I was a dumpy high schooler with crooked teeth, oily skin, flabby arms, and a huge belly that hung over the waist of my pants, allowing my belt buckle to dig into my skin painfully. How could I be gay? Gay guys had great blonde hair, blue eyes, smooth creamy skin, and six pack abs that they showed off every chance they could. I was terrified that my parents would find out my secret… that anyone would find out my secret. I was born and raised Roman Catholic so identifying as gay was taboo. I was going to have to stand in my underwear in front of them? Hell no! I was not like them. Not just because my weight made me the least athletic kid in my class, but also because of having to undress in front of all these other boys. At school I found a group of friends but never socialized because how could they even begin to understand my shame? Gym became a place of terror. I would sneak snacks and hide them in my room earlier in the day, just to ensure I could find that comfort in the middle of the night. This got so out of hand that my father had to start locking the door to the kitchen to keep me out. I would wake up in the middle of the night and gorge myself at the refrigerator door. I became a compulsive eater and did so at all hours of the day, always in secret. Middle school and high school were one long isolated journey with no real place to seek refuge, so I sought comfort in the one place I could always rely on and trust: food. It became my best friend and my only trusted companion.
As I went through middle and high school it would grow, like a gremlin being fed after midnight, ugly… and dangerous. That was the beginning of the unconscious societal bias of fatphobia. My shame about my size and weight started then, at 8 or 9 years of age. It was how she said it – in an almost hush – as if it was something embarrassing to be discussed. The moment that would define decades of internal anguish and self sabotage. I remember asking my mother, ‘What does husky mean?’ ‘It’s for boys like you,’ she said. Things just never seemed to fit right as we shopped in the ‘ husky’ section at department stores. In the 80s, in my formative adolescence, I loathed shopping for clothes each new school year.
Both my parents were ‘thick,’ ‘chunky,’ and ‘plus size’ – code words in our society for fat – so it was inevitable that I would be a kid with weight problems. And that means not to deny the beauty and sexuality of being big.
Now at 40, this ‘old man’ is on Instagram rocking skimpy underwear while discussing depression, the difference between body positivity and body neutrality, how thick men can lead a sex positive life, and encouraging other plus size men to look at their lives as a whole.
20-year-old me was in the closet, suffering a dark depression, hating his body, and contemplating if he would ever find love and happiness in himself, let alone with a partner. “If you had told 20-year-old me that I’d be celebrating my chubby body by posting provocative pictures on Instagram while navigating the body positive, body neutral, and sex positive movements – I would have told you to take your meds.