Not always. Overall, bara and yaoi are the same thing (as in adult manga fetishizing gay men) but the key difference between then is Yaoi is made targeting women and Bara is targeting men. Yaoi tends to have soft, skinny guys because thats what women like (yk like kpop boys, not too muscular but pretty boys). Yaoi can have muscular men because some women like it, it's exciting and 'different' it's cool.
Sometimes I don't understand why it can't just be two regular dudes, I also prefer more regular proportioned characters over girly twinks. Seriously, "pretty" is not my main thing. Sometimes I find it weird how majority of the world is obsessed with "cute-looking" things. When I see a skinny m*f* in real life, all I see is "I'm a real boy!"+*nose growing long af* bc they're probs not actually a kid but that's what I see. I'm like: where's the beef? I'm fatter ;-;
-from a young female
I mean everyone has different tastes and new authors are emerging with muscular lead for yaois as well so recently everyone likes these mostly. Also i always thought Darkness Hound was Yaoi tho. A more basic example of BARA would be like priapus (i love that too) and any manga written by the same author
I can't believe I'm reading a bara smut because it's cute but here I am