Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends: Bodybuilding, physical attractiveness, and paraphilic sexual preference.

Updated with available video. Louis Theroux, in collaboration with the BBC, has done a series of shows on strange (to most people) sub-cultures. His series is called Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends.

It would be fair to say that the show has an exploitative feeling to it - its whole purpose is to expose the audience to bizarre people for the sake of entertainment. It's far too easy to pass judgment on the individuals Louis meets and interviews.

But, the show does allow a rare glimpse into sub-cultures that most of us would never normally encounter. And, to his credit, Louis does try to be genuinely empathetic (or at least, convincingly pretends to be). He is unassumingly dorky, which seems to cause people to let down their guard.

In this episode, he travels to the US to meet professional male and female bodybuilders. Much of the show is devoted to the men who have strong sexual and romantic preferences for extremely muscular women (sthenolagnia). To see the women shown in class during the section on anabolic steroids, and her husband, skip to about 34:00.

17:35 - beginning of section on muscle worship (i.e., men that have a sexual preference for female bodybuilders) 26:30 - he meets a female bodybuilder who also does sex work 34:10 - Louis meets the woman whose photo was shown in the class slides (and her husband)