Bodies suck.
Really, they do.
And before your mind goes somewhere dirty, I’m talking about the general annoyance of human biology. From periods to poop to piss to immune system shenanigans, the human body is a pathetic meat sack with only a modicum of sentience and self-aware intelligence going for it. We lack fangs, claws, venom, poison, or even the size and muscle mass to truly reflect our apex predator status in our local planetary ecology.
Can you tell from my disdain for the human form, that I’ve always had a rocky relationship with my body?
As much as I want to present nowadays as agender, science is still about a century behind where it needs to be to properly digitize my brain a la “Chappie” and grant access to a variety of swappable interchangeable bodies via download.
Ah, to live in the world of Vonnegut’s “Unready To Wear!”
And to deny my Demisexual grayscale dreams even further, the only entity doing research on it right now as far as I know is fucking Elon Musk.
BECAUSE OF COURSE.
Not that other research hasn’t been going for decades. Back when I was 12 or so I read an article in WIRED magazine from 1998 about a researcher – Professor Warwick, at the University of Cambridge at Reading. His project was referred to as Project Cyborg. He was experimenting with connecting human nerve endings to microchips and circuits in a series of cybernetics experiments. I remember e-mailing him in excitement to see how things were going. As this was back in 2002 or thereabouts, I very much hope the research has come further, but as I am solidly lacking such technology to free myself from this mortal coil and this disgusting sack of flesh I currently find myself imprisoned within, let’s talk about sex appeal and appearance, shall we?
It’s no secret that mass marketing has warped and twisted the way we see our bodies.
A hundred thousand writers over the past however many centuries have waxed poetic on and off about how we are guilted constantly about our bodies in order to maintain social status or fit particular molds, all while being consumers and feeding at the marketing nozzle of perceived self-worth. Everything – from famous painters to sculptors to photography has forced visions of idealized beauty upon us.
Mainstream Media berates one constantly via ads and idealisms about how you are “supposed” to look or be as a man or a woman, chained so vehemently to the gender-binary as it is. It’s even pushing into more modern non-binary acceptance to try and force androgyny of very specific types upon that segment of the populace.
Hell, that’s part of why I feel I could never truly pass as agender. The media would never let me be, especially knowing how hungry I am to consume the zeitgeist in entirety and step on their toes.
I detest it all.
As I’m sure many of you do. They’re literally fencing us in, dictating to us in regards to our own bodies.
Over the years, I’ve taken a number of courses and participated in various guinea-pig psychology studies as an undergraduate, mostly on the topic of the human mind and body. Both from a biology-anatomy lens as a scientist, as well as through the veils of psychology and sociology. It’s a mess of systems and inherent biases we struggle to control. It didn’t matter if I was pissing in beakers to test kidney dialysis, or wearing Gucci sunglasses to determine perceived self-worth. We fail to tame the human biology daily.
While I must admit I’m impressed that the power of evolution was able to concoct such advanced and hilariously backwards organic systems, (check out the anatomy of nerve endings in the human eye for a great example on how intelligent design is impossibly fucking stupid), I still find myself wanting.
It begins with fat.
As most things do.
Ever watch Fight Club?
See, I’ve managed to fluctuate up and down drastically throughout my whole life when it comes to weight gain and weight loss. As a boy pre-puberty, I was a stick. A tiny thing that could barely lift anything heavy, let alone reflect the enormous bulk I am today.
ADHD and my other disabilities have a role to play, in that they have some strong tendencies when it comes to food, in a similar vein to our cousins over on the Autism spectrum. That means you frequently fall into our superpower of hyperfocus for long periods – not eating, drinking, or even peeing. And then you binge all your favorite foods afterwards when something finally breaks the intense focus.
If you want an example of how unhealthy I was from 11-16, I would frequently stay up until 4am on weeknights, playing Starcraft or raiding endgame tier content in the game World of Warcraft, only to wake up at 8am and go to school, often arriving late as I had to walk the three kilometers down the trail network. I wouldn’t eat breakfast or lunch due to the time crunch, and then I would gorge on anything I could get my hands on after-school as my one meal of the day. I started working at the age of 12 at my uncle’s car wash to earn money, and then almost always had a part time job from then on out, mostly for video games, trading cards, or food.
You don’t need a pediatrician to tell you how dangerous that would have been for my metabolism. I’m surprised to this day I haven’t developed diabetes from the extreme spiking up and down of blood sugar levels.
I’d often be unable to sleep from insomnia anyways, and would wander the halls, looking at all the pictures on the walls.
Just before I hit puberty at about the age of 11-12, this extremely bad habit of not eating for prolonged periods of time before bingeing, in addition to getting minimal sleep every night caused me to bloat out and gain a ton of weight.
