Out of the Closet and into the Gym:

Gay Men and Body Image in Melbourne, Australia

DUANE DUNCAN
Monash University

Psychological and health science research has identified a disparate experience

of body image dissatisfaction among gay men (particularly in relation to het-
erosexual men), and have theorised that this reflects an emphasis placed on
physical appearance in gay male settings. However, these studies largely fail
to reflect upon the centrality of the body in securing a visible gay identity, or
upon discourses of the nature, appearance and expression of gay identity in a
historical and social context. Similarly, sociologically informed work has
tended to emphasise gay men’s paradoxical relationship—dependant upon
and desirous of—heterosexual masculinity as the foundation for this emphasis.
Drawing on a concept of “reflective embodiment,” interviews with four gay
men are conducted to demonstrate how each negotiates an athletic, muscular
body ideal with reference to understandings of masculinity, pride, and gay
sexuality as a way of complicating these theorizations and injecting a discus-
sion of subjectivity into this issue.

Keywords: gay men, embodiment, body image, masculinity, pride

The suggestion that gay culture and gay male communities place emphasis on
physical appearance and body shape is hard to dismiss if one spends any amount of time
within the zone of influence of “the scene.”1 In Australia, gay news media, pornogra-
phy, advertising, and even community events frequently celebrate and privilege a par-
ticular muscular, fat-free, hairless, Caucasian standard of gay male beauty. This
representation of Australian gay identity is perhaps best reflected internationally in the

1
I refer to “the scene” as meaning the social networks and spaces that constitute gay social
life, where men meet other men, or make connection with ideas, images and information related
to “being” a gay man.

Duane Duncan, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University.

Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Duane Duncan, School of Political and Social
Inquiry, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Electronic mail: drdun1@student.monash.edu.au

The Journal of Men’s Studies, Vol. 15, No. 3, Fall 2007, 331-346.
© 2007 by the Men’s Studies Press, LLC. http://www.mensstudies.com. All rights reserved.
jms.1503.331/$12.00 DOI: 10.3149/jms.1503.331

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images and iconography that surround the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, an
event with a central position in Australian popular culture, and global gay and lesbian
cultures respectively (Markwell, 2002; Waitt, 2005). The muscular, tanned (semi-)ex-
posed male bodies associated with Mardi Gras both reclaim and parody images of tra-
ditional Australian masculinity, from Australian footballers to lifesavers, while further
constructing a dominant image of gay male subjectivity in white, inner urban, and mid-
dle-class terms (Markwell, 2002). Gay male culture in Australia, while being particular
and unique in this national and historical context, however, also resonates with images
of gay culture in other Western sites, reflecting the flow of identity movements across
national borders. Unsurprisingly, similar to research findings in Europe and the United
States, Australian research has recently highlighted a highly athletic, muscular physique
devoid of fat and hair as being the ideal body appearance sought by many gay men
(Drummond, 2005a). In addition to pressures from within the gay community to be at-
tractive, gay men are also faced with the cultural stereotype that gay men look after their
bodies, are physically fit, well groomed, and better looking than straight men (Grogan,
1999).
This is not to say that all gay men uphold this image as their own standard or ideal
of attractiveness, or that there are no alternative representations or body types cele-
brated: there are communities and social groupings that actively celebrate body-shapes
and appearances that counter or corrupt this athletic, muscular ideal—the bear commu-
nity is an obvious example (Hennen, 2005). However, for the purposes of this article,
I want to focus on this ideal as it operates as a major point of cultural reference in the
dominant representation of gay men, and how it therefore comes to have an influence
in how gay men feel about and perceive their own bodies, and identities. As such, in
this article, I want to explore some examples of the significance of this cultural ideal
in the lives of four self-identified gay men.

Prior Research

The majority of research on gay men and body image has emerged from the psy-
chological and health sciences. Quantitative studies have identified gay men have a
higher incidence of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviors than hetero-
sexual men, and a commensurate level of dissatisfaction to that of women (Beren, Hay-
den, Wilfrey, & Grilo, 1996; Brand, Rothblum, & Soloman, 1992; Feldman & Meyer,
2007; Herzog, Newman, Gordon, & Pepose, 1984; Lakkis, Ricciardelli, & Williams,
1999; Silberstein, Mishkind, Streigel-Moore, Timko, & Rodin, 1989; Yager, Kurtzman,
Landsverk, & Wiesmeier, 1988).2 While some studies have hypothesized that gay men

