It's difficult to pinpoint any particular moment when I became interested in bodybuilding, but for sure I was always struck by muscular physiques.
There are several events which spring to mind, though.
One is Tom Platz's appearance on a network chat show over here in the mid-Eighties, long before cable was available. He dropped his pants and the British studio audience's jaws dropped! At home as a kid of around ten, I couldn't believe what I saw.
Another time I was watching one of the
Rocky films on TV. I must've commented upon Stallone's physique, 'cos I remember my father pointing out that he (Sly) had
built himself to look that way. Not that my father knew or knows anything about BBing; but it's significant that up until then I must have assumed that some men just happen to grow up looking like that!
Perhaps during the same film broadcast, I remember seeing Hulk Hogan as 'Thunder Lips' in the ring with Rocky for a charity exhibition bout. I noted the immense difference in builds, and I think I assumed that maybe the bigger guy just worked harder!
And I recall watching
Film '85 with Barry Norman (a long-running Brit TV show) and listening to Norman describing then-new big-time movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, and his Rambo-clone movie
Commando. He showed the clip where Arnold's character jumps from the plane's landing gear into a marsh.
(This is around the time when wowsers like the Hollywood Wives began blaming movie stars and rock bands for all the world's ills, and Arnold/Stallone were fave targets for such nerds.)
Anyway, the point is, Arnold was in the right place at the right time for someone like me to be blown away by his physique. God knows what I would've thought if I'd seen a picture of him ten years previously!
Even though I didn't start heaving weights myself until I was 21, I'm sure that the seeds were sown more than ten years before.
TNBT