My Relationship with My Body and How It Needs to Change
Throughout my life, the statement in this article’s title has meant my body needs to change, but I’ve come to recognize what needs the most change is my relationship with it.
This article is not prescriptive of how anyone else should deal with their own bodies or identities. As usual, I’m only sharing my own experiences.
Height
I’m 5’8″ — about an inch below average as an American male my age. Not a big deal at all, right? But that’s not how I’ve perceived myself, nor how the world has treated me.
I’m shorter than the other males in my family, despite being the oldest in my generation. My younger brother (by 2.5 years) was taller than me before I graduated from the High School we both attended. My even-younger male cousin shot past me soon after.
My growth spurt was short-lived and gradual, so I was always one of the shortest kids in my grade.
Exclusion
Playing sports, I was regularly dropped to the bottom of the depth chart behind taller kids who were equally inept. Even in theater, I was sometimes passed over for leading roles because I wasn’t as tall as my co-stars.
Girls rejected me several times because I was too short. Even presently on dating apps if I don’t disclose my height clearly in my profile it’s often the first question my matches ask me, and sometimes they ghost me immediately after answering.
Sure, something can be said for me not being the right fit for these things for other reasons, but I was specifically told in many of those instances that my height was a factor. I didn’t imagine it.
Later in life this type of exclusion is harder to track down, but several studies have shown taller people have more opportunities than others.
Little Dog Syndrome
Fighting became common as early as elementary school. I was bullied for being small, a different race than most of my classmates, and (unknowingly) presenting queer. Eventually, I realized I’d developed an inferiority complex around my sophomore year of college. I felt threatened by larger men and would become especially standoffish around them if they gave me the slightest reason.
I rarely won these fights.
When my friends got mad at me for getting us banned from a local bar in Jersey City that previously served underaged students like us, I started to come to terms with my problems. Actually working on it didn’t begin yet, but awareness was a step.
Knives and guns were pulled on me when I brought this attitude from Jersey to Phoenix, where people casually walk around carrying all kinds of weapons. A bullet grazed my thigh outside a pool hall the last time my little-dog tendencies showed themselves — at least outside of a controlled martial arts context.
I have been a strict pacifist for nearly thirteen years.
What to do?
Ever googled the cost and process for surgically increasing height?
I’m a huge fan of the movie Gattaca, where the main character must assume the identity of another man in order to be eligible for a career as an astronaut. In this sci-fi film, he goes through a more futuristic version of the surgery required to increase one’s height.
In real life, one would have to:
- Spend $100,000 – $250,000
- Break both legs in multiple places
- Have metal rods and screws inserted
- Have them extended each day for weeks or months
- Spend a year or longer healing
- Re-learn how to walk
And this is assuming they have none of the common complications associated with this procedure, which could lead to permanently losing the ability to walk or even death.
Nope.
I’d love to say I’m fine now, but it’s more like I’m numb. I have fewer options for dating shallow people and have to work harder to be perceived as managerial than others do. Overcompensation and strategic social/political maneuvering have become the norm in those aspects of my life.
Weight / Shape
Partially in response to my feelings of inferiority from my height, I took an early interest in lifting weights and building muscle mass. I played football, watched/re-enacted professional wrestling, and aimed at bulking up.
This went fine for a while. I was exercising and healthy until my metabolism shifted in my early twenties and spiraled into all the things that sent me on my long weight loss journey I’ve already written plenty about.
Not to minimize how much of an effect my weight has on my self-image; I simply can’t be bothered to repeat myself.
My Shape Today
Since my last weight loss post, I gained about 30 pounds and then lost 10 of them after starting regular workouts with a personal trainer at the end of last year. I’ve stabilized at an athletic 198 lbs.
Long story short, I am finally — as a 37-year-old in 2021 — at a place where I’m happy with my weight. This took a lot of work in both the mental and physical realms, but I’ve finally arrived. My habits today are sustainable and I even *gasp* find joy in them.
Your first month of DeltaTrainer is free when you sign up with my link.
Me shilling for a thing that works for me
Ask for Cody Leach if you want my trainer.
The average person still treats me better than they did when I was fatter, which continues to frustrate me daily, but it’s better to be on this end of the experience than the other. As someone working in the fashion marketing industry, I take the fight for size-inclusivity to my meetings with decision-makers daily.
Hair
I hate the messy curls in my hair, especially my body hair. Shaving it all off was nearly constant from puberty into adulthood. I’ve used dozens of products and tools to straighten or control my hair. Each year as my body developed, I needed more maintenance to keep myself from being hideous.
Metrosexual was the phrase of the time. The phrase started to normalize my behavior, but there was a condescension included in the word whenever it was spoken. Thinking myself a 90’s/00’s modern man with style didn’t seem to flow outward to others.
