Message to Men of a Certain Age
Someone told me a while back that I shouldn’t post shirtless pictures because “they’re undignified for a man your age”.
It rankled at the time, but I couldn’t put my finger on why.
Then, in the midst of one morning’s pre-caffeine cognitive jumble, it suddenly crystallized:
He was projecting.
Specifically, he was projecting his life-long programming, body image insecurities, and repressions upon me.
Oh, no, girlfriend. You don’t get to go there. Not with me.
Our society’s attitude towards body image is a poisonous, pernicious thing, for both men and women. For men in particular, we glorify young, perfect, athletic bodies that are aggressively sculpted to Michelangeloesque proportions and bear an absurdly low (and for many aging Joe Averages, essentially unobtainable) body fat percentage. This fixation with young, spectacularly fit men is arguably even worse in the gay community.
SCREW that noise.
So here’s my message to Men of a Certain Age: Our grey hairs broadcast our experience and our ability to survive and persist against all odds. So does our body. Embrace those folds, rumples, curves, lumps, lines, wrinkles, and sags. Rock that lack of definition. We are what we are, and motherfucker, we and our bodies are AWESOME, whether others recognize it or not.