2
The extent of Western women’s body dissatisfaction has been labeled a “normative dis-
content” (Rodin, Silberstein, & Streigel-Moore, 1985, cited in Silberstein et al., 1989). Dissat-
isfaction is understood to be an indicator of vulnerability to the development of eating disorders.
Studies differ in their respective findings as to the prevalence of both the incidence of gay men
who suffer from clinical eating disorders, and the extent of body image dissatisfaction among gay

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are more prone to eating disordered behavior due to a disturbance of gender identity
(Ficter & Daser, 1987), or identification with effeminate models of gay identity (Russell
& Keel, 2002; Strong, Singh, & Randall, 2000; Yager et al., 1988), those studies that
draw on the “sociocultural perspective” to explain body image dissatisfaction among
gay men chiefly implicate a perceived emphasis on physical appearance in “gay male
culture” and “gay community” (Conner, Johnson, & Grogan, 2004; Feldman & Meyer,
2007; Herzog et al., 1984; Lakkis et al., 1999; Silberstein et al., 1989; Williamson,
1999; Yelland & Tiggemann, 2003). Gay male communities are perceived to construct
an ideal of physical attractiveness that is unachievable by the majority of gay men,
leading to dissatisfaction and a range of negative body practices including excessive ex-
ercise and eating disorders. Sexual objectification theory (Seiver, 1994) hypothesizes
that these normative practices stem from sexual objectification, whereby in the pursuit
of sexual partners gay men are likely to view themselves as sexual objects, judging
their appearances and adjusting their lifestyles to achieve a narrow image of physical
beauty. Other researchers have argued that gay men are more vulnerable to image dis-
satisfaction and eating disorders as a result of a hostile social world and homophobia
and therefore project homophobic feelings onto their bodies, punishing themselves with
excessive exercise, bingeing, starving and purging (Williamson & Hartley, 1998). Thus,
as gay men become integrated into “gay culture,” they are more frequently exposed to
the physical ideal of the desirable gay man and experience pressure to conform to that
ideal (Levesque & Vichesky, 2006; Williamson & Hartley, 1998).3
Similarly, qualitative sociological research has paid close attention to the normative
aspects of gay men’s body image (Drummond, 2005a, 2005b). However, little attention
has been paid to the ways gay male identity is tied up in notions of the corporeal. The
“doing” of a gay identity by way of reflection upon one’s body and appearance, in re-
lation to discourses about gay male sexuality, gay identity and masculinity, have largely
been overlooked. In understanding body image dissatisfaction in terms of feminine (or
effeminate) predisposition, community norms, sexual objectification, or self-harm and
homophobic shame, most empirical research has thus largely overlooked the historical,
political and social factors that have shaped the self-presentations and bodies of gay
men. As a result, larger questions, such as why gay male communities might place em-

men. For example, the study by Hausman, Mangweth, Walch, Rupp, and Pope (2004) found no
significant differences between heterosexual and gay male samples. The authors question whether
previous samples point to specific issues associated with men more closely linked to the com-
mercial gay scene, obscuring the experiences of ordinary “rank and file gay men.” In their dis-
cussion of the Adonis complex (the contemporary trend for men to develop an obsessive focus
on building a more muscular physique in the gym), Pope, Philips, and Olivardia (2000) suggest
that body image concerns may be simply more announced in gay communities, rather than pro-
nounced.
3
Levesque and Vichesky (2006) found that while involvement in gay male community
heightens body image concerns, acceptance in this community lowers these concerns.

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phasis on physical appearance, remain under-theorised (Morrison, Morrison, & Sager,

2004, p. 136).
Consequently, a focus on the normative demands of an imagined “gay community”
limits the frame through which we might consider the subjectivities of gay men as they
reflect upon, contest and live their bodies/identities in ways not necessarily reducible
to “negative body perception” or “body image dissatisfaction.” Such an approach de-
contextualizes gay men’s bodies from the political and social role the body has played
in asserting the public legitimacy of gay male identity and sexuality. As Murray Drum-
mond (2005a) has argued: “it is crucial to understand the meaning of body image
among gay men in a far more encompassing and broader perspective than the term
body image has come to reflect” (p. 287).
Alternatively, various gay male journalists, authors and academics have also writ-
ten of their personal struggles with weight, exercise and self-esteem in the context of
coming out, seeking belonging and acceptance in gay communities where particular
physical appearances or body shapes are seen to have higher status than others
(Blotcher, 1998; Dow, 2001; Durgadas, 1998; Giles, 1997; Mann, 1998). However,
other men have claimed that these men’s experiences reflect personal failings, and that
the body type celebrated in the dominant gay culture reflects an ahistorical ideal of
male beauty (Cullen, quoted in Mann, 1998, p. 347). The celebration of this masculine
physical ideal is a reflection of the pride gay men are now free to express in their sexual
attraction to other men. According to photographer Tom Bianchi (1997):

