Okay, so here's something I've wondered about for a while, and browsing around on this site is making me more curious: do gay men (I'm going to stick to just gay men for now) have body image issues more frequently than straight men? I'm sort of thinking through this as I write, so please forgive my stream of consciousness. So just for the record, I have body image issues. I've been accused of having full blown BDD. People tell me that I'm skinny, but I've always told myself that they do that because they're just so darned used to seeing truly morbidly obese people that they don't know what skinny looks like anymore. I have a healthy weight, which is good, but I've always worried about being fat or overweight (I do have a history of being overweight in the past). For some reason, in my mind, it's like the only way I'll ever be truly happy is if I look like some super-sexy gym rat with a muscular-but-not-heavy swimmers build. But even then, I don't know if I'd ever be happy (not to worry, I'm not even close!). Just sitting here these 10 seconds, my guess is that gay men have these issues not (necessarily) because we want sex, but also because it feels like something we can control. We can't control that we're gay, even though many of us would really really like to. We can't control the reactions or feelings of other people, particularly the ones who are hostile to this thing we can't control. We can't control where we grew up. And so on. But we feel like we can control our body's appearance--except, to a significant degree (e.g., genetics, environment), we can't. Which is really frustrating. Does this sound at all right?
I have issues with how I see myself as well. I have people tell me I'm too skinny, and I guess on one hand maybe they're right, I'm 6'2" and 160+/- lbs. It's weird because I look around and see so many people that just seem so much bigger than me and I just can't see myself being any bigger than what I am.
I don't like my body either. In fact, I DO like to think that gay guys have more body issues than others.
I think gay media stereotype what a gay guy is supposed to look like. Pick up any gay magazine, go onto social media, watch gay related vbloggers (the "popular" ones), watch gay porn, and in most cases you will see a certain adonis look. When I was coming out, this played heavily on my physical self image. Over time, as I got more entrenched in the gay "community", met so many other LGBT, and became more self aware, I build confidence in my own self appearance. Now, when I see what is perpetuated in the media, I know that it is there for the sake of selling products, nothing more.....
It definitely has to do with an image put out by media. I think straight women probably deal with it more than anybody else. I'm another guy who lost a lot of weight and I often still don't feel like I'm in good shape. Like, I can see it in the mirror - I too am not an Adonis, but I have a pretty decent body all things considered, as boxing definitely pays off in that regard - and I can see older photos where I am in horrible shape, but it's hard not to mentally still feel like that guy who was overweight and not feeling the best about himself. I also wish I were a little bit taller (I'm 5'4). And I wish I were a baller. And I wish I had a girl who looked good, I would call her...okay, maybe not that last part. :lol:
I think that we're affected more by it, now you bring it up I'm about 5'9 and 9st, so I know my weight shouldn't be too much of an issue for me, however I can't help but notice areas with a little more fat and stuff like that which kinda gets me down a lot
