Since I was very young there were always two things that I didn’t like about myself- my weight and my sexuality. However, in my early ages I didn’t know that it was my sexuality I loathed, I couldn’t even comprehend that, nor did I want to. I hated that indescribable part of me that made me nervous around other boys and feel like I couldn’t interact in the same way that they did.
As I got older and puberty set in, both hatreds started to intensify. My weight hadn’t gotten any better and I felt uncomfortable and insecure around almost everyone. My hands were always fidgeting to adjust some piece of clothing in a way that made me look smaller, and I avoided pools like the plague. At the same time I was starting to (begrudgingly) identify that part of myself that I hated. I started catching myself looking a moment longer than I should have at shirtless men, realized that I never thought about girls nearly as much, or at least not in the same way as all the boys around me. This terrified me. Living in suburban North Carolina in a town with more churches than gas stations, gay certainly wasn’t something that I wanted to be.
Things started to change though. Throughout middle school more people that I knew started to come out as LGBTQ and I realized that there were people around me who would love me no matter what. So I gradually began to accept myself, but as one hate died the other got worse.
When I accepted myself as gay I wanted to see more people like me. There were hardly any other gay boys at my school and I’d always avoided gay movies or tv shows before so seeing someone like myself was new for me. I was so excited to embrace that identity, but as I devoured the gay category of Netflix and scoured the gay couple tag on Tumblr I just began to feel even more alone.
Every boy I saw was either lanky and boyish or completely ripped and masculine and the few couples shown who had larger bodies were fetishized for it (i.e. bears). As I watched more and more shows with gay characters I began to create this ideal gay boy in my head, the boy that I wanted to be. He was tall, skinny, charismatic, and everything else that I wasn’t. I had accepted myself as being gay, but I convinced myself that if I was going to be gay there was a certain way I had to do it. I had never fit in with straight boys and now I didn’t even feel like I fit in with the gay ones because of my body.
See, our mainstream media has a problem with gay representation. First off, there isn’t enough of it. A study done by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) shows that LGB people currently only make up 4% of recurring broadcast television characters. Additionally, 69% of those broadcast television characters were white, meaning that Hollywood still has a problem with whitewashing the LGBT community, and whitewashing in general. But what hit home most for me was the seemingly perfect bodies that every gay character had, and more so the importance that they, and even the gay community put on their bodies.
A study done by the American Psychological Association found that over one-third of gay men surveyed had an anti-fat bias. Even in our own community- one made up of people who grew up not fitting in, we still discriminate.
This reality was extremely damaging for me and as I kept trying to be the ideal gay boy, I started trying to lose weight. At first I did this in healthy ways, exercising and eating healthy foods- but it didn’t move quick enough for me. I got a calorie counter app and meticulously logged every morsel I ate and I buried myself in guilt every time I went over the limit the app gave me.I tried to go full days without eating and only felt happy with myself after I’d lost weight. I began to slip into what I now realize as the early stages of anorexia. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I thought it was the only way I could be the gay boy that I wanted to be. Over the summer before my 8th grade year I lost 35 pounds. I felt better about my body, but it still wasn’t enough for me, I still wasn’t the lanky, perfect gay boy I’d seen from TV.
Luckily, this is when I got help. My family noticed something was wrong and I saw a therapist for a while who helped me love every bit of myself, sexuality, weight, and all. I’m better now, healthier now, but this experience has left me with the realization that the media, and the gay community itself cannot continue to perpetuate this harmful ideal. We are already a community that has been hurt because we are different, we cannot hurt our own for the same reason. The LGBT community thrives in diversity, so let’s make sure that when we hear “gay” there isn’t only one type of person we’re imagining.