Since Stonewall, two phenomena have occurred in tandem—the growth of both

our physical and social muscle. The forces are linked because our acceptance of
ourselves is essential to our support of one another. The number of beautiful, out
gay men has grown enormously as we have exploited our physical potential and
embraced our sexuality. (p. 16)

Thus, notions of pride are intimately connected to a celebration of a particular form

of masculinity in gay male culture. Bronski (1998) describes how against the back-
ground of gay liberation in the 1960s, gay men rejected previous discourses of them-
selves as less sexually attractive, weaker and less “real” than heterosexual men, and
in-turn developed distinct, visible public identities that had more in common with tra-
ditional images of masculinity, but which were understood by the dominant culture as
specifically gay. Pride became something to be publicly proclaimed, and the sexualized,
muscular male body became the form such public pride took. However, Signorile
(1997) argues that the cultural celebration of masculinity and the stigmatization of any
form or suggestion of femininity or effeminacy, coupled with the rise of a commercial
sexual gay culture, were the foundations for what he understands to be a contemporary
obsession with body image and appearance among gay men. Similarly, Harris (1999)
has argued that rather than alleviating gay men’s inadequacy in relation to the cultural
touchstone of heterosexual masculinity, the act of elevating the archetypical form of that
masculinity and mimicking it restated the notion that gay men are less “real” than
straight men. As a result, gay men are “psychologically unstable”:

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When we attempted to heal the pathology of the gay body by em-

barking on the costume dramas of the new machismo, we did not
succeed in freeing ourselves from our belief in the heterosexual
male’s evolutionary superiority…. In fact, we did precisely the op-
posite, and became our own worst enemies, harsh, homophobic crit-
ics of the campy demeanor of the typical queen. In the process we
intensified the instability of the gay body. (p. 99)

That instability is reflected in the “malleability” of the gay body (Harris, 1999, p.
90), its subjection to an array of scientific and commercial procedures and disciplinary
techniques, which inevitable produce homogeneity (Kiley, 1998). Similarly, accounts
of “Bear culture,” which actively celebrates larger, hirsute male bodies, point out that
while Bear culture rejects the “body fascism” and exaggerated masculinity of main-
stream gay culture, appeals to authentic bodily masculinity “recuperate gendered hier-
archies central to the logic of hegemonic masculinity” (Hennen, 2005, p. 27).
However, a linear historical narrative whereby gay men’s “obsession” with body
image reflects a rejection of the feminine, and a wholesale celebration of masculinity,
constructs gay men’s body image as solely an issue of problematic masculinity. As a
result, research on gay men’s body image continues to construct gay men as psycho-
logically vulnerable, offering little possibility for understanding the very subjective ex-
perience of embodying a gay social identity in any way that does not invoke discourses
of gender-performance or mimicry of hegemonic heterosexual norms, or pathology,
narcissism, and/or superficiality. The effeminate queens of yesterday may have been re-
placed with physical paragons of hegemonic masculinity, yet gay men remain limited
in their self-identifications to models that construct their embodied experience as shal-
low and lacking in rationality, or masculine authenticity.
While aspects of the commercial gay “scene” place emphasis on the “perfect” male
body, not all men who identify as gay experience the same degree of vulnerability or
dissatisfaction. Some men undoubtedly suffer pain and exclusion, while others are
likely to benefit from such a culture. There is scope for a critical evaluation of these ex-
periences, to add complexity to the dominant understandings of gay men’s body image
that privilege “obsession” and masculine compensation.

Reflexive Embodiment and Gay Male Identity

In this article, the meanings and understandings of what four gay men make of
their own bodies and identities as they negotiate these discourses on the nature and ap-
pearance of masculinity, sexual pride, and the experience of being marked as a sexual
subject via the sexualized male body are considered. To this end, Crossley’s (2001,
2006) concept of “reflective embodiment” is used. Crossley, drawing on a phenome-
nological tradition in symbolic interactionist sociology, argues that our bodies exist as
objects to us in contemplation and action, but that our basic capacity for reflecting upon
ourselves derives from interaction (2001, p. 144). Crossley argues that the acquisition
of our capacity for reflection lies in experience, embodied as habit (2001, pp. 144-145).

