The dark underbelly of Pakistan’s male body image revolution

For more than two years, journalist Saad Zuberi explored a sporting community that exists largely in the shadows and found young men whose dreams of escaping poverty and finding fame had led them into drug abuse and sexual exploitation.

Karachi, Pakistan – In a small room in his modest family home, Asad Naqib Khan threads a sewing machine needle.

As the rhythmic hum of the machine fills the air, the tailor’s gaze occasionally drifts over to the screen of his mobile phone in the hand of his oldest child. The father and son are watching bodybuilding videos on YouTube.

Twenty-eight-year-old Asad is a father of five children aged 10 and younger. He is not just a tailor struggling to make ends meet — he is also an aspiring bodybuilder.

“For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to become a bodybuilder,” he explains while hemming a shirt that morning in early 2022. “I used to watch older guys in my neighbourhood go to the gym and spend time building their strength and muscles.” As a teenager, he fantasised about doing the same. “Once, I went to watch a bodybuilding competition and wanted to become just like the men I saw on the stage,” he recalls.

Asad grew up with eight siblings and remembers how his father, a daily wage labourer, would struggle to find regular work to support his family. As the eldest son, Asad felt compelled to share his father’s financial responsibilities as soon as he became a teenager. Leaving middle school meant he had limited options, but instead of opting to become a labourer like most men from his neighbourhood, he decided to apprentice with a tailor. When he was 18, he branched out on his own. Over the years, however, he yearned for the one thing he believed would bring purpose and happiness to his life – to become a professional bodybuilder. “One of my biggest dreams is to make Pakistan proud by competing internationally and winning for the country,” he explains.

But it wasn’t until 2019, when he met Zahir Shah, a former bodybuilding champion in his 40s who owns a gym in a busy Karachi neighbourhood, that Asad began on this path.

Asad finishes sewing the shirt and hands it to his son to fold. He says that his children, particularly the two boys, take delight in watching his workout videos. “They urge me to work out harder so I win first place. God willing, I will make them proud.”

He envisions introducing his sons to bodybuilding, and also has aspirations to open his own gym, like Zahir, which his boys can one day help him run “so I don’t have to work as a tailor any more.”

The world of Pakistani bodybuilding is one that few outsiders ever get to see.

With no state funding, national structure, or regulation, the sport thrives in the shadows, haphazardly managed by about a dozen independent federations scattered across the country.