Picture the ideal man.
If I had to guess, you envisioned an ab-tastic, ripped Adonis. A Zac-Efron-type, with bulging muscles and an athletic build.
Now picture his antithesis.
That was me growing up.
I was an awkward-looking pre-teen, as most middle schoolers are. Middle school is such a terrible time. You get hair in places you never knew hair grew and your biggest enemy was the pulsing zit in the middle of your forehead – Yikes. Short, chubby, acne, glasses and braces plagued my pubescent years. I think this time in my life led to my struggle with poor body image.
I always was nervous for when my parents might say “let’s take a picture,” because I was scared how I would look.
Being the fat kid meant staring in the mirror for hours scrutinizing every inch of my body. It meant stretching the blubbery rolls from my stomach and pretending my fingers were scissors, as I ‘trimmed off the fat.’ It meant hating everything I would try on in a store. It meant trying on 2639263 different articles of clothing and feeling disgusting in everything I put on. It meant I would go through month periods of time only wearing one color because “green” happened to be the color that I felt comfortable wearing.
It also meant dreading when someone would say “let’s go to the beach,” because that meant I would have to show my body in public. I was always that one boy who wore a shirt in the pool. My chest and my stomach were the parts of my body I wanted to hide the most. My protruding belly and mildly developed breasts meant stocking up on rashguards and pool shirts. I always envied other boys my age who were bone thin and flat-chested as most 12-year-old boys are.
It took me up until I was a sophomore in high school to go out in public without a shirt.
I would fear gym class because that meant having to change in front of other guys. I was always afraid that someone would look over and notice all the things that I hated about my body. I would cower in the bathroom stalls and change where no one could see me. When the swimming unit came around? HA! My worst nightmare. I can’t begin to tell you the lame excuses I had for being absent on those days. Gym class just meant 42 minutes of shame (and kickball).
These insecurities evolved into a greater problem for me as I transitioned from elementary to middle school. I didn’t just have to be in a bathing suit to stress about my body anymore, it was all the time. This lead to me trying to bind my chest. I would constrict my chest with duct tape or whatever I could wrap around my chest to try and flatten it.
If you were to ask me what the one thing I dislike most about myself is, I would say my chest. F*ck you, moobs.
As high school approached, so did an era of diets. I probably have tried every diet fad there is. Cutting out carbs, cutting out sugar, drinking nothing but water and the many different phases of being a vegetarian. Most resulted in me realizing that I like chicken nuggets too much.
Eating is always a constant battle for me. Sometimes it feels like I have an angel and a devil on my shoulders like you see in cartoons. “Avoid junk food, eat a salad,” says the angel. “C’mon, one French fry isn’t gonna hurt. You deserve it,” says the devil. An inner dialogue I have with myself, which ultimately ends in me being upset no matter what I chose. I’m the type of person who if I eat a cheeseburger, I will spend the rest of the day scolding myself.
It doesn’t matter how many miles I spend jogging on the treadmill, or crunches I push through, I’ll never be happy with how I look.
It’s kind of debilitating too. Like the nights I opted not to go to out with friends because whatever dumb diet I was on didn’t allow me to eat past a certain time. Or feeling like a nuisance when I have dinner at a friend’s house and I don’t eat, because I’m watching my weight. Or days that I just wasn’t up to going out in public, because I feel like I'm crawling in my own skin.
This also affected my ability to be physically intimate with another person. I would find it hard to allow myself to be vulnerable with someone because I was terrified of what they would think of my body. Being insecure about my body halted me from certain experiences I wish I had. Only within the last couple of years have I become more willing to open up and be comfortable with another person physically.
The point is that men struggle with body image, too. Whether we want to admit it or not, I’m sure that most guys have looked at themselves in the mirror and felt inadequate at some point. It has been a long journey towards accepting myself for how I look. Don't get me wrong, I weigh 145 pounds and I'm 5'9; I'm a "healthy" "normal" guy. Some days are really tough, though. Sometimes, I feel reduced to that chubby 12-year-old me, who sat in front of the mirror and begged to look like the other boys. Ultimately, body image is something I'll always struggle with, chubby or not. Don't let self-deprecation get the best of you like it did me.