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Habit is the process through which one comes to view themselves though the eyes of
a “generalized other,” and forms the basis of self-identity. According to Crossley
(2001), drawing on the ideas of George Herbert Mead,

… self-hood is a process … in which “I” adopt the role of other as a

means of turning back upon myself, to reflect upon myself as “me.”
I develop a concept of myself (me) by acting (qua I) out the role of
the generalized other. (p. 147)

In this way we come to see ourselves from the outside, through the eyes of others, and
the schemas of collective representation that order and make meaningful the particu-
larities of our embodiment. In the process of reflecting upon ourselves, including our
habits, we may act upon ourselves so as to change ourselves (Crossey, 2001, p. 149).
Thus, reflection upon the self is never transcendent, but is firmly rooted in social inter-
action. Further, if we acquire our own reflexivity by way of an appropriation of the
view of the generalized other, then our own reflexivity is limited by the collective rep-
resentations made available to us by our society (2001, p. 150):

… our projects and self understanding are necessarily shaped by

these representations and the way in which they classify and differ-
entiate us. Indeed, even our bodies are shaped by these collective
representations. (2001, p. 150)

Thus, Crossley offers a concept of embodied subjectivity whereby agency is not

understood to derive from a transcendent self-consciousness distinct from the body (a
la Cartesian dualistic accounts of selfhood), nor reduced to a subject position in dis-
course (as radical anti-foundationalist approaches, such as Judith Butler’s (1990, 1993)
notion of performativity are accused of (see Connell, 2000, p. 51, and Howson, 2005).
Instead, “reflective embodiment” encourages us to analyze the perspectives and prac-
tices that individuals engage in, sometimes submitting to powerful forms of domination,
in the service of satisfying desire for recognition as social (and in this case, sexual)
subjects. In Susan Bordo’s (1999) terms, this means getting “down and dirty with the
body on the level of its practices” (p. 91), and has parallels to Connell’s (2000) concep-
tion of the relationship between discourses of masculine gender and male bodies in his
discussion of “body-reflexive practices” (p. 51).4 According to Connell, “the materiality
of male bodies matters, not as a template for social masculinities, but as a referent for

4
Bordo (1999) was discussing the need to pay attention to the material realities of men’s
bodies, which have often been overlooked in scholarship due to the association of masculinity
with rationality, and the assumption that men are somehow less “bound to” the materiality of their
embodied specificity. Of course, gay men have always been more associated with the materiality
of their bodies and perverse, fleshy desires (Terry, 1995). The assumption that hetero-

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the configuration of social practices defined as masculinity. Male bodies are what these
practices refer to, imply or address” (p. 59).
Thus, “reflective embodiment” provides a theoretical basis for understanding the
reflective, self-conscious capacities of individual gay men, as they draw upon cultural
narratives regarding homosexuality, masculinity, pride, social status and the male body,
and act upon their embodied selves in sometimes highly dissatisfying attempts to
achieve or resist the dominant body ideal. As such, their body struggles reflect the ex-
tent to which the doing of a gay identity requires negotiation of discourses about the na-
ture of men’s bodies, hegemonic masculinity, and homosexuality that are inherently
contradictory. Body image is undoubtedly likely to be complex for gay men in light of
these observations.

Research Methodology

The material for this paper is drawn from in-depth interviews with gay men explor-
ing body image and the social experience of embodying a gay male identity. Partici-
pants for this research were recruited from personal contacts, social and support
networks, and word-of-mouth. Interviews were between 90 minutes and two hours
long, were recorded and subsequently transcribed. All participants’ details are confiden-
tial, and names and identifying particulars have been changed to ensure anonymity.
Participants ranged in age from 22 through to mid-50s, were employed in a diverse
range of professional or service industries, and came from across Melbourne, Australia.
While Sydney is often characterised as being an “international gay city,” gay and les-
bian life in Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city, is much less centralised and is
often said to accommodate greater diversity in its gay and lesbian populations.
In the analysis of participant’s interviews, I draw on individuals’ own experiences
and understandings to add complexity to established understandings about gay men
and body image. I have tried to avoid presenting material that describes the normative
pressures among gay men to embody a particular body ideal, in favor of presenting
moments when participants either resist that ideal, and/or describe their embodied sense
of self in a way not reducible to negative body image. Following Wienke (1998), who
explored the coping strategies adopted by three heterosexual men as they negotiated
cultural ideals of the male body, four participants are presented who each represent
distinct but paradigmatic approaches adopted by men in this study to negotiate a gay
male body ideal. This approach gives prominence to the experiences and meanings
these men make in their own lives.

