Sass Master 3000

wrongmovehoe:

There’s a lot of intersectional and historical aspects to fitness in the gay community that are hard to touch on. There’s a dilemma that comes into play because a lot of people find it difficult to critique the issue without making it seem to others like they’re demonizing people trying to get physically fit like you said. I’d argue that it’s about standards of beauty and about class disparity among other things like access to resources and education. Nobodies arguing that going to the gym to make yourself look sexier, get healthier, or to feel a certain way is bad. And I personally don’t think demonizing going to the gym because it’s buying into mainstream culture is what anyone’s doing. What my personal problem with it is is the marketing of fit bodies to gay youth who are 1) impressionable 2) looking for a community and 3) looking for an identity. I have an issue with this implicit expectation for gay people to be or look a certain way and only that one way. A lot of gay youths first interactions with their community is through porn and if the first thing you learn about gay people is that they’re hot and fuckable then you’ve already sent the wrong message to a person in an incredibly critical period of development. This is where I feel mental health problems and unhealthy coping mechanisms/relationships to health truly develop because at an early age there’s already a disconnect between identity and community. And since this age group is so supremely impressionable they’re going to want to fit in with their desired community and if they don’t already then there’s this feeling of crisis. There’s a lot of cultural aspects you have to consider as well. I just think it’s narrowminded to say critique of this fitness culture encourages these unhealthy behaviors when the culture itself has already taken its toll on the mental health of so many consciously or unconsciously within the community.