[Vol. 9] Why Are Our Bodies Never Good Enough?
Body insecurity is a gay issue.
When I hit puberty, my nose grew a little bump.
I never paid much attention to my face before then. I was a kid who liked to play make-believe with his friends on the playground and, later, play video games with my brothers on Sunday mornings – what did it matter what my nose looked like?
But suddenly, as that bump grew in, I did care. I cared a whole lot.
My family had just moved to the other side of the planet, I was still feeling the new-kid blues, and all I wanted was to blend in – your typical angsty teenager stuff. So when my new nose grew in and people started to notice, it was the bane of my existence.
Obviously, I know now that no one really cared what my post-puberty nose looked like (we were all too busy worrying about Silly Bandz and getting a Facebook), but at the time it just felt like another thing that would keep me from blending. I can’t say that I was aware of being gay then, but damn if that need to blend wasn’t a foreshadowing to being in the closet.
It was the first time I’d felt insecure about my body; it wouldn’t be the last. I was about to enter a world of gay men that hated their bodies.
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I don’t know if it was the product of existing as an impressionable gay kid in the body image-obsessed gay culture we see today, or if it was just being an impressionable kid in our body image-obsessed culture in general, but either way, the universe was not nudging me towards body positivity.
It started with my nose, but it grew to envelop my entire body.
There was a time I could spend a solid thirty minutes doing absolutely nothing else but taking pictures of my face. And they weren’t failed selfies either – I wasn’t planning on posting any of the pictures – they were literally just test shots of what my nose looked like from different angles.
From the front, from the side, from the side smiling, etc. etc. My camera roll looked like a plastic surgeon’s consultation reference. This is super embarrassing to admit here, but there was this one time I took a full hour out of my workday just to photoshop the bump out of my nose. I wanted to see what it would look like.
After my nose, it was my posture. I don’t know how it started – maybe I caught a look at my profile in the mirror as I was getting ready, or maybe I scrutinized a candid photo a friend took of me from the side – but suddenly I was obsessed with the way my neck would slouch in front of my shoulders.
After my posture, it was my body type. Too skinny – I needed to get my ass to the gym and do something, anything, if I wanted to avoid looking like a slouching stick figure by the pool.
After my body type, and most recently, my newest fixation has been my eyes. I hate the way they squint up in pictures. And, I fear, they’re just not symmetrical enough.
With each fixation came one simple phrase: “I’m just not good enough”.
I never hated my body, or my face. I have highly disliked my body and face at times, as I’ve very clearly laid out for you all here (especially after having a bad picture taken), but I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever hated it. The word seems too strong.
Instead, I’ll say that it was, and is, just never good enough for me. There are times I absolutely love my body, it’s true. If you caught me when I work out in front of my mirror, the lighting and shadows just right, you’d think you’d just walked into a modern-day adaptation of the tale of Narcissus.
Who knows, maybe I’ll fall into that mirror someday too.
But no matter how awesome I can sometimes feel about my body when I’m working out or strutting down the runway that is the New York City sidewalk, my insecurities always have a way of catching up to me.
Fortunately (and unfortunately) I’m not alone in this.
9% of U.S. adult men report frequent body checking, while 5% report body image avoidance. For women, the numbers are even higher, with 23% reporting frequent body checking and 11% reporting avoidance.
Checking and avoidance are the twin-opposite hallmarks of having a negative body image. While body checking refers to thinking and acting in obsessive ways over your appearance (such as scrutinizing yourself in the mirror every time you catch your reflection), body image avoidance is when you’ve gone past the point of scrutinizing yourself and end up hiding parts of your body you dislike or skipping out on certain social functions in order to avoid triggering obsessive thoughts over your body image.
This means that nearly 1 in 10 men and 2 in 10 women have developed some sort of obsessional thought or behavior surrounding their body image. Those numbers don’t even account for the total number of people that are unhappy with their bodies, which is by all accounts a lot larger.
With body image issues touching every one of us – gay, straight, cisgender, or transgender – the question then is: Is this really a gay issue?
I guess my answer to that question would be, yes and no.
No, it’s not just a gay issue. The statistics I’ve highlighted above prove that no one is safe from developing a problematic relationship with their body, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity.
However, I’d have to also say yes, body image is a gay issue. In particular, it’s an issue in the gay male community.
Too many gay men hate their bodies.
And by too many, I literally mean too many – the numbers don’t add up. According to data published in 2011 by the OCD & Related Disorders Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, body dissatisfaction is prevalent at a rate of 32% in gay men, compared to just 24% in straight men.