sexual (white) men are somehow “less material” obscures the regulatory and self-disciplining
techniques heterosexual men engage in sustaining the masculine myth of rational autonomy
(Longhurst, 2001).

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Robert

Robert was a 25-year-old mental health worker who had recently come to Mel-
bourne from country Victoria with a view to developing a stronger affiliation with other
gay men and “the scene” as he imagined it. However, within that social scene Robert
had had several negative experiences with men whom he felt judged him on the basis
of his appearance and body shape. Robert described being intimidated by the apparent
ubiquity of “good-looking” men in the gay social spaces he had visited, and who he de-
scribed as conforming to “extreme standards” of physical conditioning. According to
Robert: “I prefer a more, kind of when people just look normal instead of everybody
looking incredibly chiseled and muscular, and no shirts on, and high on whatever.”
The positioning of these men’s appearances as abnormal and extreme were twin themes
in Robert’s assessment of the scene. Robert resented being subject to such a narrow
ideal, and characterised these men as conforming in a way he refused to do. As a result,
Robert felt himself to be increasingly excluded from the world in which these men so-
cialized:

I think it’s expected now that you, it’s like you’re abnormal if you
don’t have a gym membership or you don’t swim and whatever, and
I’ve met a few people who have been quite dismissive, I guess, be-
cause I didn’t conform to what they wanted.

Robert’s response to being socially marginalized by men in these spaces had been
to position these men and their focus on body shape and appearance as abnormal: “it’s
kind of, you can look at it like they spend so much time going to the gym, removing
their hair, that they become abnormal because that’s not the way that they’re meant to
be.”
To Robert, the concerns and behaviors of these men are in breach of the concerns
and behaviors of “real” men—who should be unconcerned with appearance, body hair,
and body shape, and with being looked at as objects of desire. Yet, Robert was not just
critical of the unnatural concerns of these men with their external appearance, he was
also critical of their reasons for such unnatural or excessive attention to their appear-
ances. Robert drew on the status of homosexuality in Australian culture to help explain
the motivations and preoccupations of the men he had met on “the scene”:

nobody’s perfect, and especially if you look at gay men as a wider

groups it’s almost like, it depends, like it’s impossible to become
perfect if you’re a gay man because being gay is imperfect, if you
look at it from a wider angle, because perfection, I think in the greater
social unconscious, is to be heterosexual, so I guess maybe they
strive for perfection in other areas because they can’t get perfec-
tion?… So that’s when it comes back to all the clothes and the cars
and stuff, because they’re all really all observable, measurable things
I guess, so you can look and judge a person by how they look.

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Robert suggests that gay men are automatically less perfect in the “greater social
unconscious” by virtue of not being heterosexual. From this hierarchical perspective,
Robert explains that the gay men he has met on the scene are compensating for that lack
with material signifiers of social status including physically idealized physiques and ap-
pearance. Thus, Robert understands the cultural norms that define physical attractive-
ness, and in-turn discipline the bodies and subjectivities of gay men on “the scene,” as
driven by a shared psychic sense of imperfection or lack, which is itself the product of
a broader cultural understanding of homosexuality. However, Robert positions himself
as being somehow beyond this lack. Instead, he draws on a particular discourse of mas-
culinity (that men should not express “excessive” interest or attention to external ap-
pearance) to construct the concerns of these other men as abnormal, and simultaneously
draws on an individualist discourse to describe and position his self in opposition to the
consumerist conformity of these men. While he may have been made to feel an out-
sider—as abnormal—by the pressures and norms he has observed and experienced in
“the scene,” Robert is not simply vulnerable to an oppressive “image-driven gay cul-
ture” (Drummond, 2005b, p. 292). Rather, Robert points out gay men are subject to a
body ideal that has a clear association with wider heteronormative ideals of masculinity
and social status. Simultaneously, Robert is able to draw on the contradictoriness of
those ideals (that masculinity is muscular, but also unassuming) to position himself as
normative, and not pathologically lacking in self-acceptance. Critically, Robert also
implies the pride these men seek to embody is not simply a sexual pride (in the pursuit
of sexual partners), but a more mainstream social pride. Similarly, the status they seek
is not driven by a masculine lack, per se, but a status lack. Whether Robert’s assessment
is correct or not, as a strategy for thinking about his experience of the scene, it had en-
abled him to assert an alternative or counter-subjectivity, and had driven him to seek
out other spaces to make connections with similarly othered men.

