Image courtesy: The Great Bear
My new documentary Men Like Us opens in Auckland this Thursday. One of the nine wonderful guys featured in it, 30-year-old Raymond Wilson, talks about the struggles he had throughout his 20s with body image.
For a decade, he was a twink in a bear’s body, unable and unwilling to accept that he naturally had a bigger frame and that having the skinny, angular David Bowie look of the early 70s was not something he’d be likely to achieve.
The Bowie reference is mine, not his. For Raymond, he emerged onto the gay club scene in the late 1990s and simply saw the image that we all see at those clubs: a population of the “young, thin and beautiful” having a good time and getting more attention than a pork belly at a Bar Mitzvah.
He tried so often to change his body to fit the ideal that he thought he wanted, that he thought he needed to look like in order to – not just be happy – but to fit the definition of what a gay man should be. For Raymond, that was losing weight.
But what about men at the other end of the scale?
Muscle worship has always been a part of gay culture, and its pervasive influence in bear circles is being felt more and more through the rise of the “muscle bear”.
There’s nothing wrong with being proud of your body and having fitness goals that make you strong and healthy, but how far is too far, and what happens when – as Raymond discovered – you’ve set yourself goals that are not for your own benefit but for the benefit of others?
This month’s edition of InPsych, the Australian Psychological Society’s magazine, has a series of featured articles on men’s health, including one by Assistant Professor Vivienne Lewis from the University of Canberra entitled “Body image: is it just for girls?”
She notes a Victorian government study that found “body image dissatisfaction for Western men is estimated to have tripled in the last 25 years from 15 to 45 percent”, before going on to talk about “muscle dysmorphia”, a “distressing” condition that is actually recognised as a disorder in the DSM-IV, the psychiatrist’s bible.
She explains:
“The condition is most prevalent in men and centred on a distorted body perception where muscles and body size are perceived to be smaller than they actually are. Often these men are already muscular and lean but are on a relentless pursuit to define their bodies even further, obsessively trying to become more lean, toned and muscular.
“This perception is accompanied by engagement in excess behaviours such as exercise, weight lifting, dieting and use of dangerous body enhancement products to build muscle, including the use of steroids.”
It’s this last part that’s of the most concern, because it’s at this point that your fitness goals have truly passed the point where you’re trying to build strength through what you’re humanly capable of, and have turned to substances that are going to distort your body just as badly as the false image you see in the mirror.
Lewis notes that the incidence rate for muscle dysmorphia is unknown, because men who experience it rarely present for treatment. She is, however, a psychologist writing for an audience of psychologists.
Look around. Think about the guys you know, and love. You may know someone who is going through this. You may even have turned a blind eye to it because you don’t know what to do or say.
Muscle dysmorphia is serious, because it can also go hand in hand with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts at worst. For some men, as Lewis says, “the goal posts keep moving and the more they try to achieve a perceived fitness or health goal the further they actually move away from health and fitness.”
Talk openly with your friends about their body concerns, regardless of size, whether it’s big guys who wish they were smaller or vice-versa. Being comfortable in one’s own skin is a switch in the brain that individuals have to learn to turn on themselves, but if you’re concerned about a mate, one thing you can do is help them to realise that they may have lost perspective.
This is not going to be an easy conversation to have, but the most important ones rarely are.
I don’t know where I fall in the psychiatric scale of things, but I do know that I spent many years thinking that I wasn’t muscular enough, and I literally saw a person with wasting syndrome from AIDS in the mirror, whereas others saw a body builder. I used nandrolone, testosterone, and human growth hormone for years to enhance my figure, and I lifted weights most every day. I felt horrible if I didn’t work out. I lived in a very body conscious gay community (Ft. Lauderdale, FL, USA) and felt I didn’t stand a chance socially if I didn’t continually work on myself. There were also periods of substance abuse that negatively impacted my life.
I eventually moved from this community to a rural setting thousands of miles away. There is less pressure to look good here, and I do not work out nearly as much or use steroids anymore. It has been difficult watching myself lose muscle weight. My self-image is at an all time low, yet I know deep inside me that I was headed to an early grave with my lifestyle in Ft. Lauderdale. I had so many friends who had fatal heart attacks and diabetes from the way we lived. We were all so obsessed with our bodies that it was downright scary.
