, England International player Josh Lewsey, has been deployed to interest rugby fans in bulging lycra. A giant, god-like blow-up ‘bronze’ statue of him in his shorts was erected outside Twickenham rugby stadium in 2006 by his sponsor Nike. Rugby fans queuing for their tickets had the distracting pleasure of gazing up between Josh’s towering, flared thighs and at his ‘divine’ abs and pecs bursting out of a skin-tight Nike top.

Meanwhile the England rugby strip itself has been given something of a Queer Eye makeover. Banished forever are their baggy, shapeless beer-towel rugby shirts, replaced by a form-hugging strip that might well have been designed by Jean Paul Gaultier. Understandably, England’s new sporno kit dazzled the opposition: in 2003, the year the team debuted it, England won the Rugby World Cup for the first time ever. The latest version of it, introduced for the 2007 World Cup, saw them achieve second place despite being written off beforehand by pundits.

No doubt this astonishing turnaround was down to their new strip being being even tighter than before and including a saucy red arrow/swoosh from armpit to the edge of the opposite thigh, reportedly designed to confuse opposing players. Too right – they won’t know whether to tackle them or kiss them. A confusion that seemed to be exploited, albeit unwittingly, by the ‘C’est so Paris’ humorous advertising campaign promoting the 2007 World Cup, which featured snogging scrumming rugby players and the jokey tagline ‘Paris: City of Love’ (the only far-fetched aspect of the campaign was the unattractiveness of the ad’s faux rugby players compared to the ‘real’ Dieux du Stade thing).

In the more moneyed world of football, which has been a much bigger business for much longer, the eye-catching potency of a sporno star seems to have disorientated even the tough no-nonsense guys who manage football clubs – until you look at the bottom line. Despite somewhat inconsistent performances on the pitch, David Beckham is the world’s biggest-earning soccer player and the best known – because of his off-pitch pouting (most recently confirmed by his 2007 £20 million Armani underwear deal). His purchase in 2003 by Spain’s Real Madrid made them the most profitable soccer club in the world – replacing Manchester United: Beckham’s previous club. Beckham is an object of global desire, and his merchandise moves even faster than his hips – his body is worth more on billboards than on the pitch. After making what was billed as the biggest sports deal in history at £128 million, American team LA Galaxy is his new sporno studio, and he their Number One box cover star.

There is, however, another way in which British soccer players are finding themselves and their athletic prowess paraded on the front pages. A slew of kiss-and-tell articles have appeared in the tabloids in recent years about the penchant our young sportsmen have for sharing a young female groupie with several other team mates. Simultaneously. Often videoing the proceedings. Sporting gods in naked, adult video action with other sporting gods. No wonder the tabs and the public got so excited. In recreating the more than slightly homoerotic straight ‘gang-bang’ porn that they, like many other young men today are downloading from the Net, footballers are, wittingly or not, realizing the fantasy underpinning sporno itself.

Things reached their logical, if slightly Footballers Wives conclusion – their spornographic money shot – in 2006 when lurid stories were ‘splashed’ across the tabloids about a ‘secretly shot film’ allegedly showing several globally famous (but unnamed) English soccer stars engaging in a ‘gay sex orgy’, in which expensive limited edition mobile phones were supposedly used as ‘sex toys’. Regardless of the fact or feverish fantasy of this story, no one seemed to be able to get enough of it. Except perhaps the footballers themselves – who were not only not making any money out of this particular sporno spin-off, but also faced the threat of losing earning potential as a result of the scandal (British libel laws however quickly came to the rescue providing at least one player with a large, undisclosed sum). The response of many fans on the terrace in the form of vicious anti-gay taunts and the continued absence of any openly gay professional footballers, suggest that casual homophobia is as rampant in the culture as sporno itself – which is more than slightly ironic.

A generation of men may be entranced by images of glamorous, sporting males who so clearly, achingly, desire to be desired by all and sundry, but it seems the explicitly homoerotic implications of that still give quite a few of them the willies, especially in the highly-strung world of football.  Though this is perhaps merely a time-lag issue: attitudes take longer to change than underwear.

Sporno stars themselves, moving in their celebrity circles, probably don’t care two hoots whether a fellow player likes bedroom partners with the same-shaped tackle, and may even be as pansexual as their advertising and fashion tastes portrays them, but they worry very much about what their fans will think. After all, this is show business, darling, and you can’t afford to alienate your audience – or, paradoxically, those homoerotic spornographic endorsement deals. While the statements of gay-friendly soccer stars such as Beckham and Ljungberg (and Cohen and Henson in rugby) have been sincere, thus far, actual homosex, or even bisex, rather than the faux variety proffered by advertising appears to still be beyond  the pale. Sporno stars may pose gay but until now all of them have had to be officially totally heterosexual – as do all pro footballers and, with one or two exceptions, all rugby players.