Eventually it was re-branded as manscaping and has become fairly normal. I’d like the world to know: people like me pioneered much of it out of self-hatred and insecurity.
Against the Grain
My late twenties became unmanageable. I had too much hair in too many places, and it grew back too fast to keep up with. Wavering between letting myself go and full evening sessions of vigorous shaving, I had to start compromising with my body.
Slowly, I began to appreciate my body hair in a few places. My arm hair was okay because it bleached in the sun fairly easily and looked nice. Once my chest and tummy hair filled out, I started to like it.
Some zones are still marked for destruction on sight. Armpit hair must be eradicated before going sleeveless or topless. My shoulders and back drive me crazy, and require special tools to remove the hair there. I hate how unevenly it grows back, because it creates gross-feeling days between shaving sessions. I’ve taken strides toward not feeling so awful about it when I’m not clean shaven, to the point where I can sometimes wear a tank top without being pristine, but I still keep it up for swimsuit season.
My legs are a demilitarized zone. Sometimes I just trim the hair to keep it tidy, and sometimes I go scorched earth so my tattoos look prettier. Now that I’m working up the courage to wear a sun dress in public for the first time, I’m revisiting the conversation in my head about it.
My Exquisite Mane
I’ve changed my hair for the wrong reasons so many times. To please partners, placate bosses, blend in, or stand out. Doing it for others who demanded it — literally or in my imagination — rather than expressing my true self.
Another reason I’ve bleached and dyed my hair for over twenty years has been because it calms the curls. In recent years, I’ve finally found some products that get my curls to behave better, and I’ve grown to love the hair on my scalp.
The hair on my head is a huge part of my aesthetic identity. I love my beard and brightly colored mohawk that is gradually growing out into something I imagine vividly but have yet to name. This is for me, and only me.
Validation
Gay men have been the unexpected cavalry in my battle with my body. In my college years, I frequented gay bars because they were more fun than the standard meat market bars and clubs most of my classmates attended. In addition to having better music and cooler people, they were also the first place I ever received compliments about my body.
Most women don’t compliment men on their looks, with good reason. Sometimes the second a woman compliments a heterosexual guy, he thinks she wants to fuck him and won’t leave her alone. The avoidance is entirely understandable. Unintended consequences include millions of decent men never feeling validated in their attractiveness.
The only men I saw recognized for physical beauty were models, dancers, and athletes who dedicated their entire lives to their bodies. Until being invited into the world of bears.
Beautiful Bears
Gay men have an entire animal kingdom, and bears were the first to welcome me as a straight cub.
In these private events and social media groups, men who look like me at each stage of my life are appreciated and lauded for their physical beauty. Beards, hairy bodies, greying hair, and big bellies garner not just aesthetic appreciation but lust. They showed me how to feel sexy at my size and shape, and I owe them a ridiculous amount for my improved self-esteem today.
And these groups aren’t all about thirst either. I’m not participating in some sort of Grindr or Boys Gone Wild alternative; my hobby groups overlap with bearhood. Talking about things like games, food, and travel is coupled with kindness, validation, and authenticity. Bears have been the kindest and most rewarding community of [former] strangers I’ve joined.
There Are Terms for These Things
I’ve had conversations with friends about body dysmorphia throughout my life. Many of those friends have undergone transitions since, but not all. I often think about asking for updates but chicken out, not wanting to overstep on a sensitive topic.
I’ve discussed it in therapy since my late twenties, and concluded that physical transition isn’t for me. Perhaps if I grew up today or in the future, in a time when we could all see transgender people thriving as their true full selves, things may have been different to me. But much like dealing with my height, it seems out of reach.
Which leads me to regularly wonder:
Am I only cisgender for economic reasons?
I’ve spent decades feeling alone. Surrounding myself with queer people and friends who accept sort-of-femme men like me has been life-affirming. Living on the outer edge of queerness and feeling like I couldn’t include myself has been less-so.
So what, exactly, am I?
I have complicated views on gender that don’t necessarily apply to anyone else.
Masculinity and femininity do not dictate behavior, personality, roles, desires, or anything else beneath the surface. They are just labels that describe aesthetics.
My personal perspective
And I care deeply about aesthetics — possibly to an unhealthy extent, in case it wasn’t obvious by now.
When considering who I’d be today if I were born female — something I’ve thought about nearly daily at least since puberty — I believe I’d have the same struggle and consider transitioning then too.
During the early internet days, I’d take online masculinity/femininity quizzes. The tests would usually grade on a linear, zero-sum percentage scale (anything not-male was female, and vice-versa), and returned no satisfying results. The bounding box these questions were constantly surrounded by in my world didn’t contain me.
