Jeans, a Swimsuit, and a Wheelchair

One side affect of not using your core muscles, your abs and obliques, is that these areas begin to lose their hold on your stomach. This was what I experienced when I lost the ability to walk and was confined to a wheelchair for over two years. Slowly, you will develop what my family and I have nicknamed "Wheelchair Belly", a very particularly body shape that makes it easy to identify how long someone has been in a wheelchair (my disabled friends who have spent any time in a wheelchair will likely know what I'm talking about). I was particularly conscious of it because I had started so skinny, almost unhealthy looking.

My old image of myself began to blur...

In two years time I went from a 32'' to a 40'' waist. I did my physical therapy and I tried to stay in shape but to no avail. I had a lower injury (paraplegic), paralyzed from about my waist at my worst, so I never underwent the body transformation that you will see in someone who is quadriplegic. Even so we live in a world that is constantly bombarding us with images of the ideal body, and mine just wasn't it.

                   So this is why I'm not picking up more guys. I need a WATCH! 

Wait... nobody wears watches anymore.

This is especially true in the gay community, where youth is idolized and those who are out of shape are often seen as somewhat inferior. This is not true of all gay men out there but a broad generalization about the community. You can see it's mark everywhere.

Last summer I went to a gay pride festival on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was an amazing time, in general. I was excited to say the least about it; I even enlisted the help of a art-talented friend to help my rainbowize my wheelchair. At this point in my recovery I was using my leg brace but I was still using my wheelchair to travel any significant distance. The event was almost entirely on grass and it was annoying to get around but with the help of the friend I went with I managed.

Rainbowized Wheelchair

One of the booths they had at the event was a swimwear booth. They of course were selling the type of suits that only gay men can seem to be able to pull off. And of course to emphasize the point the company had hired several scrumptious individuals, fit boys with six packs and tans, to show off the rather skimpy merchandise. To say the least they made an impression.

They all looked pretty much like this. Scrumptious indeed...

To cut a long story short both my friend and I bought a pair. He managed to pull his off rather well I thought. As for mine, I felt incredibly self conscious. Not only had I never worn so revealing an outfit, I was still pastey-white, as I never got back my skin color after months indoors following my accident; added to this were all the scars from my multiple surgeries. The icing on the cake was the wheelchair belly, which made me feel like I had a neon sign over my head "Gay Cripple! Come See The Show!" This is not to say that everyone at the event was an adonis; far from it. Eventually I overcame my initial fears and wore the suit anyway.

The feeling of being on display didn't go away and to a certain extent it still hasn't. This isn't news for anyone: gay, straight, male, female, disabled, or able bodied. We all feel the imposing weight of what we feel we should look like, making us to feel like we are are not measuring up. We live in an image conscious world and there isn't a way around it.

Words to live by.

It's true that looks shouldn't be important, that it is the person inside that matters. Big surprise, this idea is hard to put into practice. We need to remember that no matter how we look if we don't feel good about ourselves we will always find flaws, the cracks in the armor we put up. A movie I watched on Netflix, The Adonis Factor, talks about the gay community and how we put image before everything else in our lives. This entry is more or less a confession of how I let that mindset take over.

I'm happy to say that now that I'm walking full time my wheelchair belly is starting to ebb a little. It's not gone (two years is a long time to wash away) but it's on its way. I even dropped two inches off my waist, the first backward size change I've had in over two years. Even if I do manage to change back to the boy I was (unlikely in any event) I don't want to forget what it feels like to be an outsider, to be on display. For only when you are on the outside looking in do you realize how fake and superficial that kind of attitude can be. While I still don't mind the eye candy, I don't spend as much time wishing I was one of those twinks in a speedo. In the end it's the happiness we make for ourselves, not our looks, that determine how happy we are at the end of the day.

Now all I need are a new pair of jeans...

 The real reason gays are so into fashion: Those that aren't well dressed are attacked by GAY NINJAS!