When puberty struck, my body took all that extra fat and used it as puberty fuel. It literally grew and grew until it ripped itself apart. To this day I have long white and purple stretch marks across most of my body from where my skin and bones literally ripped themselves apart as they stretched out from the tiny stick-boy into the 6’3, 250-300 pound creature I am now.
I’d be a fucking liar if I didn’t admit that I’m extremely self-conscious of these “tiger stripes” as I call them. In a world obsessed with the physical and beautiful, after puberty I felt like a monster, as I had literally grown at least two feet and gained enormous amounts of muscle mass in a mere six months.
I know folks going through pregnancy often suffer from this same problem.
I rejoined Tae Kwon Do alongside my mother and obsessively dropped a third of my body weight, for what would be just one of a half dozen times throughout my life. See, I’m very aware of the privilege that comes with being thin or fit. While women have it way worse than men by and large in our western society, and are more actively guilted and pressured about it of course… The ideal of the Ryan Reynolds six pack is still a dangerous narrative that I hold in the back of my mind’s eye to this day.
Fuck Ryan Reynolds.
For the next fifteen years up to this present day, I have ping ponged anywhere from 240 pounds to my current 320 pounds. Up and down, up and down. Like a teeter totter or pogo stick depending on my mental health and life circumstances.
Now I could rant about fatphobia, which is alive and well in our society. I could rant about how socioeconomics are possibly the biggest influence on people’s overall health and how finances alter access to both healthy food and fitness outlets. I could also rant about how I’ve felt as an individual – being large versus small. But I firmly believe that a person’s body is theirs to control and command.
Believing in body autonomy is possibly one of the deepest values I hold, regardless of if we’re talking about tattoos, body mods, or trans rights. Strange, considering I’ve had to learn a hell of a lot since my wholly stunted and ignorant youth as a redneck logger-kid.
These prisons are ours to live within, after all. I’ll decorate and change it how I wish, god damn it!
What I will say is that I see how I’m treated when I’m large, versus when I’m small, knowing full well that as a 6’3 bald white man I’m often painted with a certain brush regardless. I’m treated pretty shittily when I’m big, and much better when I’m small.
Intersectionality is still a thing, as it will always be. With privilege comes responsibility after all.
But beyond just body fat – society and the people around us find ways to shame us even when we’re simply trying to feel more comfortable in our body.
When I was seventeen to nineteen, I was in a bigger phase body-weight wise. The freshman fifteen is very real. So I simultaneously decided to grow out my hair and goatee. While my lack of fitness was a struggle due to all the World of Warcraft, I got more shit from the people around me for my long hair than I ever did for being fat.
My dad, being the macho logger he was, told me to cut my shoulder-length hair off at least once or twice every few days for that entire summer I was home from University. It didn’t matter that he had long hair back in the 70’s himself – it was the gender norms he had been indoctrinated into that he was enforcing, because society had taught him that modifying your body or having long hair – especially as a man, was a bad thing.
Long hair made you “gay,” or some such made-up bullshit. Not that he ever used those words of course. Though he has similar beliefs on tattoos.
I loved my long hair, even if I did look like Hurley from “Lost” back in those days.
Being able to ponytail or top-knot my hair, or simply throwing on a trucker hat and sweeping it back was GREAT!
Thanks to the curse of hereditary male-pattern baldness, I definitely couldn’t rock long-hair these days. Which is partly why I’ve chosen to age gracefully into it and remain completely bald.
But it leads one to question the policing of bodies, doesn’t it?
As a teenager, I was referred to against my will as one of the “skids.”
We were the burnouts, the corner kids, the drug users and drop outs and suicide-kids. It was high-noon in the scene and emo kid phase, and I loved it. I experimented with painting my nails, changing my hair color constantly, wearing eyeliner and mascara wherever I could hide it, and generally living as true to punk-rock as I could. Being a theatre-kid allowed me to experiment more than I would have otherwise, and I’m grateful for it.
Especially as not all of us “skids” survived that era.
Ultimately, I idolized the punk and alt rockers that did what they wanted with their bodies – devoid of fear or anxiety at being prejudiced. Their entire aesthetic was pushing against the status quo however possible. But aesthetics seldom stop the attacks and judgements.
I’m sure that’s partly why that while our society has come a long way in regards to tattoos, piercings, and changing our hair color, I’ve always felt so fucking awkward whenever people would call me out, especially with homophobic slurs. And growing up in a small resource-industry town? You’d better BELIEVE there was rampant transphobia and homophobia.
As one of my dearest mentors was my out-butch drama teacher, it pissed me off to no end.
And yet, I was part of the problem, in a sense. I came from a dirt-poor, dysfunctional, disabled, redneck hick logging family. I had grown up using slurs and being a part of the problem, because normality was “safe.”
