The Call is Coming from Inside the Gay Bookshelf

Generic book covers all featuring muscular men, under the category of "Gay Literature"

First, a quick “aside,” if you will, on the point of this writing today.

A while back I realized that my bookshelf was awfully barren of gay literature. I think for so long I had focused either on strictly horror, which I know is innately queer but not the same thing, or on the typical cut-and-paste fantasy/sci-fi genres. I could blame it on those books being easier to find because they are always on the first page of my Goodreads emails, or I could say it’s what I’ve read for the majority of my life. But if I’m completely honest, I’d have to say it was because if I didn’t read them, then it was easy for me to say those lives didn’t apply to me, and I was the exception.

Whatever the reason, I think it was time to start fixing this and immersing myself in all things gay literature. Fuck the easy way with these gay romance novellas. I wanted the heavy stuff right off, so I jumped into Ocean Vuong, Garth Greenwell, books about the pink triangle, and the history of gay criminalization. After reading these books, I had an awakening and kept thinking to myself: gay stories existed this whole time. I just chose not to read them, so no wonder I had felt such a disconnect from myself and the community.

After I gobbled up those stories, I knew there was no going back to just my everyday books. My Goodreads shelf has cursed and flipped me off many times since then, all those unread books on my shelf now being passed up for any gay literature I could get my greedy hands on.

And this is where we get to the reason for the season here, because I started noticing a trend. And I am about to become persona non grata after this piece, but I’ve got to admit, we as gay writers do NOT do ourselves any favors when we are writing.

To start my official rant off: do you know how many books I have read where bodies are described as muscular only or some variation of muscles?

Tight, lithe, lean, athletic, sporty, youthful, sexy, vascular, the list goes on and on in almost every book I’ve read post Ocean/Garth. Save for one book I read from Garth where the protagonist referred to himself as fat or overweight, which honestly felt refreshing, if not super hard on himself. The point is, here is yet another medium where we have boiled down what is palatable for a story, and the message is clear: if you have the slightest bit of a belly, you are not the hero or will not experience to be desired beyond fetishization. Or even the villain, for that matter because even the hetero books make it clear sexy villains have abs. There have even been a few books where, if you don’t have the right body, the characters immediately shun you.

Now, those who have read other pieces by me know my feelings on gay body image. I’ve written about having an eating disorder, I’ve spoken on podcasts about how body image affects all aspects of our lives, and NOW I can add that we are not even safe in the written word. Yet again, to have a “normal” body is to exist outside the value system of muscles.

Want to know what I did to get muscles? I took Ephedrine. I took SARMs. I dedicated every waking minute to counting calories, doing cardio, and pushing through my lifting plateaus.

Want to know what I have now? Messed up blood pressure, even more psychological barriers to working out, and an especially screwed up relationship with food where, if I eat healthy, I’m giving into body pressure, and if I eat unhealthy, I’m not worthy of gay love.

The amount of time gay men spend on Instagram, X, LinkedIn, or whatever platform of the moment gay men have taken to showing off on, is ridiculous. And now, thanks to our inability to parse body issues in any healthy way, we have pages of literature to flip through where our inner voice while READING is taking in those words and reminding us: nope, you aren’t safe here either.

And these books aren’t the opinion of just one person. These books are popular. Rated 4 and up by hundreds to thousands of people. The reviews say they are raw and emotional. That they are a love story to gay men and gay life. And I can’t help but think, maybe they do get it correct, because after reading about all these muscular bodies, I now hate my appearance just a bit more. So I guess it is pretty authentic to gay life.

The gag of it too is that the “progressive” and “non-body-focused” gays are the ones championing these moments by saying they got comfortable with their bodies, so these issues don’t exist anymore. As if they don’t still look at every reflective surface, every mirror, every other man walking by, every other moment of media shoved down our throats, and compare themselves.

That’s right, fellas, you are all a bunch of liars.

But that is okay! Because what we do have here is a moment to fix it.

The amount of gay people I know who are currently writing, continue to write, or are thinking about writing, can change the conversation. Every single one of you, myself included, can, no pun intended, rewrite the story for ourselves. We can write stories where we aren’t left thinking after that we could have that life as well, if only we lost some more weight, or didn’t eat anything else for the day.

I would probably argue that for the majority of the gay community, they do not want to read something that makes them question their worth based on appearance. Even if they don’t realize it. Is erotic content within a story only going to be sexy if the muscles are bulging, if the body is perfect, or if the waist is tiny? If you answered yes to that, maybe explore that in your next therapy session, because I will stand by the fact that deep deep deep deep down inside, if these sexual scenes took place between two “normal” bodies, there would be a collective sigh of relief.

And eventually, maybe then, we could stop focusing on our appearance and do something worthwhile, like save others around the world who get killed for just existing.

Now, I know I’m coming across as scathing. I know it seems bitter and pushing hard here, but at some point we as a community have to start understanding that the call is coming from inside the house.

We don’t want these issues? Then let’s stop writing them into our stories. We don’t want these images? Then don’t dedicate your FYPs and timelines to those images. It’s simple in the sense that we do have the answers to change things. It’s difficult in the sense that you will have to put in a lot of work and have a lot of patience with yourself.

But it is worth it.

Because each one of you is beautiful and sexy and worthy of love in your own right. The bears, the twinks, the otters, the cubs, the jocks, the goths, the preppy gays, the club kids, even the models. What should matter is how you love yourself, because once people start learning to love themselves for who they are and how they look, without destroying themselves to get there, they will start to be able to show that love outward. And our narrative will change.

In typical me fashion, I am not here to tell us all what steps to take to fix it, or to give you a neat little conclusion. You are capable of coming up with those on your own. Some are ready to hear me. Some will shoot down every word and call me miserable, judgy, and, ironically, ugly for feeling this way. But again, I promise that if you take even one moment in your day to notice the times you question yourself because of a piece of content you consumed, you can take that moment and start to steer the collective toward a better life.

And if you’d prefer to stay lost in sex and body and muscles, then you are free to do that too. Not everyone is ready to look too deeply, and we can’t blame them for that. We go through so much other trauma and grief as gay men that these stories can be an escape.

But the escape shouldn’t be the whole picture.

So I hope and wish that even one person reading this will look at themselves after and not call themselves “normal” as if that normal isn’t fucking radiant and worthy.

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