"twisted steel and sex appeal"

[Jonathan Lighter]

The mention of "muscular Christianity" reminded me of this semi-jocular cliche'. It generally appears in the form "I'm 180 pounds [or whatever] of..." and is used when awesome specimens like myself wish to poke a little hyperbolic fun at ourselves (showing by humor that we're "just like" lesser guys), or when we wish to impress nifty chicks by emphasizing the obvious, that we're not like those other guys at all.

  I've a feeling, though, that some unauthorized individuals may be using the expression, because a search reveals as many as 3000 raw Googlits, the earliest from 1990. Can anybody antedate the phrase ?  (I'd be surprised if it predates the weightlifting boom that started about 1979 and brought the word "Schwarzenegger" into English.)

  JL



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