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Embodying the Gay Self: Body Image, Reflexivity and Embodied Identity

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Copyright © eContent Management Pty Ltd. Health Sociology Review (2010) 19(4): 437–450.

Embodying the gay self: Body image, reflexivity and embodied identity

DUANE DUNCAN

Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC,

Australia

ABSTRACT

The emphasis on a sexualised muscular body ideal in gay social and cultural settings has been described as facilitating body image dissatisfaction among gay men. Drawing on a concept of reflexive embodiment, this paper uses qualitative interviews to analyse gay men’s embodiment practices in relation to discourses and norms that can be found across and beyond any coherent notion of ‘gay subculture’. The findings reveal body image to be more complex than a limited focus on subculture or dissatisfaction can account for. In particular, gay men negotiate a gay pride discourse in which the muscular male body generates both social status and self-esteem, and deploy notions of everyday masculinity that imply rationality and control to resist gendered assumptions about gay men’s body image relationships.

KEYWORDS: body image; gay men; reflexive embodiment; sociology

INTRODUCTION

Body image dissatisfaction and gay men

Following the shift from individual pathol-ogy to cognitive-behavioural and feminist perspectives in psychology (McKinely 2002; Pruzinsky and Cash 2002), a significant volume of psychological and health research has identi-fied a greater incidence of body image dissatis-faction, and eating disordered behaviour among gay men relative, in particular, to heterosexual men (Boisvert and Harrell 2009; Chaney 2008; Conner et al. 2004; Duggan and McCreary 2004; Gil 2007; Levesque and Vichesky 2006; Martins et al. 2007; Morrison et al. 2004; Siever 1994; Thompson and Cafri 2007; Yelland and Tiggemann 2003). These studies largely draw on a

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