Max

Max, a 29-year-old financial consultant from inner-city Melbourne, was incredibly

reflective about the influence of the athletic, muscular ideal in his own life, describing
an extended period of low self-esteem related to dissatisfaction with his body. Max felt
his acceptance by other gay men, and his enjoyment of life as an out gay man, was di-
rectly related to his body shape and appearance. Yet, while Max described feeling an
expectation that he embody a particular “stereotypical” image of gay male subjectivity,
and while he acknowledged the difficulties he experienced in trying to achieve that
physical appearance, he paradoxically also saw that embodiment as a politically strong
position from which to identify himself as a gay man. In fact, Max perceived the body
norm he experienced in gay social spaces to be the dominant contemporary stereotype
of gay men in culture more widely. According to Max:

I want to conform to the gay stereotype now that I’m actually out. I’m
quite happy to be obvious. I’m quite happy for people to know that

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I’m gay now, and, because I think that having a gym body and wear-
ing the clothes that sit right and fit properly just emphasise a good
look, that’s certainly very attractive.

For Max, appearing well dressed in fitting clothes that accentuate a gym-built body
was a positive image of gay masculinity that he hoped to emulate. Max identified the
association between appearing attractive and being self-confident as a key element in
this image of positive gay masculinity. Max did not resent being subject to this ideal
in the way Robert did, but saw it as his best hope of achieving wider public acceptance
of his homosexuality. In fact, Max claimed he was less likely to reveal his sexual iden-
tity to people if he felt like he was not well presented: “If I’m not in good shape I don’t
have as much self-confidence, I’m likely to be depressed, probably less likely to tell
people that I’m gay.” While Max’s unhappiness with his appearance might have been
driven by his inability to achieve the form he saw most desired among other gay men,
his reasons for desiring that form had much to do with notions of pride and acceptance
that went beyond “the gay community.” Significantly, Max made this connection in a
way which situates the notion of what makes a “good-looking gay man” within a het-
eronormative frame:

Max: I think, kind of part of my perception is that people are going

to be put off by [a] fat ugly gay man than a stunningly good looking
one.

Author: Which people?

Max: Well, the general public. I don’t know, I think when you tell
straight people about being gay they can’t help but think of the sex.
I don’t know where I’m going with that one.

Max positions the image of the tanned, toned, muscular, hairless gay man as sub-
ject to the gaze of a general heterosexual public. From Max’s perspective feeling good
about oneself in this context means meeting a heteronormative desire that gay men be
“ideally beautiful” and “masculine.” He points out that identifying as a gay man marks
one as an individual whose sexuality is lived publicly, in terms of the assumptions,
presumptions and stereotypes informing other people’s understandings of what it might
mean to be a gay man. Max’s anxiety reflects the burden of being marked as a non-nor-
mative sexual subject, in a culture where homosexuality remains a position of differ-
ence worth remarking upon. If one is to embody a sexualized identity, it makes sense
to embody a form that at least elicits desire, respect and status.
As such, Max highlights that particular embodiments of homosexual identity are
preferable to others. Therefore, gay men who are attractive and muscular, and therefore
masculine, are preferable to gay men who are effeminate, gender non-conforming,
weak, overweight, or unattractive. Max highlights that society can more tolerate gay
men provided they do not challenge the binary gendered order of masculinity and fem-

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ininity. Similarly, he points out that there is something doubly horrifying in the prospect
of a “fat, ugly” man having sex with another (potentially fat, ugly) man. Max points out
that the prohibition works by way of appeals to sexual and physical pride in one’s true
self. A confident—out and proud—gay man, who embodies a socially desirable phys-
ical form—masculine, muscular and attractive—is a less threatening image of homo-
sexuality preferable to Max’s “general public.” For Max, embodying this form thus
produces a social acceptance which in turn generates self-acceptance and self-esteem.
Max highlights that his appearance and body shape are related to his identity, but
not in a way simply reducible to an “obsessive” gay community. If there are norms in
gay community and culture that place emphasis on individual gay men to embody par-
ticular forms, Max highlights that the origins of these norms are not necessarily inherent
in “the gay community.” At the least, the regulation of the forms gay men’s bodies
might take occurs not just among other gay men, but in relation to how gay men see
themselves in the eyes of a wider heterosexual public. Similarly, Max highlights that
gay men move between cultural spaces, negotiating ideals whose origin cannot easily
be located in either “the scene” or beyond it.

