Bodies bodies bodies

On self-image, hot wrestlers, and being a sentient meatball

“Were you ugly or just raised in the United States?” Recently, two fellow melanated friends — independently of each other via DM — asked me this chest-stomper of a question, as we casually pondered hotness and attraction.

Growing up brown in this country, being anything other than gorgeous or white puts you in the aesthetic category of “other.” Personally speaking, thanks to my constant yo-yo dieting, body dysmorphia, and the pervasive body-obsessed shallowness of gay life, I didn’t like myself for a long time. My whole life, probably.

And yet lately I’ve been obsessed with my body. The annual regimen of physicals, blood tests, doctor visits and the like will do that to you. Stepping on that scale, waiting for some judgement about my salt intake/diet after reading the blood pressure band, it’s all I could do to not think about this potato sack of corporeality.

Amidst all that, I realized I am also just sitting there, simply breathing. Terrifying! Beautiful!

The irony of dedicating the last few years to my mental health is that I’m also now always constantly thinking about sensations in my body. Anxiety is an iron ball that forms in the bottom left of my rib cage. Anger shortens my breath. Sadness and whimsy occupy the same space in my upper chest.

Because I more or less got my mind right, I find I’m more grounded in my sense of self as a sentient meatball — but now I am occupied with thoughts of the space I take up and how I move through the world.

I’m 37, 38 in a few months, and in what seems like 5 minutes after that, 40. I can’t continue ignoring my body. It’s the only one I have, and it took the inward reflection of therapy to finally face myself in a mirror.

In Bioluminesence by Paul Tran, a poem I haven’t been able to shake lately, the speaker plumbs the depths of queerness and beauty in the subjectively ugly. Embracing the imagery of the ocean’s underworld, they examine the meanings of isolation and darkness, but also show us what it’s like to be capable of manifesting your own light. “I found myself without meaning / to ... in the company / of creatures who, hideous like me, had to be their own illumination.”

I’ve been swimming with these themes a lot lately. In my dreams, in my waking life. what happens if I just let go of these self-imposed anchors? What if I can move past my own judgement of my worth?

For the first time in a long time, I love who I am looking at. I look back at older photos of myself where I am objectively cute and handsome, but all I remember is how unkind I was to myself. Behind the practiced smile was a lot of self-directed harm, a lot of hate and doubt. I lived in a Bermuda triangle of shame as a gay, brown, chubby person, and back then, I didn’t know how navigate myself out of it.

Last summer, when Fire Island came out, I was enthralled. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a glossy Pride & Prejudice rom-com adaptation centering Asian gay men as sex and love objects. In addition to being deeply funny and witty, witnessing actors Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang and Conrad Ricamora onscreen, as rounded, fully realized people and sexy, romantic leads was a kind of representation I didn’t know I needed.

When was the last time I had seen that, if ever?

In a similar vein, I have been binging a new Korean game show called Physical 100. Not to get too into it, but it’s like Squid Game minus murder, featuring Korea’s elite athletes competing in physical challenges. 

Sportsmanship, accomplishments and accolades aside, you can’t help but see these athletes’ bodies: They ripple with power, exertion, and use. The contestants range in size — muscled and herculean; lithe and feline; mountainous or agile; even puny.

They all take up space, gloriously.

One wrestler in particular, Nam Kyung-in, caught my eye. Apple-cheeked and bearded, stout but powerful, he and I could have similar body types, if I didn’t dedicate myself to the art of carving an ass-groove into my couch. When I first saw him, I thought, “damn, he’s hot?” Which felt really narcissistic, because he’s incredible, and I’m not. But I saw in him proof of power, strength, and (frankly) hotness I never saw in my own self. 

Calibrating these new revelations of my self-image with my past treatment of my body has often felt like a spelunking expedition, where I’m traveling blind into the bottom of an abyss of my own design, but I feel safe knowing there will eventually be a bottom — and a way out.

I’ve largely forgiven myself for my past transgressions, but that comes with the realization I haven’t been taking the best care of myself in the present. Until recently, I historically haven’t moved my limbs in joyful movement, or felt my heart pumping fiery red, or filled my lungs with possibility.

So I changed that. I got moving.

Slowly I have found my way back to myself, and learned to embrace this body. It got me through 4 years of a pandemic, goddamnit. I’ve rowed or cycled daily, hitting 10k steps every day with multiple walks throughout my neighborhood. I dance. While cooking, or when Ian went to bed early and I feel the wiggles, or when I make coffee between Zoom calls. I traveled to Dublin and walked a daily 8 miles, 10 miles, 13 miles, everything in between, over seven days.

Even on my low days, I fully embrace body neutrality, instead of darker judgements: Can we just be cool today? 

And I think of the last line in Tran’s poem: “I exist. I am my life, I thought, approaching / at last the bottom of the sea. It wasn’t the bottom. It wasn’t the sea.”

Read: Part of my daily routine has been a morning walk to get coffee, plus an evening walk to stretch out my legs and run any last minute errands. I haven’t been in a podcast mood during these walks; instead, I’ve been devouring The Mirror Visitor series by Christelle Dabos, available in audio format on Libby. The books aren’t new, but they’re a long, intriguing fantasy that’s equal parts Bridgerton slow-burn romance and apocalypse mystery set in a ruptured, quasi-authoritarian world.

Watch: Ian and I didn’t do much this weekend, but did catch the Oscar-nominated animated short films, per our annual tradition. This year’s batch is certainly less bleak than last year’s, but only two stood out to me: Ice Merchants by João Gonzalez and Bruno Caetano, and My Year of Dicks by Sara Gunnarsdóttir and Pamela Ribon. Last night, we finally saw Aftersun, and oh my. As someone with daddy issues like whoa (whomst among us???), it was so poetic and evocative — the praise is worthy.

Do: Just… This.

Joseph Hernandez (he/him) @joeybear85

My cat does this thing at 5:30 where he herds me onto the bed so we can have an EOD cuddle session, and it's my favorite thing in the world.

Lead photo by 青 晨 on Unsplash

Book links are affiliate links through Bookshop.org, where I receive a small commission if you make a purchase. You’ll also be supporting an independent bookstore — shop locally when you can.