I went on a diet to facilitate an operation a few months ago. I lost 45 pounds. This weight loss necessitated that I wrangle once again with my personal issues around gender.
Don’t worry about me. I’m not anorexic. But, boy! — or perhaps I should say, girlfriend! — the gender issues that had been percolating during my summer diet kinda reached the boiling point after watching Renee Zellweger in Judy. The film triggered me — in the way that art is is supposed to trigger people. (It’s always a good thing when art upsets you and challenges your fundamental world view!)
I was a fat, effeminate little boy. Judy Garland was a fat little girl. We both struggled with eating disorders. And for Judy and me, being skinny was all wrapped up with being beautiful and feminine. As a fat little boy I struggled with shame when people noticed my effeminate mannerisms, asking ‘You talk with your hands, why?” — and suggesting “You’re a big kid, shouldn’t you try out for the football team?” Of course I never wanted to play football (in reality I dreaded the thought). For me, as for a lot of gay men, my big masculine physical body was at odds with my inner feminininity.
I am not ‘trans.’ In fact one of the reasons I am writing this is to explain that gay men and lesbians have always had lots of issues around gender — and we had them way before the notion of ‘transgender’ ever existed.
After losing 45 pounds, I began to feel very at home in my body. Before losing the weight, I was a big guy who made people uncomfortable because of my fluttering hands. Now — on the far side of my diet — I have long slender arms and legs, and no belly to speak of. I feel graceful and delicate. I feel like me. Now, when I dress up in drag I look like a female porn star — though an ageing one — (the kind of girl I’ve always been inside, really!). Not all gay men are effeminate, but we all (due to stigma) deal with issues of gender. Lots of gay men have eating disorders for many of the same reasons women have them — because being skinny seems to fit with being girly in a sexist society. If you want to be a feminine sex object, you are ordered to be lithe, poised, and petite.
Hey -- it’s nice to be an effeminate gay man, comfortable in my new body.
But I promise I won’t be losing any more weight.
Cuz now I’ve got it all figured out!
