RIPPING IT UP
Model Terry Miller – America’s first Tom of Finland ambassador – is now the daddy of the bodybuilding scene
Tom of Finland’s drawings of muscular men look almost too good to be true — until you lay your eyes on Terry Miller, a walking, talking Tom of Finland model. Although he just turned 50, he recently started entering body-building competitions — he has no plans to slow down. Here, he discusses his metamorphosis from being slim with a pair of “bird arms” to sculpting the limbs of an Adonis, as well as the joys of strutting his stuff at leather events and his life with sexadvice columnist Dan Savage.
Were you active in your youth?
I was super scrawny. I have a picture of me when I was 18 years old and I had what I called “bird arms”; they were like sticks with little hands at the end. I was not very muscular or fit and I didn’t do any sports as a kid.
I saw a video of you doing a tour of the Tom of Finland House in LA and in it you mentioned that you discovered Tom of Finland in your teens. Did that experience inspire you to physically emulate his art?
I saw his stuff in my teens and then I would see it more at gay bars when I was out and in gay publications in my early 20s. I didn’t really think about emulating it until a little bit later, but it was always like, that’s the ideal for me.
Did it take you years to go from “bird arms” to bulked up?
It really did. Also, I have a son, and when he was really young, I was a stayat-home dad and I was carrying him around all the time and it just became essential for me to get some exercise because when you’re lugging around a 20lb “bag of sand” all day, bird arms
aren’t going to cut it. So, I started exercising in my 20s and it took a while to get to where I am now.
How much exercise do you do to maintain your body?
It’s weird, we all talk about how much exercise do you have to do. I go to the gym because it’s good for my brain and my positive emotional state, so I go six days a week and I probably ride my spin bike almost every day. I’m always trying to get some sort of exercise because it helps with depression and anxiety; it helps raise your serotonin levels and makes me feel good. So, it’s part of the job but I would still be doing it regardless of whether I was modelling [or not].
How strict are you with your diet?
If I’m trying to get [body-building] competition-ready, it’s very, very strict. Otherwise, I just keep an eye on things, I don’t let things get out of hand or out of control. I drink very, very lightly — I’ll have a glass of wine or beer when I go out, but I don’t over-indulge in alcohol because that’s the real hidden killer, more so than sugar and fat.
You start drinking and then you want salty snacks, you want everything that you shouldn’t have and your body’s metabolism doesn’t work correctly when it’s under the influence of tons of alcohol.
You recently turned 50 — have you found it harder to stay in shape now that you’ve hit that milestone?
Naw, it’s just the stable grind every day, I still enjoy doing it. I’m sure my muscles are recovering much slower and I’ve had backache for a week, I have no idea why, but I’m just powering through it.
You’re an ambassador for
Tom of Finland, what does that mean?
When I go to leather events such as IML [International
Mr. Leather], Dore Alley,
Folsom Street Fair or Folsom Europe in Berlin, I can walk around and, in my full leathers, I look pretty close to a Tom of Finland model. It’s just a good way of spreading the word about Tom of Finland, his art, his life, how he’s created this leather lifestyle, the image that as leather guys we try to attain.
When and how did that relationship manifest?
Four years ago, a friend of mine was starting the Tom of Finland store, which we started as a catch-all for all things Tom of Finland. Now we’re actually creating new products and doing a lot of collaborations with fashion designers like JW Anderson to create higher-fashion, higher-quality products. And I’m happy to help with representing the brand.
Within the gay community, muscle men are idolised but they are far from the majority. Do you find that the leather community is more inclusive of different body types?
The leather community is inclusive of everything. There’s bears and otters, puppies and skinny guys; there are all kinds of guys in the leather community. And everyone’s mostly friendly, so it’s cool to just meet people and hang out at those events.
What event do you recommend the most?
The thing to do for Folsom weekend is go shopping at Mr. S Leather. Folsom is only one day, on Sunday, but most guys go there for the >
“Exercise helps with depression and anxiety”
weekend and there’s parties and stuff all weekend. But shopping at Mr. S Leather on Friday and Saturday leading up to Sunday’s street party, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen — there’s guys in cages, guys being whipped in the store. I had a fair amount of scenes happen in the store, it’s just super fun. And Mr. S Leather is huge, it really is the gay department store; it has a sports fetish section, the puppies section, the leather restraints section, the rope restraint section, all the leather gear, all the rubber, it’s just like if you went to an H&M, except it’s all gay fetish stuff.
You mentioned competing — which body-building competitions have you done recently?
The Emerald Cup is a big, amateur body-building competition that I’ve done for two years. It’s a big, straight day of hanging out with straight people who are big, muscley guys.
It’s not intimidating, it’s just not what I would usually choose to do. I did it as a thing to set a goal and achieve, like, a merit badge for myself — like, I’m going to get super fit, do a competition, see if I trophy. But it’s 16 weeks of hardcore dieting and when I say dieting, it’s not like you’re starving yourself, body-building dieting is actually eating five to seven times a day, you’re stuffing your face constantly and that is a grind — you’re just eating rice, chicken and asparagus for weeks on end.
You said it was very straight, do you think that’s a bit ironic considering these are men obsessed with their own bodies in posing thongs?
Absolutely, I mean it’s so weird and what’s funny is the guys on stage doing the competition are 98 per cent heterosexual. Everyone on the periphery of the competition, like all the photographers and people helping out are all gay guys. They want to be a part of it but they don’t want to be on stage; it takes a lot to get to that point of putting yourself on view.
You are married to sex columnist Dan Savage, what’s your relationship like?
We’ve been together for 25 years and married for 15. We are not two peas in a pod but we complement each other — he does things that I don’t do and I do things that he doesn’t do. I have interests that he doesn’t share, and he has interests that I don’t share, but it means that when we come together at
night for dinner, we have things to talk about. And we share parenting our son and that’s its own reward.
What is the best piece of sex or relationship advice that you’ve learned from him over the years?
The big one is: be good, giving and game. Be good in bed, be giving of experience and time, and then be game for anything.
Eleven years ago, you and Dan created the It Gets Better Project. What prompted that campaign?
In 2010, there was a particular barrage of gay teens committing suicide and it just was really saddening week after week hearing about kids who are so young, so
“Be good in bed, be giving of time, and be game for anything”
confused and willing to end their lives as young as age 12. We just felt like we needed to do or say something that could alleviate that pain, show people that they were part of a bigger community and that everyone has been through this before in some way or the other.Possibly not as intensely as they have, maybe more intensely, but everyone in the LGBT community has been through the same thing, and we just wanted to find a community for those kids to reach out to and talk to people, because a lot of them have no one to talk to. They were trapped in Christian enclaves in Colorado, Utah and Missouri. Online is everywhere, so we needed to set up a place where they can meet online and talk to people. And what was the most poignant moment of creating that campaign? Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both made videos and it was not just speaking directly to gay people — because politicians had done that before — this was speaking directly to gay kids. To have the President of the United States speaking directly to LGBT kids — to have the President acknowledging that LGBT kids exist — was a huge thing and an incredibly positive and gratifying step.