I believe my last “friend” has fallen away due to my change in body type. He wrote me just about every week encouraging me to work out more, start taking steroids again, and return back to my previous lifestyle. Finally, I responded that I would work out when I wanted to, that I didn’t need to use substances to enhance my looks, and that I was getting a great deal of exercise hiking in the mountains and I felt better doing that than lifting weights at this point in my life. Although I was friendly, I haven’t heard from him since. I miss communicating with him, but I do not miss the constant nagging about returning to my “body builder” look that I had to disregard in every letter.
I am beginning to establish friendships on a deeper level with others. I am interested in spirituality, so I have several friends who I share with on this topic. It hasn’t been easy, however, to shed this old skin and start afresh. Body dysmorphia–for me, at least–wasn’t just a mental condition, but an entire lifestyle as well.
Such a fascinating article. Thanks for writing/posting it. It amazes me how ultra important it is to so many humans how their bodies and faces appear, as if everything at stake in one’s life were based exclusively on that.
Sadly fascinating to see that men struggle mightily with body issues as well.
On reading the tittle ‘Am I Big Enough’, so many issues around me appeared. Around ten years or so ago, a young bear fan at the Brisbane Bears Club, was interested in me in the physical way. I find often that men aren’t so interested when you would like to be friends or talk about computer programming or anything else. i was starting to put on some weight, and I wasn’t happy about that as I had a period of going to the gym before that. I am usually fairly moderate in things I do and apart from the idea of having a better appearance for my own sake as much as for anyone else, exercise and muscle mass were and still are very important elements, not just in everyone’s good health, but essential in my situation of chronic and life threatening conditions. Mental health and general well-being greatly impact on my physical health too. So when this young bear saw I had the start of a bear’s belly, he remarked that I was ‘getting there’! Yes, that’s right there are ‘chubby chasers’, some even having a liking for the severely obese. I certainly did not want to ‘get there’ for my own health sake and certainly not get someone’s sexual interest. (He was a computer programmer, but didn’t want to share his knowledge with me.) I’ve seen quite a few chubby bears die with heart failure and this is concerning me more with those around me, as maybe I’m not in the circles of the body beautiful to see the other side of it.
I do understand something is seriously wrong when no matter how much people keep changing their bodies, they can never achieve satisfaction. This area includes what is called ‘body dysmorphic disorder’ and conditions such as anorexia. It can go into people obsessed with body modifications to the extent of desiring to be an amputee. The categories seem arbitrary with the reality of a continuum from ‘reasonable’ desires that can be satisfied more or less such as those who wish to lose some weight, gain some muscle, better health and well-being.
I include the ‘condition’ ‘gender dysphoria’ as another misnamed condition as all people who have dissatisfaction with their body in someway or degree would be better named ‘body dysphoric’ and would be on a spectrum from where realistic changes are possible and the outcomes could bring some satisfaction to the more medically morbid conditions.
It is quite disconcerting for me seeing a relative who is into ‘getting big’. He has psychiatric conditions with medications affecting him sedatively to the extent of him being fairly obese and very out shape. I’ve told his obese 9 year old son of his dad’s likely death in the next few years. His children are not legally to be left alone with either parents. He has a room full of heavy weights that can still lift even though he can’t walk for long without getting out of breath. He hasn’t the right care or carers to help him see he has delusions and always repeats about how if he stays ‘big’ he will be taken seriously. He weighs over 130 kilos and watches martial artists and body builders on his huge TV screen. I think If his obsessions were about getting ‘fit’ rather than getting ‘big’ he’d be a lot better off. He is too comfortable in his own skin. It’s not about getting a mate, it’s about staying alive and getting healthy that are of my primary concerns for myself and some of those around me. I’d like to be able to attend their medical appointments, but as adults they are left to their own ‘choices’.
I’ve been on multiple sides of the big v. little v. everything else stuff. When I lost 140 pounds the first time in 2008, people who were once attracted to me got very pissy with me and said I looked better fat, and a few “concerntrolled” me asking without really saying it if I had cancer or AIDS. When I got bigger, vice versa. I’m just concerning myself now with getting down to a reasonable weight instead of skinny, and I’m down about 40 pounds now.
I was not going to type on here and maybe you won’t read but that makes my blood boil. You are fat and you are considered a disgrace, lose weight and you are diseased. Get rid of those bitchy queens that say that to you. Typical gay community behaviour.
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