Perhaps this is also the reason today’s soccer stars, who appear, way ‘gayer’ than their predecessors – according to The Sun, Manchester United’s locker rooms have recently had to be modified to make room for players’ ‘manbags’, because ‘they use more cosmetics than their wives’ – no longer kiss one another passionately after a goal is scored as they did just a few years ago. They have to maintain the impression, like many gay porn stars, that they’re only gay for pay.

As for the paymasters themselves, the fashion brands, while they certainly wish to continue changing mainstream masculine attitudes towards clothes and the male body, it could be argued that a certain amount of homophobia works to their benefit here: making sporno advertising more arresting, more powerful – and also helping to displace any homoerotic feelings/anxiety they provoke into commodity fetishism: buying the product instead of trying the fantasy it’s wrapped in. ‘Of course I don’t want the athlete’s desirable looks/face/body/packet’, the hetero male viewer/voyeur of sporno perhaps says to themselves – ‘I want his pants’.

Nevertheless, these are interesting if somewhat conflicted times. We shouldn’t underestimate how far we’ve come and how dramatically traditional male past-times such as football and rugby have changed in the last decade as a result of their collision with the worlds of fashion, celebrity and consumerism. Sporting male heroes have enthusiastically taken up shockingly exhibitionistic sex-object poses in the global media that once were anathema for most men because they were seen as ‘girly’, ‘slutty’ or ‘homo’. Or, what was much the same emasculating taboo in the male mind: passive.  Sports starts have become sporno stars – playing enthusiastic power bottoms to the public’s imagination.  Stripping off, lying back, and thinking of England… lusting over them.

Unsurprisingly, this represents a taboo too far for some. As one outraged (and, it needs to be said, plump and plain) middle-aged male top BBC sports presenter thundered recently in The Sun about Beck’s Armani lunch-box ad: ‘You’ve got money, status, respect and fame – then someone says: “Armani want you to do a picture wearing tight white pants with your legs as wide open as the hole in England’s defence.” Why would you say yes?’

Actually, in a spornographic age, the question should rather be: why on earth would you say no?

© Mark Simpson 2010

Who knew that Rooney on Rooney (in a romantically darkened stadium) could be so swooney?

The message of this latest spornographic ad seems to be that you play better with yourself with your shirt off.  Especially if you’re on YouTube.  And that Powerade InnerGear replaces those salts and ‘nutrients’ you lose in your body fluids.

But in all its autoerotic, chunky bear-cub pride this ad seems to also lovingly-longingly evoke a missing torso.  The smooth, defined, ab-tastic one belonging to Rooney’s much more talented, much prettier Portugese ‘winker’ chum – famously fined for peeling off his shirt on the pitch – who is no longer with Man U, or Rooney, but playing for Real Madrid and stripping off for Mr Armani. And also for visiting fully-clothed Formula 1 race car drivers.

Hence the recent statue of Cristiano Ronaldo unveiled by Nike in Madrid looks so hilariously unconvincing not so much because it doesn’t look anything like him – and it doesn’t even look unlike him – but because it’s wearing a shirt.

Tip: Andre Murracas

Male pole dancing is on the rise, according to Diane Passage on the Huffington Post.  Male pole dancing teachers such as the leg-warmer wearing one above have emerged. There’s even a male pole dancing contest in the UK called ‘Mr Pole Fitness’.  However Ms Passage is careful to make this slightly uptight, not to mention self-defeating disclaimer at at the end of her piece:

As I was discussing this topic with friends, the majority of both men and women were not turned on by the idea of watching a man work the pole. I personally am not a fan of a man who tries to imitate the sensual moves of a woman, but I do appreciate a man who demonstrates a masculine gymnastic style suggestive of what I might see in Cirque du Soleil – which does appeal to the masses.

In other words, so long as the male pole performer accepts that sensuality is the woman’s preserve and doesn’t ’try to imitate it’ but rather pretends he’s taking part in an Olympic pommel-horse event or some circus act — instead of pole dancing in a thong — it’s still ‘masculine’ and therefore OK.

It seems to me that male pole-dancing is becoming more popular with men  precisely because in this metrosexual century men are more and more disregarding what is supposed to be a woman’s preserve — particularly sensuality and inviting the gaze.  Men today see women doing things — such as using cosmetics, pole dancing, and sucking cock — and think: Hey! That looks like fun!  I’d like to give that a go!

And why not?

After all, women have been doing the exact same thing with the ‘male preserve’ for some time.  It’s why so many journalists these days are female.

Here are some other clips of male pole dancers that probably won’t meet with Ms Passage’s approval.  I’m not entirely sure whether they all meet with mine.  However the last clip seems to gloriously short-circuit quaint (North American/Anglo) ideas of what’s acceptably ‘masculine’.  The young pole-dancer may be gymnastic, but he’s definitely not pretending he’s on a pommel-horse.  Instead he seems to represent the emergence of a beautiful new species of butterfly. Spectacularly demonstrating that males can be both (eye-poppingly) masculine and sensationally sensual. 

