Men and Body Image

Growing up I loved G.I Joe and wrestling.  I mean, I still do, but when I look back a lot of my earliest versions of masculinity were towering and muscular people.  With G.I Joe it was probably a little closer to real, but there were not a whole lot of deviations.  With the professional wrestlers I saw at my most formative years, well let’s just say this preceded the steroid trials that were pretty significant news stories and marked a shift in some policies we saw in the “sports” world.  However, the stories I was told at the start of my life were that through hard work, regular prayers, and vitamin consumption, I could have a jacked physique and could be a really strong person who would be able to easily tear my shirt off of my upper body. 

Of course, I grew up and discovered comic books from there.  The physiques in those were chiseled and heroic in nature.  Obviously, these were drawings, but they fed into my image of what a man should look like.  Before we get much further, let me make clear that I don’t think that any of these mediums presented false information, I mean hell, two of the three were drawings.  However, the reality is that while I knew at least animation was fake and not real life, there was still an element of belief there for me, that people could and maybe even should look like that.  Still, I grew older and discovered action movies and these were again real people who were playing heroic roles.  These were strong men who all looked jacked without their shirts on, and that fed into the idea of what a man should look like even more. Now, as an adult, I see movies with superheroes in them and often will see those actors; usually shirtless, on the cover of magazines advertising their regimen to prepare for those heroic roles. 

 So, what is the point of me talking about all of these images?  Well, as a man I have been hardwired to think that men should look a certain way.  I grew up a fat kid and beyond just getting picked on for being fat, I felt like there was something wrong with me because I did not look like these guys, animated or otherwise.  For many of us men, we silently judge ourselves against other men.  We do not compare ourselves to where we are, we do not appreciate our own potential or challenges, and instead we focus on our own individual shortcomings.  We recognize that some people may have more athletic gifts or potential, but that does not mean that we do not wonder why we do not look a certain way.  Even deeper than that, we compare ourselves to people who are not celebrities or drawings.  Hell, there is a lifter in my area, around my age, not terribly far off from me in height who is more jacked than me and can outlift me by a significant amount on all the lifts.  That often is the extent of our comparisons, which does us a significant disservice because that removes most, if not all, of the variables.  For instance, the lifter near me started lifting in their teens and has been consistent for damn near 30 years.  Meanwhile, I started lifting in my 30s and don’t even have a full decade of barbell-focused strength training under my belt.  This is why I often tell my clients that comparison is a thief of joy, because rather than appreciating what I can do, have done, and how far I have come, I could instead get mired in not being enough.

 The fucked up part of all of this though is that for most of us men, we participate in this too in some way, both for ourselves and for others.  I lost over 100 pounds and the way I see myself to this day has always been in a not so gentle light.  I have even at my leanest thought I needed to drop some more weight.  Having grown up being fat and being a fat adult, I felt less than and like I did not have the same value or desire that other men did because I thought they looked better with their shirts off.  I probably drove coaches mad when I wanted to avoid increases to the weight on the scale while wanting to increase the weight on the barbell.  But for me, I tied the number on the scale with an aesthetic I cared more about in my most quiet moments.  Eventually, I moved up a weight class and suddenly the weights I moved on the barbell were higher too.  However, the choice to move up was not one I made easily, nor one I made lightly.  For me, it came out of a toxic and abusive relationship where I was told I was too lean at one point, and so I started to add weight.  I have no doubt that at some point it devolved into eating emotions too.  But I despaired over the weight on the scale as it increased. Because I was in many ways moving away from the aesthetic appearance I had been working towards, the one that I thought would bring meaning and value to my life and existence, and the one that would make me attractive to women. 

We can delve into details another time, but for me, I heard my abusive ex’s voice when I saw numbers on the scale and saw my appearance in the mirror or on my videos lifting. But, at my therapist’s urging, I started dating and found that my perception of what was attractive or desirable was not always in line with what women were looking for. In fact, I was overwhelmed with attention and had to start setting boundaries with my time and energy and my dating life.

 But, men can still be toxic, and I got comments about my appearance on a video I posted that was meant to be fun and lighthearted. Admittedly, those comments hurt and made me contemplate what I was doing. But I know my goals for right now were to rebuild strength and to add muscle, while also learning to love myself and appreciate what my body is capable of doing. Today, in my 40s I move better and more easily than I did in my 20s or 30s. I am as strong as I have ever been, but I am also learning to value myself and only compare myself to myself and my own past and journey.

 Beyond that, I have learned to be skeptical of anyone who makes it sound like a bulging and ripped physique is easily attainted with enough protein and hard work. I know there are people who have decades of work that shows, and that there are people who genetically have gifts and advantages. But I also recognize there are people who use certain supplements that are not talked about in the magazine articles touting their exercise routines to get big. However, not all men have gone through extensive therapy and processed the impact of external things on their bodies. So, I want to challenge people to no longer perpetuate these thoughts and to just appreciate that our bodies are different and can do different things. In the meantime, maybe I will fuck around, get hella strong and start wearing crop tops to trigger people, even though my confidence is not yet there, maybe it will get there.