Matt

Both Robert and Max’s comments resonate with those of Matt, a 31-year-old gym
trainer from St Kilda. Matt described wanting to fit a “bare-chested, smooth, tall, mus-
cular” physical ideal as a desire to appear “normal” and act “masculine.” Matt described
being incredibly concerned with his appearance growing up, and especially about ex-
hibiting qualities such as effeminacy, passivity or camp behavior that might mark him
as homosexual:

I guess in some respects that’s what I’m trying to be, I’m trying to
look normal, I’m trying to look masculine, I’m trying not to show
any behaviors that I might be gay or effeminate or girly or sissy or
whatever.

In seeking to avoid association with the effeminate stereotype of homosexuality,

before coming out Matt had always sought to convince people he was straight. How-
ever, since coming out Matt’s focus had changed:

From a very early age I didn’t want to be identified as gay, I had to

portray a different image, and now that I am out and gay I’m still
trying to project an image, but it’s a different image, I think when I
was young and wasn’t out I wanted to look perhaps straight; I still
want to look straight now, but I want to look like the ideal gay man
now.

If at one time being gay and looking heterosexual (i.e., masculine and therefore
“normal”) was a contradictory subjectivity, Matt highlights that there has been a cultural

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shift, meaning the ideal gay man now shares many of the same physical attributes as
the so-called “normal” heterosexual man. In seeking to embody a socially celebrated
physical ideal of maleness, gay men such as Matt, and Max, cast aside the imposition
of prior understandings of their gendered sexuality, in favor of more socially desirable
gendered sexual subjectivities. While Robert earlier understood these men to be suffer-
ing from a communal sense of perceived lack in comparison to heterosexual men, both
Max and Matt highlight the self-pride they each seek is both the desire to appear normal,
and to embody a sexual body ideal common to both straight and gay worlds. This is not
to deny the narrowness of that ideal, nor the potential for dissatisfaction and distress it
creates, nor the wider cultural significance that the elevation of a muscular standard of
maleness has in the context of a wider gender and sexual politics. But it does tell us
something new about the reasons gay men might pursue such an elusive body ideal.
Rather than simply oppressed by a body image focused gay male community, these
two men perhaps embody the struggle that has occurred at an ideological level over the
representation of homosexual men, from effete queens, to ripped porn studs. In terms
of research on gay men and body image, this observation opens up a cultural and social
understanding of the ways gay men’s subjectivities and bodies reflect the historical
and political struggles over meanings and understandings of gay male identity. It also
identifies that body image dissatisfaction is less a function of oppressive gay male com-
munity, and is perhaps more a function of the ongoing tension these men feel negoti-
ating a visible, public, communal identity, whose status is still problematic, and the
reality (or limits) of their own material bodies.

Chad

Chad, a 35-year old artist from Collingwood, saw the pressure to attain and main-
tain an athletic physical appeal as a sloughing-off of previous demands and stereotyp-
ical ideas placed on gay men’s shoulders. Chad had “come out” close to 20 years ago
and had negotiated different expectations regarding his self-presentation and appear-
ance over the course of that time:

It’s funny when you come out and identify as gay you almost feel as
if you have to behave this way, you know high camp, dramatic, ef-
feminate, all this kind of stuff, and you get forced into those kind of
roles, and for me as getting older and getting more in touch with my
homosexuality and my masculinity you know I am, that’s, I’m leav-
ing those character traits and things behind, you know, and so I notice
that at the moment there is this real switch towards this hyper-mas-
culinity for gay men, you know, everyone’s tattooed and everyone’s
butched up and all this kind of stuff and that’s almost an overcom-
pensation, “become the real stereotypical straight man,” but there’s
also a re-balancing I think, a disposing of some of those stereotypes
of effeminacy.

