Jason Dilts lives in Wichita, Kansas and is a graduate of Wichita State University, who is pondering his next move in life. He loves his life as a single gay man and enjoys spending quality time with his amazing friends. In part one of his story, he explores his descent into Anorexia. In part two, he will discuss his recovery.

The idea of extreme dietary self-restriction is likely to conjure up images of bony, thin girls. Some may remember that waify girl from high school who never ate during lunch. Many will recall that friend from college who couldn’t stop exercising. Others may think of famous thin-obsessed celebrities like Mary Kate Olsen or Nicole Richie who have proudly strutted their skeletal structures across the red carpet. A few may even recall that Lifetime movie with Tracey Gold where her character famously hid her jars of her own vomit inside a closet, only to later have them discovered by her shocked and bewildered mother. The one common thread is that when it comes to eating disorders, most people are predisposed to think of them as a female issue.

After a recent Google search, I was delighted to stumble on something that sheds light on this myth. Filmmaker Travis Mathews has pieced together an eye-opening documentary called “Do I Look Fat?”, and for once, it’s not women who are being asked the question. It’s gay men!

Mathews’ movie stands out as one of the few pieces of media available for gay men looking to find other people who suffer from the shame of corporal self-loathing. The hour-long film documents the inner turmoil and strife eight gay men face and have faced with anorexia, bulimia, over-exercising, and other unhealthy manifestations of eating disorders giving a relatable, human face to an invisible issue.

It also explores the issue of how gender and hostility to all things female in our culture creates the perfect storm for gay men to develop eating disorders. Breaking it down into simple mathematical equations, one of the men points out that there is a mind-set that fat equals weak equals female and thin equals strong equals man. As I watched the movie, I was gratified to see other men step out of the closet of deep shame to discuss their own issues of uncomfortability with the mainstream gay male community’s obsession with youth and beauty.

For so long, I felt I was the only one. The film’s exposing of the ridiculous obsession gay men have with the “perfect” physique along with its feminist critique of eating disorders, reminded me of my own journey.

Rewinding back three years, I had convinced myself that the idea of my having an eating disorder was laughable. I had been overweight for most of my life. While not morbidly obese by any measure, losing some weight was not such a bad idea. However, I ended up losing more than just some weight and in the process, I nearly lost myself.

I don’t think there was ever a time since adolescence when I felt good about my body, but there was definitely a day when I started to let this insecurity take control. It was the day I was told by a boy I was crushing on that he only dated really thin guys. I obviously wasn’t one of those “really thin guys”, but I was determined to somehow become one. I had never exercised a day in my life, but I soon ventured to the gym.

There, I found a seemingly magical contraption called the elliptical machine. Although it took a little while to get used to the demands that working out had on my body, I was soon peddling away an hour a day on it. There was a scale in the men’s locker room, and I weighed myself religiously each day. The pounds were shedding off faster than I ever realized they could. For the first time, I felt in control of my looks. I started to feel more confident about my own body. So I thought, at least.

I was baffled that I could lose so much weight and still not have a single guy be interested in me, though. I thought my entire problem was that I was fat. After 12 months, I lost a third of my original body weight, but I surmised that I must have to lose more if I wanted a man to be attracted to me. I stopped eating normal meals, reducing my usual daily caloric intake to less than 1,000 calories. I exercised excruciatingly for hours every day, sometimes spending more than two hours daily at the gym. I was determined to do whatever it took to have some guy be attracted to me. All the while I convinced myself that I didn’t have a problem. Someone who was medically classified as obese only one year earlier could never be anorexic. Plus, I was a guy. Men don’t get eating disorders. I clung to the lie.

There’s an entire culture that promulgates lies about our bodies. Our culture caters to eating disorders and aids in convincing people like me that their behavior isn’t irrational or harmful. The brainwashing exists on several levels. For one, there’s the mainstream heterosexual media that is obsessed with thinness. Nearly every image you see on TV, in magazines, or in movies is of a person with a thin and trimmed physique. Beyond the media, people in general are obsessed with losing weight. The minute I started losing weight, I received constant praise from people I ran into.

“Wow, you look amazing!”

“I don’t even recognize you!”

“You look like a whole new person!”

These comments are understandable and even appropriate to a point. Even while I was wasting away, though, I was still receiving non-stop accolades from friends and acquaintances. I began to notice that our overweight society seemed to operate under the assumption that you can never be too thin.

There’s another level on this issue in the culture, though, and it lies in the gay community. Eating disorders have become an almost normalized way of life, particularly among young gay men. The gay media constantly bombards us with images of men with washboard abs, burly muscles, and perfectly trimmed, circuit physiques. We see these in every gay magazine, in ads on every major gay website, and nearly every gay male character represented on television fits the image. It also translates into real life.

Though research is rare and often obscured, a 2007 study done by the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health managed to get a little press. It found that gay and bisexual men have a higher-than-average risk for developing eating disorders. In a culture that often obsesses over youth and beauty, it’s easy to see why. Their study found, though, that gay men who aren’t identified with the “gay community” and aren’t involved socially in a gay-oriented subculture are just as susceptible to having issues with eating. There could very well be an internalized aspect of self-loathing that manifests itself in this unhealthy way inside many gay men; I know there certainly was within myself.

Over time, I started to take pride in being anorexic. It felt like I had masterminded the ultimate coup, going from hideous and fat to emaciated and thin. I was in love with the sight of my rib cage. I felt empowered every time I could see a new bone. I felt a rush of pride each time my hips knocked up against the surface of a counter or desk and a ping of sharp pain consumed my body. The more it hurt, the better it was.

I was able to take pride in being anorexic in a way I was never able to take pride in being gay. Constant compliments, societal encouragement, and a whole world that caters to being thin contrasts deeply to the social retribution one typically faces when coming out of the closet. All of us want to be accepted, and after being rejected by society-at-large for being gay and by the gay community for not fit
ting the image of what a gay man is supposed to be, I felt I had finally found a comfortable lifestyle and identity.

While the new “lifestyle” I was living gave me a faux sense of empowerment, it also left me drained and exhausted. I had little time to actually enjoy my life. I also found that turning off one set of drives — in this case hunger — sets off a chain reaction that turns off other basic instincts as well. Ironically, after I set out to get thin so that my body would be more sexually appealing, I ended up having no sex drive at all. I reached a point where I wasn’t even really sure why I continued the whole routine. It hadn’t gotten me what I wanted, but I was scared to let it go. I needed a new perspective on life to jolt me out of my weakened state. Thankfully, I would soon find it…

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