Tip: DAKrolak

The new issue of Germany’s leading gay magazine Manner Aktuell carries an essay on Sporno by yours truly (and yes, that’s my name on the cover but not, alas, my body).

US Olympic swimmer Ricky Berens unveiled his new dashing new swimsuit during the 4x100m relays at the World Swimming Championships in Rome last weekend.  ‘The Bruno’ caused something of a splash – and the US team, no doubt encouraged by the stirring vision before them – both of them – successfully qualified for the Finals.

Let’s hope other swimsuit designers adopt the asstounding aquadynamics of Mr Berens’ blond butt cheeks.

Tip: Joe My God/Uroskin

 

Postscript:

I’m very grateful to Mark W for reminding me of this highly apposite literary quotation ‘regarding’ the male derriere:

“The veneration I feel for that part of the body and the great tenderness that I have bestowed on the [boys who have allowed me to enter it, the grace and sweetness of their gift, oblige me to to speak of all this with respect”

Genet- “Funeral Rites”

 

Dolce & Gabbana’s latest sporno campaign for their Intimo men’s underwear line (above), employing eager, wide-shouldered chaps from their national team to stretch their designer cotton, seems to have taken inspiration from the tarty antics of the swimmers at last year’s Olympics, peeling their swimsuits off to flash their ‘cum gutters’ at the world (or was it just me?).

I certainly wouldn’t mind a few lengths with any or all of them, but I can’t help but wonder whether D&G might not have had a more spornographic impact if they’d used instead some of these Aussie Rules footballers from Down Under to stretch and pitch their product: they’ve just appeared in a ‘Gods of Football’ sporno calendar clearly inspired by Dieux du Stade, if not actually paying homo-homage (see below).

Though maybe it’s all just a matter of taste.  Or positioning.  There’s definitely something about Aussie Rules Footie that makes for butts that sit up and beg for attention. And they’re certainly getting it from me. The photographer Pedro Virgil, has expertly exploited this ‘asset’ to the full and made these extraordinarily athletic arses the stars of the calendar.

I really should be bored with this kind of thing by now, but curiously I seem never to be able to get quite enough of young straight slutty sportsmen sticking their naked shelf-like bums out and asking for it….

‘Where are you planning on putting that big lens?’ asks Michael Osbourne with his eyes, worriedly clutching his favourite gold-plated footie ball. ‘And don’t I get some poppers first?’

John Williams contemplates his career profile and clenches, while the setting sun and our eyes stroke his thighs.

Travis Burns is a very modern, very smart player: he’s tattooed his name on the back of his arm so we’ll know whose arse we’re staring at. And book him again.

What would a gay porn shoot be without the obligatory barn and showers scenes? (Yes, yes, we know this calendar is officially aimed at women, complete with a quote from Cosmo on the cover, but everyone knows, including the athletes themselves and Cosmo readers, that gay porn is the sensibility of sporno.)

Just to prove I’m versatile, a classic frontal sporno pose a la Ljunberg for Calvin Klein and Beckham for Armani – reclining on a chair, legs apart, arms behind head, smouldering gaze meeting ours and murmuring: ‘Do with me what you will! (But speak to my agent first, OK?)’

Tip: D.A. Krolak

I seem to have somehow missed the not entirely shocking news that Tim ‘No Acorn’ Oakes of Sandbach RUFC, the spunky rugger-bugger captain who was so keen to show off his impressive semi-tackle on national television – and very kindly let his team mates play with it – has since gone the whole hog and stripped off for FamousMales.com, teasing the gayers with his no longer semi but fully erect assets.

EthanSays.com has some safely doctored snaps from the FamousMales shoot (albeit with the wrong kind of ball  – please try to remember you Yanks: rugby players’ balls are odd-shaped). Here’s how the shoot went according to Ethan:

Completely at ease with being naked, Tim recently stripped down for Famous Males and stood stark naked in front of them, his proud, strong nude form – beautiful and stunning. “I’ve got quite a few scars now,” Tim said. “I get well bashed about on the field. God knows what the lads will think of this when they see the pictures…hee…hee.” “JUST LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU WANT ME HARD.”

I’ve seen the pics sans strategically placed football and let’s just say Tim is not only a shower, he’s also something of a grower.  That said, I personally happen to think his ‘hammer’ is even more fetching than his ‘nail’.

His face isn’t bad either….

(Shame about the haircut, though.)

Adidas’ flirty-shirty interactive sporno gets its tits out in New Zealand: ‘Which two players would you like to see swap jerseys?’

No.1 and No.3 did it for me – though I’d quite like to have invited No.5 to join us, but unfortunately you can only choose one-on-one jersey-swapping at present.

