...when you're bombarded by images of men who seem to be in impossibly better shape than the rest of us? This has been my main problem since being a teenager.
(Buckle up. This could be a long ride.)
I was a fat kid, standing roughly 6 feet tall and 220 pounds at my highest weight. This was not muscle, because I barely exercised. Subsequently, I went to school overseas at The University of Luton and wound up dropping 60 pounds in my first semester due to a combination of walking long distances and fasting--brought on by not liking British food. (I have a fish allergy, so I'm a tad bit screwed on an island.)
Christmas that year, both my parents remarked on how much better I looked with the weight, which of course, felt good like any compliment does. Even when I told them how I did it, they didn't seem too peturbed by the fact that anorexia played a role in it, and to be honest, neither did I.
That's an entirely different story however. The real subject of this entry is body dysmorphia. I try to come across as very tough and devil-may-care, but my body image is a real Achille's heel for me. No matter what I do, I have this image in my head of what I should look like which always woefully pales against the reality. I get obsessed with statistics: 6 feet tall, 194 pounds, 15.86% body fat, 34 inch waist, 14 inch arms, and so on; with the ultimate goal of getting these elusive perfect measurements that will supposedly bring forth this age of happiness upon me. Things can get quite Orwellian at times (why I can't I get my arms to go to 18? Chest 40? Waist 29? Body fat 9%?) with my fanaticism in achieving the perfect statistics.
Compounding this is, well, some pretty deep internalised racial self-loathing. I grew up in a place where there were only 400 blacks in the entire county! I never really saw myself reflected in the people around me, at least in a desirable manner. When I was younger, I used to wish that I could be white, because being white symbolised being able to belong. To this day, it's hard to keep my spirits up when I realise that I will never look like the mass-marketed images of the happy gay white male who seems to live a life devoted to the pleasure principle all while maintaining his washboard stomach, hard chest, and generally muscular body without breaking a sweat except in bed. I'll be honest with you, it sucks, but it's a fact of life that there will always be "an ideal" which is held up as what the rest of us should aspire to.
Yet, I really am beginning to worry that this--I'll label it "a personal state of affairs"--is causing me more grief than need be. Last night, I went out to one of my favourite bars, The Ninth Avenue Saloon, for a drink. I'm sitting there for a bit, talking mostly with the bartender (a great guy I've known for nearly 3 years now) and this guy suddenly sits down next to me. The bartender knows him and they have a conversation. The guy turns out to be a dancer in a Broadway show, and is going to be in this year's Broadway Bares. (If you're thinking naked theatre performers, you've got the idea.) I clam up. I can't think of anything to say, in fact, I wished I could be anywhere else but there at the time. I loathed him. I hated everything that he represented. Why? He's younger, better looking, white, and tons of other superlatives that ran through my mind. Whether or not any of them are true, is irrelevant, because what I thought stymied me from having any ability to relate to this man as a person.
Did I want to sleep with him? Honestly, I don't know if I would want to, nor would I assume that it would ever happen. If it did, I doubt it would be pleasurable, because I would notice evey little imperfection on my body and try desperately to hide them.
I'm guessing that my challenge this year is to finally kick this narcissistic mindset to the curb, aka get over it, because it's useless and it has probably caused me more harm than a knife across my wrists.
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