Body Image, take III – Popular culture and the effect on gay teens and body image (a guest post)

 In a post for Hommemaker, Orlando Soria writes, “Gays . . . live in a warped bubble where we are freaks if we don’t somehow magically look like underwear models.” As a gay teen, I have pressure coming not just from American society that I need to drop my excess pounds and have a healthy weight, but because I’m also gay, I should be in the gym nearly every single day so I can be musclebound. And why is there so much emphasis on having a muscular physique in gay culture that teens are picking up? Brian Moyler of Gawker writes that the main reason is fear of being alone and rejected by others. Additionally, a 2012 study conducted in England revealed that 48% of the males surveyed who identified as gay or bisexual said they would be willing to shorten their life by a year in exchange for the “perfect body.” Even more shocking was that 10% of those men would shorten their lives by a decade for that perfect body at that moment.