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In describing a greater interest in his masculinity and homosexuality, and a focus

upon a “hyper-masculinity” on “the scene,” Chad identities a shift from previous mod-
els of homosexuality, toward a greater investment among gay men with notions of a nat-
ural and inherent maleness—a maleness not at all distinct from homosexuality. While
Chad described feeling pressure to maintain a particular physique, which he also re-
vealed was becoming harder to achieve as he became older, this was balanced by a
more organic sense of himself and a letting go of a prior false identity, in favor of a
more individualistic understanding of his self. However, the men Chad refers to are
less in touch with their “natural” maleness, and are instead “compensating” for their
prior status as effeminate with stereotypical signifiers of masculinity, including tattoos
and other “butch” accoutrements. Chad’s characterization of these men as embracing
a “hyper” masculinity is also an acknowledgement of the performativity of such gen-
dered behavior. Chad highlights that the tropes and tools of hegemonic masculinity
may be strategically taken up in exploration of an alternative homosexual masculinity
by gay men. Yet, Chad’s observation also reveals that gay men are understood to trans-
gress normative codes of masculinity by revealing the extent to which that masculinity
is performative. As Connell (1995) has argued in regard to hegemonic masculinity,
that “true masculinity is almost always thought to proceed from men’s bodies—to be
inherent in a male body or to express something about a male body” (p. 45). For gay
men, “true” masculinity is a contrivance or costume drama, revealed when the body on
display becomes “excessive,” or reveals obsession with the external self.
Chad reveals the complexity for gay men negotiating the embodiment of a mascu-
line self. While heterosexual men are never understood to be performing their mas-
culinity by adopting styles of dress or self-presentation that confirm their male status,
gay men in contrast are understood to be “playing” with such styles. While, in some
senses, gay men do play with, mock, and parody the behaviors and presentations of
“real” men, Chad highlights that gay men are first and foremost understood to be ironic
in their self-presentations as masculine, before they might be thought to be natural. As
a result, gay men carry the burden of being gender copies, even when they do not view
their own senses of self with the same sense of play—as the comments of Robert, Max
and Matt reveal. Similarly, that Chad understands his masculinity to be more natural,
more central to his “true” self, including his homosexual self, than that embodied by
men more self-consciously concerned with embodying the muscular, athletic ideal, re-
veals the way in which attempts to achieve that body image are neatly understood to
reflect gender anxiety.
Gay men are understood to be vulnerable to body image dissatisfaction en masse
at the very moment that the masculinity they perform is revealed as somehow “unnat-
ural” to them.

Conclusion

The quantitative health studies and psychological research on gay men’s greater
body dissatisfaction and higher incidence of eating disordered behavior only provide

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us with a partial explanation of the complexity of these issues. While some gay men un-
doubtedly have problematic relationships with their bodies, which may be understood
in relation to the norms and pressures experienced in gay communal spaces and scenes,
a failure to contextualize those norms and that pressure within a wider understanding
of the importance of the body in the materialization of a gay identity risks pathologizing
all gay men as vulnerable to a culturally induced narcissism. What is missing is a cul-
tural framework in which we might better understand how gay men’s bodies are inti-
mately tied to complex and sometimes contradictory discourses of gender and sexuality
through, or against which, they take meaning and form. More nuanced stories exist to
be told than those that simply catalogue the norms to which gay men are subject in
“gay community,” and which understand those norms to be driven by a rejection of
“the feminine.” A less fixed understanding of the relationship between gay identity,
masculinity and the male body opens up a space for analyzing the reflective dimension
of embodying an identity that requires social signification in a heteronormative context.
In the four examples provided, I have shown how each of these men negotiates an
athletic, muscular body ideal, with particular reference to understandings of masculin-
ity, pride, and gay identity that have a particular hold on “the body.” Gay men must en-
gage with and negotiate contradictory discourses about the nature and appearance of
homosexuality, and masculinity, which articulate gay men’s bodies as surfaces upon
which identity and subjectivity become one and the same. The reduction of gay men’s
struggles with body image to a “gay community problem” participates in this reduction.
An account of performativity that takes into account the reflective capacity of subjects
to act upon their bodies in the service of achieving social recognition counters this re-
ductionism. It gives us a framework for thinking about how the body matters in securing
(or unsettling) the myths of masculinity and how the practices of individuals embody
those myths with meaning and materiality—not as subjects who can step outside of
those myths, but as subjects whose intelligibility is predicated upon them.

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