Meet the Body Fascists

I'm thin. Quite thin, really. Sometimes I tend to forget this and begin to think of myself as an ordinary average guy but since I'm also gay, I'm constantly reminded. The places I go, magazines I read and people I meet surround me with images of pumped-up, hairless, fat-free beefcake. Even in the new world of 'cyberspace' -- where no one knows what anyone looks like -- someone in a chat channel greeted me with demands for "stats" (5'10", 140 lbs.), which were greeted in turn with, "Wow -- you're skinny!" How tactful. Despite it all, however, I wouldn't dream of complaining. Let me explain.

I recently noticed a man in a bookstore pick up a copy of XY, the glossy gay teen magazine that no gay teen can afford at $8 an issue. It was filled with the usual muscular, white prettyboys with odd haircuts and the man sneered to his friend, "Look at all these idiots with their muscles, telling us what we're supposed to look like...it's body fascism!" For obvious reasons, I understood his complaint but it also seemed harsh to me. I imagined a model pouting, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful," and I wondered what body fascism means.

Feminist author Naomi Wolf's book, The Beauty Myth, is an occasionally over-wrought yet gripping account of how contemporary women are destroying themselves trying to live up to the ideals presented through our advertising -- all page three girls and Pamela Lee videos. Wolf's book ends with a brief look at how men are beginning to fall into this trap as well, spitefully suggesting that only after men become bulimic and filled with poisonous silicone implants will our culture pay attention. Unfortunately, she may be right. Calvin Klein's giant mural of an underwear-clad muscled male model may have surprised New Yorkers in 1981 but such images are now commonplace and even straight men are now buying moisturizers.

As Wolf hints, this has scary implications. The current percentage of men with eating disorders is about 10% and rising, and over a quarter of those men are homosexual. A recent American magazine article told of a gay man who died from an excessive amount of harsh dieting and liposuction treatments. Equality between men and women was supposed to mean a sexual appreciation of both, with an equal amount of respect for the diversity of both. Instead, men are now being objectified, devalued and forced to fit certain 'beauty standards' the way women always have been.

A telling example of this is the popularity of The Full Monty, the recent film in which a group of downsized working-class men suddenly realize that they're about to be held to the same harsh standards they've had for women as they try to become strippers for pay. It's all played for laughs but there's a grim sadness in watching Dave -- your average big, jolly fat guy -- begin to wallow in self-loathing over his inability to lose weight. What's so cheery about the film, however, and the reason why audiences have flocked to it, is the happy result of the pain these men go through. They learn to hate their bodies but their courage in carrying on regard-less gives them the self-confidence they lost upon losing their jobs. They even discover that people in the city are rooting for them. The three-hanky moment in the film is seeing Dave cry in front of his wife, moaning, "Who would ever pay money to look at this?" His wife quietly replies, "I would," because she loves him. That's the heart of it right there: body fascism doesn't matter because people with open minds and love in their hearts will always see past any surface imperfections. By the end of the movie, these men -- fat, old, lumpy, skinny -- are heroic figures, lovable and, yes, sexy.

People are attractive for all kinds of reasons, most of which having nothing to do with being buff, but this is a message our culture -- straight and gay -- doesn't get right now. Chalking it up to 'body fascism,' however, is a silly notion because the fascists are us. While I realize how cruel it is to compare myself to some magazine standard, my vanity nevertheless pushes me into gym workouts that leave me looking buffer, staying healthier and feeling sexier. Unlike some, I accept that I may never look like these models and would never resort to steroids or surgery to do so, but my small attempts are improving my life. I like having these muscled prettyboys around to spur me forward.

So do many others, I suspect, which explains their continued presence in all media. It's not some conspiracy to impose one look on everyone but merely the usual money-grubbing impulse to find out what we like and sell it back to us. That doesn't mean we have to line up and buy it. There are always options: Bear, for instance, is a popular magazine that features nude photos of big, fat, hairy men -- some are handsome but generally not my cup of tea. We need Bear though, because it's trying -- like The Full Monty -- to expand our culture's narrow view of masculinity and beauty by just getting the images out there. Meanwhile, I'm making myself the sexiest skinny man I can be: since we've created such a healthy appreciation for the perfect male body in the past two decades, I'm hoping we can start creating a healthy appreciation for those bodies that fall shy of perfection as well.