Whiteness has occupied the sexual imaginations of queer men of color for as long as many of us can remember. The same is true for nearly anyone who has experienced puberty in America, especially those who did so before social media or the internet. In the absence of smartphones with Google or Tumblr, we had ripped torsos on Abercrombie shopping bags, ads for aftershave and at-home gyms, Baywatch, and whatever porn we may have squirreled away from magazines or early downloads. For many of us, men with broad shoulders, narrow hips, taut muscles, and white skin — sun-kissed or pale under hot lights — became an ideal we couldn’t escape. We coveted images of these bodies like treasure, and they educated us in the rules of attraction.
When I looked in the mirror in adolescence, I saw none of these things. I saw a body plump with the stress and excess of a first-generation childhood in the U.S., with Lays potato chips and Baskin Robbins ice cream an attempt to smooth over the unease of not belonging. Even after I grew body conscious, and over a decade-plus of working out and dieting since, I still see some version of that gloomy kid in the mirror every day. I have long since embraced my Indian heritage and brown skin as a deep source of pride rather than shame, but residual whiteness still colors the lens through which I scrutinize my figure. Some part of me will always want to look like — and come between — Marky Mark and his Calvins.
On Instagram and Grindr, in bars, clubs, and vacation spots, fit, white men embody and propagate the body ideals that have long dominated gay culture. Pressures to achieve these standards are a significant source of mental distress among gay and bisexual men, who suffer disproportionately high rates of disordered eating, steroid abuse, and other adverse consequences of body modification. Though these inherited body standards may not hold universal sway, few of us regardless of race are completely immune to them. And their effects have proven especially acute among queer men of color, who often experience body pressures in tandem with sexual racism. Maybe the absence of non-white abs in a kickline of Instagays doesn’t make everyone pictured actively racist. But such is the environment gay men of color navigate online and in the real world, in our own myriad ways. The result is very often an acute intersection of body anxiety with the stress of racial difference. Not only will my torso never look like Marky Mark’s, it will never be white, either.
“The idea is that the absolute ideal can never be met,” says Mike Parent, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in men’s health and minority stress theory. “If people don't fit the ideal they’ve internalized because of a natural body characteristic like skin tone, then they would certainly feel [heightened] anxiety.” Of course, it’s not that racial minorities don’t recognize that we are not and will never be white (nor that we want to be), but that we may find ourselves rehearsing this recognition again and again against body ideals — often internalized before we had any say — that prize not just fitness, but whiteness as well.
“Growing up in the suburbs, it was sixpack, white varsity jock — that was the gay propaganda,” says Sam Coffie, 35, a Black clothing designer living in Brooklyn. A self-described bear whose weight and feelings about it fluctuated for years before he reached a point of self-love and acceptance, Coffie admits that overcoming inherited standards can be a continual process. “Though I am an outgoing person, there are still moments where I’m kicking myself and wondering, Why am I still feeling this way?” he says of experiencing bouts of body image stress he feels he’s mostly overcome.
For some, the process of dismantling what Coffie calls “the Adonis complex” may begin by leaving small towns for places where we encounter more racial and body diversity — connecting with peers of color perhaps for the first time. One man I spoke to, who like me also grew up as one of few Asian Americans in a predominantly white suburb, says he never really thought about racial difference and body image in tandem, while admitting he always considered whiteness the standard ideal. It was only upon moving to a major metropolitan city and cultivating an Asian American friend group that he felt some comfort in comparing his body to theirs (rather than to white men who tend to have bigger frames), and found himself attracted to another man of his race. That he declined to be identified for this story speaks to how raw and personal such revelations are — and how a certain proximity to whiteness can be blinding to its effects.
But assimilation is a powerful instinct that can be tough to deny, no matter the racial makeup of your peer group or degree of reverse conditioning you might be able to achieve. In order to blend into a sea of white torsos, on Scruff or around the pool, a chiseled frame may feel like a universal prerequisite, but it represents a particular kind of currency for many men of color. “Having a fit body is like that invisibility cloak to provide entrée,” says Lewis Feemster, 32, a Black American art maker based in Harlem. “It doesn't really matter what race you are; fitting into the fit body party is about not disrupting the picture.” Feemster imagines the concept of inclusion as a kind of center point around which anyone considered “other” begins on the periphery. External characteristics, like a muscular body or Anglo features, can bring minorities one step closer to the middle, where the idea is that you become attractive to the most number of people.
