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Homosexuality And Masculinity

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Despite most studies suggest that homosexuality is a risk factor for disorder eating in men, there has been some speculations regarding whether sexual orientation mediate with eating pathology specifically or with other psychopathologies in general. The study from Russell & Keel (2001) reported that, in compare to heterosexual men, homosexual men have greater body dissatisfaction and higher levels of bulimic and anorexic symptoms. Moreover, gay men generally report higher depression, lower self-esteem, and less comfort with their sexual orientation, as these variables often contributing as risk factors for other psychological disorder, including eating disorder. After controlling these variables, sexual orientation still continuously accounts …show more content…
Many researches support that gay men may be more likely than heterosexual men to express both muscularity and body weight concerns (Calzo et al. 2013; Feldman & Meyer, 2007). Others, suggest that gay men seem to be more influenced by ideals from the media and prefer a much thinner slender ideal than men with a heterosexual orientation (Austin et al., 2004; Williamson1 & Hartley, 1998). Literature suggests that waist-to-chest ratio (WCR) was the primary component of attractiveness ratings for both heterosexual and gay men. However, despite there were only small differences in terms of preference for overall body weight, gay men showed a much stronger preference for lower WCRs, in which indicating a preference for a more developed upper-body build. The findings are discussed in terms of gay culture, which emphasizes the importance of muscularity in physical attraction (Swami & Tovée, 2008). Additionally, the value of muscularity may reflect the tendency to associate muscularity with masculinity. Within the gay community, it may be that gay men are left with their bodies as prime distinguishing source of masculinity, and images of muscular and fit bodies thus represent men seeking to embody physical strength, hardness and power associated with muscular ideal, while signaling distance from ideas about femininity (Swami & Tovée, 2008).The heightened value of the muscular ideal is also reflected in the tendency of gay men to integrate such ideals into their self-concepts (Swami & Tovée, 2008).Furthermore, muscularity may also be an important signal of health within the gay community, which may be especially pertinent as the community deals with the impact of HIV and AIDS (Swami & Tovée,

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