Anything outside that norm was strongly discouraged, as it othered you as different. Hell, my younger brother got bullied as a child by GROWN MEN via homophobia for having the same name as a barbie doll character growing up. How fucked up is that? Being bullied for something completely outside his control?
Comparing all that to now, where I realize the value of being different in a world full of boring sameness…?
Holy shit.
My best friend recently got me nail polish for the holidays, and I’ve revelled in going back to my emo-punk-scene-goth kid self, rocking the black nail polish unapologetically. I especially love it when it gets chipped, scratched and beat up after a few weeks. Reminds me of my inner self. I’ve had the shit kicked out of me, been beaten and bruised by life as long as I’ve lived it, and yet…
I’m still hanging in there, eh?
A good metaphor.
But even now… Having changed my name, living openly as a Demisexual, trying to comprehend Poly lifestyles to see if they’re my jam, after all that, I’m still afraid to try the purple, pink, or sparkle polish my friend gave me, no matter how much she encourages me.
All because I’m still mired in those old memories. I’m reminded of constantly being othered. Of being treated as less than human because I wanted to simply be left alone to be myself. To experiment with my body and my image.
And the reinforcement of society all around me doesn’t help.
We are told that to be viewed as handsome or beautiful, we must have six packs and enormous muscles, thigh gaps and hourglass figures, all while being perfect symmetry via plastic surgery, botox injections, false tans, and other such nonsense.
When you were literally born wrong, with one ear lopped off via disfigurement, and the rest of your body covered in scars, stripes, and various skin tags and the like… It’s difficult to find things to like about yourself.
Hell, my family is cursed via our nebulously mixed Caucasus blood to not even be able to grow a full beard without it being a patchy mess!
Ugh.
I’m working on my own self worth, as you can tell. It’s hard to remove yourself from the gaze of others and to isolate your feelings about a physical form you don’t have much choice in driving from the starting line.
I find myself attracted most these days to the alt-culture looks, almost in defiance of my own self-loathing. Femmes and Non-Binary folk with colored hair, tattoos, and petite bodies sans curves that defy the demands of bullshit like Maxim or Playboy on the individual.
But how can both you and I break apart from the machine that attempts to dictate to us what beauty or attractiveness is defined as?
Well, the simplest answer is to reserve our judgements about bodies. Sharing body-positivity and denying negative words that can hurt or warp people’s beliefs about themselves. Simple kindnesses that reinforce individuality and individual choice.
A focus on well-being and comfort in one’s body first and foremost.
Avoiding conversations on health or medicine unless asked, as that’s a confidential relationship between a person and their chosen doctor.
Hilarious that it boils down to kindness and self-awareness as usual, eh?
I think society expects us to fit the attraction norm, when love is often conflated with it in unhealthy ways. The idea of being beautiful as some pedestal to stand atop, elevating yourself above others. How the fuck should that dictate whether you are loved or not? How does that reflect your deep inner soul?
So I guess I can implore you to do this – the next time you find yourself struggling with your reflection, I’d ask you to pause. To then try and do away with the negative self-thoughts and find one thing you like about yourself, as so many have advised over the decades to try and fight this endless pit of never being good enough.
Chasing love and acceptance based on physicality will only doom you, after all.
Furthermore, the next time you catch yourself prejudicing someone for their body, how can you flip that negativity into something positive that uplifts them instead?
After all, I’m attracted most to people who make me laugh often and feel artistically fulfilled.
What the fuck do either of those things have to do with physical beauty?
I mean, if a fat, ex-hick redneck disabled dude can figure these simple kindnesses out, why can’t everybody, right?
Perhaps that’s all that appearance and sexual attraction boils down to at the end of the day. I mean, we’ll always have individual preferences, and we can’t fault people for their personal attraction after all. Yet, to this point, I still find myself baffled how anybody could find me attractive, despite having a half dozen exes that would attest to me being wrong. Even when I have been the most fit and my confidence has risen, I still saw myself as deeply unattractive due to my perceived defects.
But we have to keep trying to be better.
There’s a quote from a stupid video game that will haunt me until the day I die in regards to this: “What is better – to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”
We can be better in trying our best as individuals to keep breaking down our own inner biases to make the world more accepting and loving. We can be better by spreading simple kindnesses and coming from an angle of support and truly wanting to help uplift people. We can be better by making people laugh with stupid jokes and helping them grow into the selves they were destined to be.
I’ve certainly had my own share of struggles when it comes to attraction and sexuality, so nowadays I just hope I can help others through theirs in good faith, as well.
You’re beautiful, no matter what you may think about yourself.
Alright…
Now let’s get the fuck out of here.
-McRae
