Friday, January 9, 2004

Molding my own mold

I was on www.friendster.com today, looking at one subscriber’s page and I was awestruck by the number of muscular mesomorphs listed as his friends (I believe it was about 400+). The site of so many "Adonis-like" bodies made me both self conscious and curiously bewildered. Wondering if this was all fueled by jealousy or my own inadequacies, I began to remember my own experiences as I came out as a gay Asian male. The gay community has always promoted the muscular, smooth Caucasian as admirable, desirable and do-able. Now, far be it that I should complain about these fine specimens, but what about us, the slim non-Europeans? As a slim Asian, standing at 6 foot 1, I battled my own personal demons and fears and desperately tried to workout to fit in. I didn't want to take steroids or any supplements, so I was screwed. Trying to attain the Gay body without these drugs would prove to be both futile and a mystique.
A very good friend of mine, who now refers to himself as "a reformed A-List circuit boy", told me that nearly all those Adonis like creatures were likely filled up with more roids than the common cow. Now, before you start sending me hate mail or some such stuff, hear me out.

If these bodies are really the product of steroids and supplements, then are they Real? I recently saw a friend of mine, whom I had not seen since September, and I could not help but notice his "new" body. He was always slim and fairly well toned, but now he was one large piece of meat. I bluntly asked him what he did to get the body so quickly. His answer was a cycle of roids for a period of 8 weeks. I have often wondered if taking steroids would be an option, but another friend tells me that you simply lose most of the mass when you stop the cycles. What's the point? Taking steroids for the rest of your life isn't a choice I would take refuge in. Sure, you get big and muscular, but think of the cons; pimples, acne, smaller testicles, roid rages, damaged livers, kidneys, heart failure.... the list goes on.

I weigh the options, the pros and the cons and I am left with one answer, that I will never fit any particular mold that society has dished out. The good thing is that it doesn’t bother me as much as it once did. I realize that there is a distinct separation from what is real and what is not. I don’t want to get all philosophical, but all of this reminds me of Plato’s Republic and the concept of The Real. I don’t believe everything out there. Not everything is real or what it seems. The image we project or the image that we perceive, is just that, a perception.

Eyes open, open-mind and you will always see truth and things for what they are.

*Have a peek at Michelangelo Signorile's book Life Outside: The Signorile Report on Gay Men: Sex, Drugs, Muscles, and the Passages of Life
http://www.signorile.com/books/index.html

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