Revisiting Gay Men's Body Image Issues: Exposing the Fault Lines

Abstract

For over 25 years the varying idealizations of gay men's bodies and the behaviors associated with achieving such bodies has been the focus of an increasingly large body of research. What first constituted an idealized body in this research, in the 1980s, was a thin and youthful image, which evolved into a muscular ideal in the 2000s with thinness translated into lean muscle mass and a small waist. To account for the emergence of both body image dissatisfaction and eating disorders, researchers in both paradigms have tended to either pathologize gay men or speculate about the contribution of a range of social-cultural and psychological factors. These include the role of the gay community, being effeminate or less masculine, and internalized homophobia. HIV and the “wasted” body is claimed to have also influenced the purported recent emergence of the muscular ideal. The underlying driver for both paradigms is the proposition that gay men are universally fixated on their appearance and presenting an idealized body to other men. This critical review examines the fault lines in both paradigms that can be found within prevalence studies, the methodology, data analysis, and the contradictory and problematic theorizing that arise as a result. It concludes that the prevalence and the truth of gay men's body image issues are overstated.