Gay Men Have Long Been Obsessed With Their Muscles. Now Everyone Is.
LAST FALL, I found myself facing a health issue caused by, among other things, a lifetime of running away from my own body. Getting better and stronger, my doctors informed me, would require the surgical removal of the air quotes I had for years placed around the phrase “aerobic exercise.” Henceforth, working out wouldn’t be optional, and it would need to be defined as more than a brief, daydreaming amble on the treadmill while Bravo played on mute in the background.
Like many nonathletic gay guys, I had coasted in and out of the gym irregularly, content to be in it but not of it, and not especially eager to spend a minute more than necessary in a milieu that I still associated with various childhood humiliations — being picked last, striking out, feeling perpetually insufficient.
None of that is particularly alien to any number of straight men, but there’s one difference: As a gay man, what I had been trying to dodge wasn’t just fitness but an entire universe of body-image issues, decades of them, honed and shaped and sculpted by popular culture, especially the gay version of it, in ways that have helped countless of my brethren look a little better and feel a little worse.
That, I had long said with confidence, wasn’t my world. But I was kidding myself: If you’re a gay man, there’s a good chance that, unless you’re a hermit, you will find yourself staring dejectedly at your reflection at some point, and an equally good chance that you will end up, sooner or later, sweating in a large space with a lot of other gay men and loud music and way too many mirrors, hoping it doesn’t end in embarrassment.