Even more concerning, the same report points out that while gay men make up only around 2 - 4% of the U.S. population, 12.5% of men that meet the diagnosis for body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) identify as gay.
That means more than 1 in 10 men living with BDD, the mental health condition that leaves you obsessed with largely imaginary defects in your appearance, are in the gay community.
From doing a little research, I’ve found countless personal stories from gay men who’ve struggled with BDD or body image issues in general. Modern Family actor Reid Ewing’s personal account of his plastic surgery addiction is a particularly jarring testimony, but a powerful and revealing read nonetheless.
So, why are we, as gay men, so prone to being dissatisfied with our bodies and looks?
A Vice article I came across while researching, Too Many Gay Men Still Hate Their Bodies, breaks it down like this: “It’s no secret that certain segments of the gay community hold high, near-oppressive standards of what counts as sexually attractive … Whether suffering from a diagnosable disorder like BDD, or just inundated with negative attitudes about one’s looks … the root causes are likely endemic to the way the gay community functions itself.”
In discussion with an LA-based, gay clientele-focused therapist, the writer goes on to list a couple of possible origin stories for all this body hate. His research-backed theories span everything from hyper-masculinized action figures to the anxiety we might harbor about our roles in the gay community.
The theory that hit me the hardest, though, was one that I toyed with in my last newsletter.
Queer people grow up in a homophobic-leaning world. We grow up knowing we’re somehow “other” and we internalize that sense of “otherness”.
From what I know about the various corners of the LGBTQ+ community, I’d venture to guess that each subcommunity deals with this “otherness” in a different way.
Gay men may just cope with it by setting the bar for satisfaction with their bodies, and themselves, perpetually and eternally out of their reach. Yes, it’s just a theory, but damn if it doesn’t hit home for me.
I didn’t know it when I first became anxious over the size of my nose, nor when I kept straightening my bent posture in the mirror, and not even when I couldn’t stop fixating on the way my eyes would squint shut in pictures, but I would never be satisfied with just blending in. I’ve always wanted more than that.
Without anyone ever having to say it, I could feel that who I was was not who the world wanted me to be. And so, I desperately wanted to make up for it.
Or so goes my theory, anyway.
I wanted to outperform because I had internalized the idea that I’d already underperformed. I wanted to be beautiful because the world had already made clear what it thought of my sexual identity – ugly, weak, comical.
More than that, I wanted to be beautiful in a masculine way. Since homosexuality wasn’t something I wore on my face, I guess I felt like a superficial, undeniable handsomeness would cancel out anything within me that the world could deem undesirable.
‘It’s ok to be gay’ my subconscious thought, ‘so long as you’re beautiful’
If this theory stands, then I know I’m not alone. I know because I’ve seen it – the same internalized insecurity in the eyes and words of countless Grindr, Tinder, and Hinge profiles.
In a world where body insecurity is so prevalent, especially amongst gay men, how can we learn to make peace with our bodies?
As I’ve come to learn, you need to address these things from the source: the mind.
No amount of validation, eating right, going to the gym, or perfecting my angles would ever make me feel better about the way I look. It’s been said a-hundred-and-one times over, in just about a-hundred-and-one cheesy songs, but the only way to tackle low self-esteem is from within.
If my, and so many others’, biggest fear is that we are not enough, we must learn to convince ourselves that we are. Easier said than done, obviously.
For me, what that looks like tangibly is self-care. Ok, I realize self-care has completely lost its meaning at this point, so let me be clear about what I’m talking about here. In no particular order, here are the things I try to stay on top of that have kept my negative inner-monologue in check.
Eating enough, eating regularly, and eating healthy(ish)
Drinking more water than I do coffee/wine
Sleeping 8 eight hours a night (or trying my best to)
Talking about my problems (therapy, friends, family – you name it)
Writing about my problems
Running and working out on the yoga mat that spans the length of my entire, tiny Manhattan bedroom
More intangibly, I’m learning to decide what is worth my mental energy and what isn’t.
And I’ve decided that the pursuit of perfection isn’t worth it. I’ll never get to where I want to go if pull myself down that road.
Will I still take pictures of my nose and scrutinize the way my eyes wrinkle up in pictures? Yes, of course, I’m only human. But I’m learning to not give my looks so much mental weight.
And funnily enough, the less I’ve occupied myself with my looks, the more I’ve come to appreciate them. Honestly, fuck “good enough”.
*If you believe you could have a diagnosable mental health issue such as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), the best thing to do is seek professional help.
As a first step, the UK-based Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation’s website is a good resource on all things BDD-related and how to properly treat it.
And that was That’s Gay, Volume 9. See you in Volume 10, folks! Wowee, a whole 10 volumes!
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