Cherie Fox, 25
I grew up hating my body. I came out as a gay man a few years ago and I thought I could finally find comfort and acceptance, but it didn't take me long to realize how toxic the culture of body shaming was in the gay community. Those lines were taken straight from bios of Grindr profiles that I read this morning.
They made me question why I decided to redownload the dating app time and again. The last profile bio I came across just broke my heart. Should that person apologize for being plus-size in this world?
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Should I? When I came out, I was excited to live in a time with plenty of dating apps for people like me to meet one another. I was naive then.
I did not yet realize that once people saw my picture—my round, grinning face, thick glasses, oversized T-shirt and pants—they immediately marked me as undesirable. Hundreds of men rejected and ignored me, or even mocked me for having the nerve to ask them out. From my observations over the years, gay men can be very unforgiving when it comes to judging different body types that people have—even more so than straight men.
Many gay men spend a lot of time in the gym hoping to look like ancient Greek gods someday. Your fashion sense and how you carry yourself matter too, especially in big cities like Jakarta. But maybe because looking for approval is something that comes naturally in me, I need affirmations too sometimes.
I think many people will agree.
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I got in touch with other gay men to learn what their journey to self love is like. I have always been undermined because of my appearance. Once, someone called me ugly to my face. Other people have eagerly asked to meet in real life but once we did, they looked for any excuse to get out of the date. Besides to become healthy, I also want to fit in with the gay community here. We categorise men by body type twinks, bears, otters, etc.
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This strict categorisation usually idealises masculinity, and it is easy for many of us to fall through the cracks. Reed thin boys are designated as twinks, too femme for many to fuck, and the bear tribe requires a very specific amount of fat, muscle and fur. Your tastes in men, your fetishes, your attitudes towards dating are all products of the society that you grew up in. This image obsessed culture also affects us deeply as individuals as well as altering our gaze.
Of course, the desire to be physically attractive is completely healthy and human, we seek to make ourselves appealing to others in order to form connections. However as gay men we seem to have confused who we are with how we look.
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On four separate occasions whilst working boys have shown me their stomachs, bound up in cling film to conceal their bellies beneath their t-shirts for the night. I know boys who long for surgery. I know boys who have thrown up after meals. The amount of gay men with eating disorders has skyrocketed, and chemsex, the alarming phenomenon of gay men using hard drugs to facilitate prolonged partying and rampant sex, to me indicates something disturbing that even a tiny subculture of gay men need drugs to bolster their ability to be intimate.
It is such a deep-rooted problem that there is no immediate solution to. Maybe considering that there might be a problem within our culture as gay men would be a step towards a solution in itself.