Simon, 37, tells me that he found changing rooms excruciating.“My earliest embarrassments with my body began aged 12 when I started getting chest hair and people saw in the changing rooms,” he says. No one gives a sh*t if you are good at chemistry." Isaac feels that these early experiences “totally shaped” his relationship to his body and his sexuality, saying: "You’re told at that age that you are worth more as a boy if you can run faster, lift heavier, be in the ‘A team’. People would laugh if I f***ed up, which inevitably I did because I was fem and chubby and terrified.” I was terrified and cried my way out of playing every week. “When I first joined the school the only sport they played was rugby. “Being active in public filled me with anxiety,” Isaac*, 25, explains. The gay men I spoke to said that feeling vulnerable and excluded in school, particularly in “traumatic” PE lessons, had a major influence on their feeling towards exercise and their bodies years later. These experiences can stay with us for a long time.” If we don’t fit in, then we feel excluded and vulnerable. “In adolescence we all are trying to find a concrete identity and the easiest way to do that is to compare ourselves to our peers, and that easiest way to do that is by appearance.
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“There is evidence to suggest that even five-year-olds have already absorbed the cultural stigma against ‘fat’”, he says. Kyle Murray-Dickson, a clinical associate in applied psychology for children and young people, tells me that negative attitudes towards our bodies can start earl y in life. So why do so many gay men dislike their bodies?Įven in “normal times”, the reasons why people of all sexualities and identities might dislike their bodies and exercise are complex.
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To cap it all off, gay men are also more likely to suffer from body dysmorphia, with Instagram and hookup apps being linked to a rise in “ bigorexia ” too. They’re also more likely to use laxatives and a study of gay gym-goers in London revealed a higher use of steroids for muscle gain. Gay men are eight times as likely to have eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia than straight men. These pressures likely contribute towards health issues. For gay men, the pressure to have a “good body” can be intense and often has a uniquely complex relationship to what it means to be both gay and a man.Ī 2018 survey by Attitude magazine found that 84 per cent of its readers said they felt significant pressure to have a “good body” ( which usually means very slim or big and muscley) with only 1 per cent considering themselves “very happy” with their appearance. People across all demographics and identities have different feelings about their bodies and exercise.
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Others did the opposite: bending, stretching and (literally) running away from the tension that the pandemic has brought. In these “strange times”, some of us have become the least active version of ourselves: snacking and drinking through the mind-numbing boredom, stuck in ‘that week between Christmas and New Year’ for eternity, while worrying about how we’re going to look on the other side. Gyms and leisure centres have finally reopened across England, signalling the end of a lockdown period that’s changed how many of us feel about our bodies.