Of course, fitting into majority white spaces goes well beyond physical appearance; code-switching or actively breaking down preconceptions based on race can often be part of the equation, too. Those stereotypes may include what others expect Black or brown masculine bodies to look like (including below the belt) or conform to, a scrutiny the men I spoke to felt more often from white men than their racial peers. “I know that when people are looking for a stereotypically attractive, muscular Black body, it may not be my body,” says Feemster, who grew up running cross-country and is relatively light-skinned. “I don't necessarily look in the mirror and compare myself to that.”
But opportunities for body comparison have also grown exponentially over the past decade — we carry them in our pockets, scroll through them endlessly, and sleep with them bedside every night. The ripped bodies we see are no longer just posing on billboards or magazine covers, but showing off their supposed everyday lives on a media platform we all share. On Instagram, a souped-up body can net not just social but real currency, for influencers who have narrowed the gap between what we perceive as absurdly aspirational versus just within reach. Social media may have democratized who holds the camera, but the dominant aesthetic still reigns — it’s just that now it seems anyone can achieve it. Maintaining a sense of what’s possible for our own bodies amid a proliferation of idealized imagery from our purported digital peers has become a trickier prospect.
“Sometimes the images that come across are just unobtainable — and I recognize it,” says Garrett Narvaez, 39, a human resources professional of Jamaican and Portugeuse descent. “But it still puts a lot of pressure on me because I feel like, even though I'm not going to achieve that, I still have to work hard to make sure that [my body is] acceptable.” Narvaez adds that he’s started to unfollow accounts he realizes fuel unhealthy pressures.
“We actually have more control now than before media was user determined,” says Parent, the Austin psychologist, pointing to the flip side of apps we curate for ourselves and whose algorithms respond to our likes and follows. “People also need to take ownership of their own actions and their contributions to the environments that they create for themselves.” That said, apps like Grindr and Scruff, where overt and subtle racism runs rampant, are far more inundative with harmful messaging over which users have little to no control. Parent suggests that for men of color engaging in these digital environments, “building up a support system, both interpersonally and within, is important to face that constant bombardment of negativity that white mesomorphic men may not be facing.”
Parent doesn’t believe idealized body imagery is intrinsically bad but that it can inspire people to pursue healthy fitness goals while making others feel bad about themselves. (I often think many of us feel a bit of both.) “On one hand, I'm really working out because I want to stay fit and healthy,” Narvaez says. “But the other side of it is, I know that I'm under a microscope and constantly being judged.” Feeling secure in our bodies, whether in relation to some external paradigm or a more internal measure, boosts our self-esteem and can make us feel more viable in forming social and romantic bonds. Whatever fitness goals drive people to the gym, I think most of us would agree that security in our appearance is at least part of what we’re seeking.
The line between a reasonable, or even ambitious, body regimen and a fixation that’s bad for mental health comes down to a question of balance. “The pathological side would be saying, ‘I only want to date someone who is super fit, and I must be physically super fit to be able to attract anyone worthwhile,’” Parent says, cautioning against trying to change one’s body solely to gain others’ approval, or in service of chasing an ideal that can never be caught. This is especially true for anyone whose natural characteristics make these pursuits especially sisyphean, be it because of skin color, genetics, or physical disability. “At some point, it was healthy for me to think about body type and what was actually possible,” Feemster says. “Developing realistic views of one's body can change your outlook on how you compare it,” whether to some version of your own past body or to anyone else’s.
Trying to drown out or resist social messaging can be exhausting in and of itself, such that reorienting how we relate to dominant ideals becomes essential to navigating them. That doesn’t mean denying valid feelings of alienation or swallowing our anger. “We sometimes think of resilience as being able to bounce back from things,” Parent says, “but I think it's putting a lot on people who are minorities to tell them to reduce their level of upset at injustice or unfairness.” Minorities of all walks have plenty of practice sitting with and processing those feelings; it’s what we do next that can clear a path to higher ground.
“I had to change my mindframe because if I’m focusing on combating, then I’m not listening to me anymore,” says Coffie. “I started to focus on what makes me happy versus things that make me feel like I perceive to fit in. You don’t have to have a six-pack to be a bad bitch.”
For Coffie, part of that process involved creating Bear Gazer, Tumblr and Instagram pages devoted to men of color in the bear community, embracing their bodies and showing joy in who they are. “When you start seeing that representation, you start to build a better focus — not why I think I’m beautiful, but why I know I’m beautiful,” he says. “You have to stop asking the same questions and start affirming your answers.”
*Get the best of what's queer. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here.