I was kind of inspired by @brybryespino’s video on guys’ views body image which you can watch here.

Let’s not even pretend that it isn’t true, gay men are highly judgmental.  And we can get away with it because it can just be passed off as being sassy.  We constantly judge each other on so many things.

One of the biggest thing we judge each other on though is body type.  It is built into gay culture that body image is important.  We are obsessed with going the gym.  We count calories with every breath.  We refuse to eat carbs.  We constantly joke about eating disorders as though it’s a normal thing.  We insult each other about weight.  We starve ourselves once the warm season approaches and diet religiously once Pride season starts.

Why is that though?

One of the reason is because during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980’s, being skinny was frowned upon.  The main reason was because of the belief that people who looked physically fit couldn’t have AIDS.  And those who were scrawny, skinny, etc had to be suffering from AIDS.  Of course this was quickly proven to be a myth, this transitioned.

Another reason is because we get both genders’ standard of what is considered the perfect body.  Our culture is saturated with rippling bodies on every club poster.  Sex is the main and possibly the only thing used to advertise anything gay, whether it’s club events, parties, reality tv, std protection, fundraiser, and even celebrating gay culture.    the image of a man with a toned body and firm muscles is everywhere.

And yet, even the most fit can still view themselves as fat because of our skewed view on body type.  We would rather be really skinny than a little chubby.  This is because this is pressures that we put on women.

How many times have you called one of your friends’ fat as a humorous insult even though they really aren’t?  How come we can joke around about eating disorders as though they are a normal and acceptable thing?

Just as women are faced with airbrushed female models on fashion mags, gay men are smacked with a barrage of unrealistic body images. Open any national gay magazine or local publication geared toward the gay community and you will see ridiculously buff men representing the dominant one or a slim toned feminine body type representing the submissive.  In either case, body fat will not likely be found.

What we find as fat would be considered skinny by straight people.

Urban Dictionary defines the term gay fat as

A gay man who does not have a gym-perfect body, but rather carries a body fat percentage in the 12% - 20% range. A man who is considered gay fat within the community would likely be considered athletic, physically fit and in-shape within the greater cultural context.”

And yet we accept this as normal.  We celebrate hard bodies and thin silhouettes. We constantly categorize each other on body types, and unless you are part of the chub community and culture, the attitude is somewhat harsh.

Body image and what is considered attractive is a big issue amongst the gays, possibly worse than women, because honestly we don’t find anything wrong with our attitude about being skinny.

A new study shows that gay men really are leaner than straight men. And conversely, it also found that gay women tend to be heavier than their heterosexual counterparts. Boston researchers determined that gay women were more than twice as likely as straight women to be obese, while gay men were 50 percent less likely to be obese compared to their heterosexual counterparts, according to a report published in the American Journal of Public Health.

After scrutinizing a health survey of more than 67,000 Massachusetts residents between the ages of 18 and 64, the researchers found that 14 percent of gay men were obese versus 21 percent of straight men. The opposite was true of gay women: 26 percent were found to be obese, as compared with 17 percent of the straight women.

The researchers also found that both gay men and gay women were more likely to be current smokers compared to their heterosexual counterparts. And gay women were more likely to have multiple heart disease risk factors than straight women.

Earlier studies that looked at health in the gay community focused mostly on sexually transmitted diseases and mental health, rather than on chronic illnesses like obesity and heart disease, says the study’s lead author Kerith Conron, an associate research scientist at Northeastern University and a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. “This may mean that we in the public health community need to come up with more tailored messages to reach these groups, just as car dealers do when they want to reach a specific target audience,” she said.

Conron suspects that cultural differences might at least partly explain the weight divide. It may be more acceptable in the lesbian community for women to be full-sized, she said. That explanation makes sense to Esther Rothblum, a professor of women’s studies at San Diego State University. “People in sexual relationships with men — heterosexual women and gay men — get more pressure to look thin and to otherwise conform to attractiveness norms than do people in sexual relationships with women — lesbians and heterosexual men,” Rothblum said.

The best evidence for that comes from an older study of bisexual women, Rothblum adds. When the bisexual women were asked to describe their experiences with women and men, the differences were dramatic: they often reported that they got more pressure to be thin when they were with men.

Other researchers have found further evidence of this male effect while studying personal ads and dating sites like Match.com, Rothblum explains. “Men will say they are looking for a partner who is not above 35 years old and not above 135 pounds,” she said. “Women don’t typically do that. They say they are looking for someone with good sense of humor, intelligence, and creativity, or someone who is not an alcoholic.”

-Titles of Drama