In a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience featuring comedian Adam Ray, host Joe Rogan highlighted an unusual trend in the bodybuilding world that has emerged in response to contemporary social sensitivities.
According to Rogan, competitive bodybuilders have begun leaving their faces untanned while still applying dark tanning products to the rest of their bodies—a practice designed to avoid accusations of blackface.
During the conversation, Rogan and Ray discussed how bodybuilders traditionally darken their skin to enhance muscle definition on stage.
The contrast created by darker skin makes the muscles appear more pronounced under stage lighting, which is crucial for competitive success. “The more the darker your skin is, the more contrast, the more it shows your muscles,” Rogan explained to Ray. “So when they get like real shredded and they they dye their skin like super dark.”
However, Rogan noted that this long-standing practice has been modified in recent years. “Now after the woke stuff, it’s become offensive to dye your face,” he said. “So they dye their whole body and they leave their face white. So they have chocolate body, full chocolate body, white face.”
The visual result is striking and somewhat surreal. Rogan showed Ray examples of bodybuilders competing with dramatically tanned physiques but pale, untanned faces. “Look at him. Look. Oh, look,” Rogan said while viewing images. “Look how kooky that is… That’s ridiculous because he can’t do his face like that cuz he looks fully black.”
The comedian described how some competitors have attempted different approaches to this dilemma. While some bodybuilders now accept the stark contrast between their darkened bodies and pale faces, others have tried to find middle ground. “You can kind of go brown face, but if you want to get full chocolate body, like some guys go full dark,” Rogan observed.
This phenomenon represents a significant departure from decades of bodybuilding convention, where competitors routinely applied dark tanning products uniformly across their entire bodies. The practice has nothing to do with racial impersonation but rather serves a purely functional purpose in competition—making muscle striations and definition more visible to judges.
