Hi everyone, I think a lot of gay people (I can only speak on behalf of men) in the world, on this forum and in my community have at least a minor degree of feeling physically imperfect. Regardless of what your "body type" is, there will always be some sort of self judgement (I am not skinny enough, I am not "fit" enough etc) My physical fitness issue is that I feel I am stuck in between fit and skinny. I am in the "grey" area. I am not "fit" enough to "fit in" with all the athletic people nor am I skinny enough to qualified myself to "fit in" with the slim people nor am I fat enough to fit in with fat people (I used to be fat in middle school). Essentially I feel like I don't belong to any categories. I am on the brink of being "totally" fit and muscular it appears (I am told I have potential), but exterior influence of most of the men I dated (and now friends) emphasize on skinny bodies (and again I have potential to be "skinny"/"Tiny". And I don't eat enough to be fat (says my mom). MY QUESTIONS: What do you do when you don't feel like you belong "physically" to any major "body" groups? How do we as gay men/women navigate in our society with so much "labeling" and trying to box our own bodies in categories? SOME ANSWERS I KNOW ALREADY - Be comfortable in your own body etc etc... - Who cares about the "label" and just live your life - Know what you want first and foremost etc... - Stop caring about what other people think of you (According to my personality test, I can be too sensitive and take people's judgement too literal) - Why don't you just be FIT or Skinny then? Choose one and stick with it if you want to belong. - Any other different answers I missed out? Please do let me know
Why does it matter that you belong to a body group...? Last time I checked, people didn't hang out only with people of the same body type or anything...
I've personally never really paid attention to what 'body group' I am from. Somewhere between skinny and fit I'd say.
oh you did not come off as rude~ In a way it matters because you believe it matters. Its like sexuality, if you are hetero you like the opposite sex and if you're homosexual you like the same sex. Its not related to physicality - The above statement, but in a way being "categorized" you have a sense of security - belonging. And with this sense of belonging there's a illusion of power/security. For example, Skinny/Fit people feel more "prized" than fat/average/other forms of people (Everyone has a bias mindset about these things).
If you don't like your body, then change it. It doesn't get any easier than that, really. If you wanna look a certain way or be healthy/unhealthy, all it takes it the know-hows and then action. I've played sports practically all my life, so I've always been athletic but college got me a little bit of a belly (I blame alcohol) so I had to work my ass off this past year or so to trim it down to just the way I like it.
I posted this not to sound like I was caring extremely about this and wanted to do something drastically to my physical body. There has been an increase of "body" feature threads on EC and well I just thought about the fact that a great majority of us are probably in the grey area. These folks are the ones who are neutral on the spectrum of fitness and just like those fat/skinny/fit people, they want to do this and that to their body, however, they are never as "extreme" or "problematic". That said, they still go through the process of self-judgement. And I want to give them a voice in a way. "Hey its okay to be skinny-fat. You actually don't get teased or stalked by others as much. Be happy " Lol you find me sexy haha~ I get cute a lot, sexy not so much.
There's nothing undesirable about being somewhere between skinny and fat. It's my body type (somewhat chubby) that is the sore loser on the gay dating scene. Too fat for the ordinary twinks and college jocks that I like, but not fat enough for the chasers, LOL... How much I want to get back to my thin 19-year-old former self.
Apparently being cute is better than sexy for some ppl. Cute is more personal, meanwhile sexy is commercialized. Good thing or bad thing? ---------- Post added 8th Jun 2012 at 09:23 PM ---------- That was 4 years ago~ You're only 23 (I am turning 23 this year), so you still got plenty of time to do whatever. Plus your right. Who cares anyways? Is it a good thing when you like your own body to the point you would like to have sex with yourself? It sounds a bit gross, but apparently that's how some people measure their physical "desirability".
