Yeah, it's been a while. I'm like that loser boyfriend who drunk-dials you at 3 am just when you think I've lost your number. It's like that.
This picture shows several things that are indicative of my life at this point. First of all, I'm at the gym. I am doing crunches while maintaining a push-up position with my arms, and pulling my knees to my chest. This is while I am suspended from a bar using two TRX straps. TRX straps are these nylon ribbon-thingies that hang from a bar. They utilize your own bodyweight for resistance while you do various painful exercises. In this picture, I am pushing up in mid-air against one TRX strap, with my feet stuck into another TRX strap. What results is a complex crunch movement in what feels like zero gravity. Zero gravity should be easier. It is not.
Also in the picture are members of my workout group laughing at/with me while this occurs. My trainer is taking the picture and also laughing. Our workout group laughs a lot.
The small folded towel in the image is what I'll use to eventually wipe the river of sweat from my face before I almost throw up.
Also in the picture are members of my workout group laughing at/with me while this occurs. My trainer is taking the picture and also laughing. Our workout group laughs a lot.
The small folded towel in the image is what I'll use to eventually wipe the river of sweat from my face before I almost throw up.
This is what gay guys are expected to do to maintain their appearance. Women have long bitched and moaned about unrealistic body-image expectations, and for good reason. They are complaining about images like this one:
Gay guys, on the other hand, are constantly bombarded with body images like this one:
Sure, there are guys who can look like this more easily than others. They are a tiny fraction of the gay population. I know a ton of gay men, the majority of whom do work out and take care of their bodies. Not one of them looks like this. Of course, this image has been retouched and photoshopped from here to Detroit and back. Same with the anorexic beauty above him. This creates unrealistic expectations of what is and isn't acceptable when it comes to one's own body habitus. The reaction against these expectations resulted in the fetishization of guys like this:
These are bears. More specifically, they are "muscle bears". The bear movement came into vogue during the AIDS bloodbath of the 1980s, during which the super-skinny look was a bit too reminiscent of the cachexia experienced by our dying brethren. Some in the community reacted to this by working the big, hairy, "masculine", truck-driver look. There are several sub-types of bears. There are cubs (younger bears seeking older), daddy bears (older bears seeking younger), chubs (plump gay guys who aren't hairy enough to be bears), muscle bears (hairy muscular guys often without a 6-pack), otters (skinnier hairy guys), panda bears (Asian bears), pocket bears (short bears), polar bears (bears with white hair), wolves (a muscle bear who's rugged and outdoorsy)... this list goes on and on. My favorite term is the one used for the women who love to hang out with bears. Instead of the well-known "fag hag", these women are referred to as "Goldilocks".
The initial idea was a good one, offering community and identity to those gay guys who aren't easily assimilated into the young, smooth, muscular, pretty-boy cultural milieu. But the maturation of the idea has resulted in a body habitus expectation that is often just as rigid as the one against which these men initially rebelled. It's frustrating for those of us who are somewhere in the middle. I love hanging with the bears, usually. But I'm neither muscular enough, nor hairy enough, nor dark enough, nor faux-butch enough, nor "whatever" enough to really fit in with them.
My goal for my own workouts is to be ME enough. I've never been much of a joiner. But it would be nice to be able to excape the self-judgement that these expectations subtly or not-so-subtly create in most of us.
