Gutted

[randy_byers]

Damn those paparazzi!

This photo, taken by my younger nephew in the Dominican Republic, is probably already TMI for some of you, but beware that below the cut is a meditation on body image that may tell you far more indeed than you want to know about me. Consider yourself warned!



One of the odder things about the family trips to tropical resorts the past three years is that I've been forced to wrestle with my body image. When we went to Costa Rica three years ago, I had a truly terrifying moment in the bathroom one day when I tried to put on my swimming trunks and found that they no longer fit. In the bathroom mirror my body looked bloated and corpse white. I was horrified at the disgusting spectacle. In a panic, almost in tears as I quickly got dressed again, I thought I'd have to hide my decaying flesh from the world for the rest of my life. Maybe I'd even hide in the room for the rest of the trip, just to be safe.

Needless to say this was a bit of an overreaction. I did keep my torso covered for the rest of the trip, but I borrowed a pair of large swimming trunks from my nephew and went snorkeling with the gang. Wearing a t-shirt when snorkeling was good sun protection anyway, and sunbathing has never been anything I had patience for, so I wasn't tempted to lounge around the pool. It was no hardship to stay in the shade with my shirt on, drinking weak beer and reading a book.

Over the past two years, I've gradually worked my way past this fear of exposing my body, although the anxiety hasn't gone away. The anxiety itself fascinates me in a way. On this past trip to Dominican Republic, I was pretty comfortable letting it all hang out down on the beach, but for some reason the pool area was different. At some point my youngest nephew talked me into heading up in that direction to look for food. Since it was going to be a quick trip, I didn't put on a shirt. As we reached the first pool with people sunbathing around it, I caught my reflection in a window, and I was utterly horrified to see my sagging, shapeless flesh. Wait, what? How had I lost sight of how awful my body looked? I was completely disoriented and confused. I mean, I'm Mr. Oblivious, I acknowledge that, but how could have I fooled myself into thinking that it was okay for me to walk around a resort shirtless?

And of course this whole mental spasm was completely irrational and untethered from reality. My body wasn't some horrible atrocity to look at. It was simply an anxiety attack. The thing I find fascinating about this internal dialogue is that it is basically impossible for me to arrive at an objective view of my own body. It's me. My view of myself is always subjective. My own body changes before my very eyes depending on how I'm feeling. I seem to have no control over how I look to myself.

Now there are some objective facts that I can use to try to gain perspective. I weigh around 175 pounds, which I think is fairly normal for someone 5'10". However, 145 pounds was my base weight from the time I stopped growing in high school until I turned 40, stopped smoking, and put on around 30 pounds over the course of a couple of years. My weight has been stable again since then. But of course, the new weight wasn't distributed evenly. Most of it was added to my gut, although I do think my face is also noticeably rounder than it was when I was younger. The other change that started happening to my body after I turned 40 was that I started losing muscle mass, as you do, and there's some signs of withering as skin doesn't shrink to compensate for that loss.

Early on in this process of growing a gut, I tried to compensate by doing sit ups. As far as I could tell, all this did was create some muscle under the fat. I decided to hell with it. Probably the only thing I could do to alter the process at all would be to quit drinking beer, and at this point I would rather feel fat and ugly than quit drinking beer. Which isn't to say I didn't do anything to placate my vanity. I thought that if I built up my upper body, that might balance the gut somewhat, so I started doing push ups. Did this accomplish anything? Well, in certain mirrors, under certain lights, it makes me look like this freakish guy with muscular shoulders from one body and a sagging gut from another. Mostly it doesn't seem to me to have any noticeable effect at all.

To get back to "resort anxiety," however, there's more to it than just the exposure of my own body. There's all the other exposed bodies too. It's heartening, in a way, to see all the male bodies in every shape and size. Yes, the sexy young bodies make me feel bad about my own, but that's part of what confuses me too. There's a part of me that thinks, "Man, if only I had a body like that, these beautiful young women would want to have sex with me!" But the truth is, when I did have a sexy young body, I was still me, and I've always been sexually reticent. Which is to say, I feel nostalgia for something that was never real. Or perhaps it's just that even in my middle age I continue to struggle with my sexuality. I've never truly accepted myself for who I am.

