Does the mirror lie?

People usually keep these high standards concerning the way they should look. Even though most everybody is enslaved by fashion and body fascists, I think that women get the worst part in this deal. We all are bombarded with images of women in the media and they all look totally flawless. No hanging skin, no muffin tops, no wrinkles, capillaries, dark circles under the eyes, no saggy boobs. Have you ever looked at those Lancome/Revlon/Maybelline ads? Those Vogue and W photo spreads? Fuck, if anybody I know would look like that 24/7 I'd totally flip. I truly believe that women are crushed by this flood of images that do not allow them to be less than perfect.

But few actually know that the people they are gawking at are re-touched to an inch of their lives. And what about those perfect creatures? It's even worse for them. Example? Look at Britney Spears. She was for years the darling of the media and a whole country. Too bad they only saw and presented her photo-shopped, air-brushed self to be gawked at. As soon as the real Britney (Brittany?) emerged and began walking around with her hair extensions in a bun, her feet in the same pair of boots for months and all the glamour of a trailer-park unemployed single mother, the whole country turned on her and tore her apart. Anybody would have had 'psychological issues' after that.

I, as a gay man should admit to have been somehow slave to the image that gay magazines and movies impose on us and how males are perpetuated in the gay media. Mostly porn. On one side, all you have to do is look at Bel Ami or any of the other porn machines: impossibly slim, hung and muscled young men cavort under perfect lighting having the most perfect sex ever. When they come, they do it by the gallon and look amazing while doing it. Even their sweat looks sexy (now I'm thinking that they may even fabricate that 'sweaty' image). It's the photoshop version of moving pictures: nothing is real, all is made.

On the other side, I have impossibly well-coiffed and impeccably-styled men in the pages of GQ and Details telling me what I need to wear and how. Artfully posed men in absolutely expensive clothes keep telling me how I need to look to get a man/keep my man by me. All this is done in quite the calculated way from pages and pages of gay magazines (Genre, Attitude, Out), too. I, as a gay man fall in the trap created for women by stylists, hair stylists and designers. I, too have for awhile tried not to eat too much pizza, renounce donughts and exercise a little.

But I have discovered that I better do that because my cholesterol level was going through the roof and because I feel more energetic and alert when I eat well and exercise a little. I won't have a six pack (unless I buy one at the store) and I don't have nine inches (unless I brandish a Jeff Stryker dildo). And I'm ok. I'll age and my looks will go. Who cares? I hope I'm not one of those guys who runs to the surgeon and to Just for Men at the least indication of gray hair and a few wrinkles. I hope I can age with dignity. When it's gone, it's gone. I still look passably well. And will probably do for some years. But I'll try to stay true to myself. Because my looks will attract men to my bed but my conversation is what will keep them around. Hopefully.

Note: the amazing 'Re-touch my body" is by the amazing Jackie Beat.