Pride season is well and truly underway, and we have many reasons to celebrate this year but why do I feel increasingly isolated from my community?
As a gay community we were supposed to be inclusive and non-judgemental of other people but these days there really is no truth to that anymore. As a homosexual in his late 30s I’m practically already dead, over the hill etc etc, and as stupid and wrong as that is, it is only the tip of the iceberg of the problems that are currently infecting the gay community all over the world.
SOCIAL MEDIA
One of the biggest issues I have today is Gay / Social media and the constant in your face pictures of “muscle men” as being the ONLY form of male that is apparently attractive, it’s so constant and aggressive that I think the younger generation have developed a skewed perception of what makes an attractive man.
Every single day on my friends’ timelines and news feeds, anytime a picture is posted of an “attractive” man (famous or a cheeky pic of someone on the train) you can absolutely guarantee it’s somebody muscles or a digitally enhanced six pack, yes it’s lovely to look at a nice body, but it’s also incredibly tiresome when you see picture after picture, day after day of men with bodies that look exactly the same as each other.
It all has a ripple effect and that’s never more apparent when you’re using a gay dating app. The amount of times I have been asked for a “body pic” and when I say no, it’s either usually no more reply or “is it cos you’re fat?” and by “fat” it now generally means you don’t have a toned or muscled body. I find that incredibly sad and worrying.
There are plenty of attractive men out there that don’t have 6-day-a-week-gym-bodies but you wouldn’t know they existed, and you won’t see them on the cover of magazines or in silly “Top 10 Hunks” columns.
We have been wiped out in terms of media, we don’t exist anymore, we are dead.
Perhaps it’s time for the gay media to take some responsibility and start including people who don’t have those “desirable” muscles and bodies in their photo-shoots, imagine how incredible that would be, how liberating the positive long-term effects it would have.
In the 21st century we are finally starting to be awarded the equal rights that any human being should have, but what good is equality when a large part of the community is increasingly being isolated or forgotten about by gay / social media.
Most gay men don’t have the perfect body, or the perfect job with a jet-setting lifestyle that all gay men apparently seem to have and if we don’t we are constantly trying to be sold that lifestyle whether you like it or not.
There is nothing wrong with being “Mr Average” with a perfectly normal non-gym body.
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Opinions expressed in this article may not reflect those of THEGAYUK, its management or editorial teams. If you'd like to comment or write a comment, opinion or blog piece, please click here.