The other thing about this, however, is the acceptance of aging. Why is it so hard for me to accept that my body has changed as I've aged? Why is it so hard to accept that I'm not as physically attractive as I used to be? Is it simply the persistence of the sex drive, still hoping for that miraculous, delirious score, still lusting for nirvana? Aside from that, though, I can't help but feel that I'm still suffering from Peter Pan syndrome. A couple of years ago, I grew my beard out to see how grey I was. When Sharee came up to Canada last year, I shaved the beard off "by mistake." She told me I looked younger without it. But is that a good thing? Doesn't it just encourage me to regret my age? In the first week of this flu, I was too sick to shave, and I got a running start on growing out the hair on my head for the first time in over a decade. Baldy! How long do I continue to deny it by shaving my head? And to what purpose?

To look good, I guess. I don't have any answers here, just a series of questions and observations. I almost didn't write this, for fear that it was too narcissistic, but then I was inspired by kdotdammit's Art By the Balls: Heterosexual Male Representation and Me. Straight men don't write about their bodies much (because bodies are something women have, I guess), and I'm not sure I've succeeded in keeping it real, making it interesting. The struggle continues. Mostly in resorts, it must be said. Could it be that resorts are actually good for keeping it real?

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Wow this was wonderful, thank you. I chuckled a couple times, felt moved at others -- all with sympathetic acknowledgment of the connection to my own experience. Yeah!

And now I'm going to go back and read kdotdammit's post. ;>

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Thanks, dude! Forgot to write about my dad and my brother's bodies too.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Yes. What holyoutlaw said.

To my eyes, you kept it totally real and interesting. Real response from me later, I hope.

Just recently, I saw a woman who was clearly totally comfortable her own skin. It showed in her every movement, her every gesture, her every word. The other reality of aging is that I can't now recall who it was, or if I even saw her in person or on screen...only that it was some kind of presentation. That suggests I saw her in something like a TED talk. What sticks in my memory is how unusual and wonderful it was to see.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I suppose there's an element of "dance like nobody's watching" to it. If I stopped paying attention to my reflection, maybe I'd stop worrying about how I look! There's the true narcissism of it all.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

But actually that kind of feeling you describe can be seen as narcissism too. It depends if you want to be the only person in your world whose opinion matters. When I tell younger female friends that when you get over 45 ish and size 16 + you become invisible to most men, they tell me that I run myself down. When in fact the truth us that I still think I look pretty good with the right clothes and make up - and then I see apicture of myself in a work context, and I suddenly see how others see me - middle aged, over weight, slightly mutton dressed as lamb. I then get exactly the same kind of dissonanaces you get - wasn't I hot stuff just minutes ago? - except when that happens I suddenly realise it's no wonder the cool young geek dudes at IT law conferences these days don't look at me *that* way, even tho they find my conversation entertaining. (I have just ben to 4 work do's on the trot where I've experienced this so it's been on my mind.) I need more body issues not less I personally think - then maybe I'd actually go back to the gym...

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I'm just more fatalistic than you. I'm never going to be hot in that way again, gym or no gym. Worrying about it is just useless self-torment as far as I can tell. It would be better to accept my losses at this point. Pity my libido doesn't agree.

I certainly seemed to be invisible to the hot young women at the resort (and it's a good point -- that's part of what was bugging me too), but then again I was chased after by a divorced woman my own age. Somebody else who finds paunches cuddily, I guess.

Mutton dressed as lamb is such a great phrase. I was feeling that way myself at times. But how the hell *do* I dress my age? I don't even know what that might mean. No more jeans and t-shirts?

[farmgirl1146.livejournal.com]

Good luck to you on body image. Five pounds a year adds up very quickly. I am always amazed that the lack of body image of many heterosexual men, and well, homosexual men, too; so it's men in general.

I have known many men who kept themselves in great shape, but the image that they had of their bodies seemed no different that for other, out-of-shape, men. I still marvel at the sight of a man about your height and with twice or more of the body mass wearing nothing but a speedo and a smile. What was he thinking?

I liked the part about "stopped smoking," and I don't think that actually affected your weight gain. I would suspect that, like mine, it has to do with a lack of exercise and too many calories.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

It's actually very common to gain weight when you quit smoking. I walk to work everyday, and have done so for twenty years. Which is to say that the amount of exercise I get hasn't changed. But I do think the main thing is that I have been a fairly heavy beer drinker for many years. Those things are calorie bombs, for sure.

