Bros, Brusses & The Search For Shredded

Fluro posters with nonsensical quotes like ‘live summer, stay summer’ plaster the walls of a brightly lit office. Beautiful men and women hurry around its spacious confines, their short shorts matching their loud and proud Havaianas. Everyone is positive and upbeat, beaming like their internal lights have been pushed into permanent overdrive. The mood is euphoric, like usual, but more so today. There isn’t a single frown in the building, as an aura of achievement wafts through the ventilation ducts. A bearded wizard of a man walks to the centre of the room and looks to the sky. People fall quiet, waiting in anticipation for an announcement they already know. “This year, Stereosonic shall be a two day festival!” He screams with exuberance, pointing upward as small ecstasy tablets rain down from the sky. His peers kiss his feet, amazed at such an innovative revelation. “Welcome to the future, ladies and gentleman,” he smirks, before leaping out the 31st floor window and cascading, completely unharmed, to the pavement below.

And so it was done. On the day of May 10th, Stereosonic gave a steroid-induced extension to their annual pump sesh. The ingenious decision was clearly spawned from the brain of a human who understood that cramming tens of thousands of human sheep into an expensive cage for twice the amount of time would bring forth twice the amount of profit. This double dose of mayhem gives the bros and brusses of Australia an extra 9 hours – or 540 minutes, or 16 disco biscuits, or 32 vodka Red Bulls – to fist pump young girls in the face and tense in front of cameras held by people they call ‘fucking hipsters’. It also means that event organisers will require twice the amount of populace-pleasing artists than in years prior, which will unfortunately result in the booking of Bombs Away for the 957th consecutive year.

Does he even lift, brah?

Though don’t misinterpret my bluntness for malice; this announcement really was a game changer. The extension was a move that solidified Stereosonic’s stature as one of the most physically strong gatherings of large, angry men in Australia. Furthermore, it was a dominant stamp on a less-than-stellar festival circuit, as well as a reiteration of their ability to consistently troll the Australian public by booking the same acts for an inflated price. But more than all of this, the announcement posed the greatest of questions to Stereosonic’s primary demographic. It was a question that forced them to think, a mental process harder than any squat set or bench routine they’d ever done. It was a question that would haunt them night and day until they threw the fanny-pack around their waist and strutted through the golden gates of the festival. It was the Mount Olympus of dilemmas, and one that must be answered: how will they stay shredded for two of the fullest days?

But before we can answer and move forward, we must first go back. So, shall we?

…

I used to live in the same shitty apartment complex as a large mass of a human named Darren. He had bulging biceps and his IQ seemed inversely proportionate to the circumference of his chest. It was he who first exposed me to the mentality of ‘bros’ (or brusses, both completely interchangeable terms). In short, this species of man will happily choose flexing his guns and drinking pre-workout over having sex with women and learning to read. Darren’s longest commitment was to his 4kg tub of protein powder and I’m 90% sure he thought the only time the word ‘textbook’ was used in the English language was when describing a man’s abdominal muscles.  Each time I saw Darren, he’d say things like ‘run at me bro’ and ‘do you even lift brah?’, before aggressively laughing and punching me in the arm. He once told me he loved the feeling of ‘shredding for Stereo’, which prompted me to ask him a series of questions about how he got in shape for such an event. He just repeated the word ‘steroids’ until he became distracted by a crow eating a tortilla chip in a tree nearby. The whole ‘shredding for a music festival’ seemed a bit silly to me, but I’m a fat piece of shit.

Bro-meat

While I may not understand it, there is plenty of good things about these minotaur-like bros. As a heterosexual man, even I can acknowledge the beauty of their perfectly sculpted alpha male figures, and the way they can bash through crowds without a single strand of grace. I’m sure the feeling they get from the hoards of tiny little endorphin soldiers raping their muscles with steroid wands is one of pure ecstasy, and I’d be a fool to downplay their commitment to such a productive hobby. They are more than entitled to wear fluorescent booty shorts and knapsacks and lather themselves with coconut oil and fake tan and fist pump and shuffle and sweat on innocent bystanders, just as I’m allowed to dip my Guzmen Y Gomez burritos in melted Kraft cheese while I watch The Biggest Loser reruns and weep into month-old newspapers.

But some things still seem foreign to me. I remain lost as to why the whole bro culture has become so intertwined with modern music festivals in Australia. One peep through an InTheMix photo album and you’ll instantly realise how important not wearing a shirt has become when listening to dance music in a field full of people you’ve never met. As the emphasis shifted from actually enjoying Porter-whatever-the-fuck-his-name-is to maintaining optimal shred levels for the duration of the day(s), the mentality of the punters and the artists shifted too. Alas, boys will be boys, and if they’re going to do it, they might as well do it right. And so we arrive back at our original question: how will they stay shredded for two of the fullest days?

I have no fucking clue. My six packs come in liquid form and I haven’t done a pull up since I was eight years old.

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Sammy Attwood is the founder of Your Friends House. He enjoys eating breakfast at cheap restaurants and is incapable of using his Twitter. You can follow him on Instagram though: @sammy_attwood.