I’m sure though that given the ‘penetration’ of sporno into the culture, group shirt swapping along with shorts-swapping options isn’t far off.

Tip: Jay Hirst

Now that’s what I call pushing back.

Taking the sporno trend to parts it hasn’t yet reached – and what parts! – while spreading the famous French ‘pro’ tartiness of the Dieux du Stade calendars to these shores, the latest ad campaign for Powerade’s ‘InnerGear’ isotonic sports drink features several UK pro rugger buggers in the buff snapped by the photographer Alan Clarke. Including, most spectacularly, most spherically, England Rugby Union Captain Steve Borthwick (above), keeping his spornographic end up for the Queen.  And nicely stuck out.

Or as the gay porn legend Dink Flamingo would say, ‘Arch your back, bitch!’

Once again, it seems that it isn’t just me who is undressing athletes with my eyes and giving them filthy directions.  Advertising is doing it too.  But unlike me, advertising can actually afford these tarts.

But I’m not bitter. Honestly. I’m sure that Borthwick was rewarded handsomely by his sugar daddy Coca Cola (who own Powerade) for his bare-faced cheek, but nevertheless he also deserves, as Julian Clary would put it, a warm hand on his entrance for his bravery.  Apparently his mates have been rogering him – sorry -  ribbing him.  ‘It is one of the most daring shoots I’ve been involved in,’ he told the ladies and gentlemen of the press,  ‘but it has been loads of fun, even it it has given my team mates plenty of ammunition for changing room banter.’

I can’t help thinking though that the shoot would have been even more daring and fun if Borthwick had been portrayed along with his bantering naked team mates in an actual scrum instead of doing a muscular Marcel Marceau.  For the purposes of realism, of course.

‘The InnerGear for an athlete – how we train, what we eat and drink – is as important as what we wear,’ says Borthwick, clearly reading here from Coca Cola’s script. ‘And it’s great that this campaign brings it to life’.

‘Gear’ of course is also the street name given to steroids, that hot commodity more and more rugby players these days look as if they’re taking, mandatory drug testing or no.  According to various reports, epidemic numbers of young men who aren’t athletes but who, like today’s sportsmen, also want to look like porn stars are downing them like, well, soft drinks.

I’m sure Coca Cola chose the name ‘InnerGear’ for entirely innocent and pure reasons, and that none of their models would ever use banned substances, even if it is quite easy to do so and avoid detection, but if young men think that by drinking an overpriced sugary-salty drink invested with magical, virile properties by advertising they’ll get buff instead of fat, and look as desirable, as shaggable, as these pro athletes, that can surely only help sales.

Below, England International Paul Sackey and Welsh International Shane Williams who also feature in the InnerGear campaign, prove that really fit bubble-butts can fly. Williams, who looks a little like a Welsh statue of Eros with a rugby ball let loose instead of an arrow, also proves that really fit bubble-butts can arch and look over their shoulder at the same time.

It’s true that this public campaign, unlike the DDS calendars (which are for private consumption, after all), avoids frontal nudity, but then Freud thought that in dreams flying had a phallic symbolism.

So with InnerGear’s flying rugby buttocks you really can have both.

Welsh International Shane Williams. Your flexible friend.

If you’ve been watching the noble Olympics in a slightly pervey way, treating all that lycra and fit young firm flesh on your HD screens as a form of illicit spornography then you deserve to be spanked soundly with a spiked running shoe.

But you’re not alone.

America’s prestigious NBC no less are doing it too.

With an online splurge of swim-boy nakedness called ‘Ab-Fab’ it asks you to ‘Guess the Swimmer’ – by identifying the headless topless torsos of selected Olympic totty.

In other words, it presents photos of top-flight swimmers as if they were headless naked profile pics on Manhunt or Gaydar. At the very least, it takes it for granted that you’ve been studying their bodies rather closely. They should really go the whole hog and provide a ‘MESSAGE ME!’ button to send those naughty athletes our phone numbers.

Someone with more morals than me might be inclined to huff and puff a little at this non-consensual spornographic exploitation of the golden swim-boys. But then, they are encouraging it, those devilish rascals, with their low-slung pants showing off their storm-proof ‘cum-gutters’ and saucy ‘come-hither’ pelvic tatts. They know exactly what kind of world we’re living in – and they seem determined to give it a semi.

And when you see NBC’s full-length pic of multi-Gold-medal-winner Phelps – the slim-hipped superstar whose seismic popularity might just overcome America’s deep-seated Speedophobia - you realise that, like so many young men today, he’s already practically stripping for Fratmen TV , even when he’s wearing jeans and underpants. (And why he deserves yet another Gold – for tarting.)

Meanwhile, two US National wrestlers have permanently lost their place on the team and their scholarships for actually doing just that.

Tip: D.A. Krolak