There were a number of overweight guys in speedos at the resort. I was envious of their lack of anxiety.

[e-compass-rosa.livejournal.com]

Well, if it is worth anything to you, I've decided that I like a good gut on a man. : ) Good for cuddling.

Seriously though, it is interesting to read a man's meditation on his own body. Thank you for sharing it.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, another thing I "know" is that a lot of people don't find guts particularly repulsive. It does seem as though a big part of my problem is that my image of myself is stuck in the past. When I look at myself now, it doesn't look like me, if that makes sense. I don't recognize myself. My self-image hasn't kept up with reality.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I feel a lot the same way as you. But yeh, it's really interesting to read a straight man talking about this. Thanks.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Cheers. Are you at Eastercon, or are you boycotting Bradford?

[kdotdammit.livejournal.com]

This is SUCH A GREAT POST. I have so much to say, but will have to do a bullet thing:

1. Your writing style is great. I had many LOL moments. You are self-reflexive yet humorous.

2. It is so cool to see a man (heterosexual!!) write about his body this way in such honest exposure. I love how you describe yourself looking at your reflection, etc.

3. I am fascinated by the difference of being at the beach and at the pool. It makes total sense to me since a pool is such a "formal fixed" environment where people are "showcased." It's also very artificial and even cinematic so you feel forced to perform yourself in the "venue" much more than in the "natural" state of the beach.

4. I like how you talk about how our impression of ourselves is so fixed regardless of physical reality. That's so true.

5. I inspired you, but now you inspired me to write about my aging body. Maybe I'll write it in the context of getting the freaking cancer on my nose burned off again tomorrow. (talk about aging!)

This was SO GREAT. Thanks for reminding me to read it. Maybe tomorrow I can return comments on my hetero art balls post. :-)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Kim. Your comments on pool vs. beach are very interesting and probably get at the psychological difference. At they resort they really are both a very artificial set-up, but the beach still feels more natural to me, perhaps because the water itself isn't surrounded by artfully exposed flesh. There's more to it than that, but I think you've got the essence.

One thing I would expand on if I rewrote this piece is that when I was younger I had a skinny, boy's body. It wasn't a manly body (like my brother had), it was boy's body. Part of what I wrestle with is that I went directly from being a boy to being a paunchy middle-aged man. I had a picture from 1985 that I was going to use to illustrate the difference, but I chickened out. Hm. Teh gays used to call skinny boys "chicken" -- as in chickenhawks.

Anyway, yeah, and I'd write about my dad's body and my brother's body too.

Thanks for your comments! I look forward to your aging-body post.

Oops, that reminds me that a day or two after I wrote my piece, I stumbled across an article about the poet Frederick Seidel, which contained this snippet of one of his poems:

A slight thinness of the ankles;
The changed shape of the calf;
A place the thigh curves in
Where it didn’t used to; and when he turns
A mirror catches him by surprise
With an old man’s buttocks.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

I hear ya. I can get pretty self-conscious. And I'm actually not so bad at the moment, but still pretty self-conscious about my pasty white self.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Hey wait, I thought all Aussies were tan-colored! Must just be Queenslanders. Hm, well, anyway, Sharee once took some semi-candid shots of me in Oz that were pretty embarrassing for their pasty whiteness. On the other hand I've been to nude beaches at lakes in Berlin where people seemed to have no worries at all about how they looked. Nudism or naturalism seems to encourage that attitude. Even I lost most (but not all) of my self-consciousness in that kind of environment.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't get self-conscious in the slightest at nude beaches. I'm more likely to get self-conscious wearing a tight shirt than wearing nothing at all.

A lot of Aussies are very tan, but a lot of us area bit sun-phobic (pretty much everyone in Australia knows someone who has had a brush with serious skin cancer - that ozone hole thing).

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Yes, I met a friend of Sharee's in the Sunshine Coast of Queensland who is in his 70s or maybe even 80s and who has had a long-running battle with skin cancer. His skin looked blotched from it. He was a British immigrant who came over after WWII. Very pale complexion.