Enter The Matrix
Long before fully understanding why, The Matrix was a formative movie for me. Years after becoming obsessed with it, I learned about it being an allegory for gender transition and it made perfect sense in hindsight.
The Matrix has a concept they call residual self-image: the mind’s projection of their physical self. My residual self-image is neither fully masculine nor feminine, so I’ve come to label myself non-binary.
My future self is an image held deep in my mind. After growing my hair out, getting a few more tattoos, and figuring out my hair-removal practices are among the to-do list, but I’m excited to work my way there.
Pronouns
Pronouns are shortcut words that take all of the individuality and complexity out of a human being. This is just as true for cis people as it is for everyone else. Simultaneously, single syllable bookmarks meant to quickly reference an entire person are useful.
They aren’t important when applied to me, but I prefer they/them slightly more than he/him. Both are acceptable. I won’t correct anyone, and don’t need anyone else to do that for me. Please use the energy for others who do care more than me, though.
Tips
Friends have recently asked how I got used to using singular they/their as my default for everyone, and this blog is the answer. Long before doing it to respect and not assume gender for others, weariness of typing out “his or her” all the time in my writing compelled a change. It was repeated in nearly every paragraph and it was cumbersome. Practice using singular they/their for the sake of word economy made pulling it into my verbal usage less difficult.
Don’t beat yourself up about it if you take a while to get used to it. The effort is appreciated.
How I Move Through The World
I’ve been a confused mess of gender, orientation, and aesthetics for a long time, and I’m tired. I’m not confused anymore. There are words for who I am. My communities get me. I’ve found spaces where I can be myself safely.
Safety
When going home to New Jersey to visit family, I feel fully accepted and loved. Outside of our family gatherings however, I get stared at. Even wearing more muted clothing, my wild hair style is enough to get mean-spirited gawking out in suburbia.
Kids are great though. They stare in wonder and tug at their parents’ coats asking hushed questions. I remember being that kid. Being an adult who shows them what’s possible if they break out of the bounding box is incredibly rewarding.
I hid in Arizona, Nevada, and Maryland. One can be fired for anything at all in those places. While dating my ex-wife, who I met in Arizona, she and her roommate would laugh as they regularly told the story about how before they met me they thought I was gay because of my fashion sense. And my clothing felt conservative at the time. Deeper into the masculine closet we go!
Why yes, my fellow macho manly man. I will take the black Affliction tee shirt with skulls on it. Here’s $75.
22-year-old me
I belong in the Bay Area — even on full-blast. People either don’t notice me or compliment me. Friends I’ve made here in all kinds of different places completely unrelated to gender or sex (even gaming communities that have history being misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic, [etc.] on a wider scale) have been welcoming and accepting in ways that I couldn’t imagine in other places I’ve lived. That’s a big part of why I planted roots here.
Who I Love
Answers here are complicated too. If eyes are rolling right now, believe me, I’m tired of complexity in this shit, too.
One thing I know for certain is I’m demisexual.
Demisexual adj. or n.
LGBTQIA Wiki
a sexual orientation on the asexual spectrum defined as someone who does not experience sexual attraction until they have formed a deep emotional connection with someone. The connection can be romantic, platonic, or some other form of connection. What counts as a “close connection” can vary between demisexuals. Forming an emotional bond with someone does not mean that one is automatically attracted to said person, as it just means there’s now a possibility for one to feel attraction.
I’m attracted to people of all shapes and sizes, except for people with more masculine aesthetics. I’ve dated women, androgynous/non-binary people, and trans women. I’ve haven’t had 1-on-1 sex with someone with a penis, but I’m not opposed to it. Maybe someday I’ll meet the right person.
Part of me wonders if I’m only repelled by strong masculinity because of my own dysmorphia. After working more on loving my masculine features, perhaps this will change. We’ll see.
Because of this, I don’t consider myself bi or pansexual. The people I’m attracted to are usually either non-binary or feminine in how they present. Dating someone who lives and presents as a man might reveal bisexuality. Again, we’ll see.
Belonging
Will I be accepted? LGBTQIA folks might think I’m just a cis-hetero white man trying to appear more interesting. I could worry about bigots treating me like I’m sub-human, but they already do. Garbage people have called me a faggot with venomous intent since 2nd grade, so there’s nowhere lower to go among that demographic anyway.
Happy Pride
I didn’t intend for this post to end up this way. This started about my body, and just kept flowing into other parts of my life. Identity affects absolutely everything else.
I had no idea ending a long-term relationship, buying my first home, living alone for the first time, and taking a heroic dose of magic mushrooms would lead to all of these realizations about my identity. But here we are, all conveniently in time for June.
I’ve resisted applying these labels to myself for many years, but this is me coming out. I’m sure many of you are unsurprised, but for the rest I hope you’ll continue to treat me with kindness.