mirrors.

a moment of clarity.

words.

"Not all fat gay men are resentful of fit ones, and not all fit gay men are condescending toward fat ones. But Whitesel touches on a real problem: Many gay men put a shockingly high premium on looks. Most pride parades are populated by unbelievably sexy gym bunnies in skimpy attire; a typical gay bar will feature a mind-boggling number of bulging biceps and rippling abs. It’s a tough market out there for an average-looking guy, let alone a tubby one. And if you can’t slip through the bear escape hatch, you’re bound to wind up a bit aggrieved.

There’s a strange irony in all this. By coming out, gay people have already thrown off the shackles of societal expectations in so many ways, defying gender roles, sex stereotypes, and sexual conformity. So why, after freeing themselves from these conventional traps, do gay men create a whole new set of stringent standards to hold each other to—standards largely cadged from heterosexual society?

...Yes, for reasons that remain totally unclear, many gay men do put a disproportionate amount of effort into personal appearance. But the stereotype has also become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Younger gay men think they must have perfect bodies because everyone expects them to have perfect bodies. This leads to predictable consequences: Gay men have a distressingly high rate of anorexia and are more likely than straight women to have an eating disorder. That’s a dark side of the quest for the six-pack, the one you never hear about during the fleshy revelries of a pride parade.
...In one sense, then, the fat gay men of Fat Gay Men are lucky: Their willingness to embrace their fatness means they’ve wriggled out of the body image bear traps that ensnare so many. But there’s no point in outwardly celebrating your body if you still harbor jealousy of your fitter brethren, as so many fat gay men in Whitesel’s book seem to. What we see here is the inevitable discontent of a stratified community, with the lower strata basically displeased with their lot but unwilling to smash the hierarchy altogether. By boldly trumpeting their own corpulence, the fat gay men of Whitesel’s book want to challenge the norms of their community. Too bad their community doesn’t want to hear what they have to say."

SLATE: Big Gay Pals: The troubles and triumphs of fat gay men.