Before ‘Likes’ and ‘Views’, there were the ‘Glances’

She hadn’t seen me for over thirty years or more, and she said it in good faith, it was her compliment to me, “You have your father’s smile, and your mother’s slim figure.” I winced at my male-middle-aged physique being complimented in the context of my mother’s petite frame. Walking away, I laughed out loud with the release of not caring about how an old friend recalled my physicality – which for me is one of the great advantages of growing older; I care less about how I’m perceived physically, and personally.

But, I wasn’t always so blasé about dismissing comments about my physical-self. As a child I was sometimes mistaken for a girl, which made me feel shameful. As I entered my teens I suppose I carried that shame with me and did all I could to ensure my masculinity wasn’t questioned.

Aged eighteen I was readying for a night out. Satisfied I looked good, I set off to pick up a friend. I knocked at the door, which was opened by said friend who looked at me with a strange expression. “What’s up?” I asked, concerned my clothes might not be cool enough. But friend stared, “Have you put weight on your face?” I touched my cheek, “I don’t know, why?” I asked. The reply was not said with malice, “You look gay when you put weight on your face.” The force of those words punched me so hard, I ran to the toilet and made myself sick.

Back then I don’t know if the term ‘Bulimia’ had been coined; if it had it wasn’t a word in my vocabulary. I was driven by an instinctive urge to purge myself of the massive burger, which was making me look gay. Thankfully that self-purging was a one-off, and I never succumbed to the debilitating eating disorder.

Leap forward to London; early 90s and I’m working in a fancy-pants Creative Agency. There was a dress code, smart casual when in the office, suit and tie for meetings. During hot weather, we were allowed wear shorts. One steaming morning I donned my shorts and as always made my way to coffee in the office communal area. Three female colleagues were there – they looked at my legs in unison before one announced, “Wouldn’t you kill to have a pair of pins like that…!” I was mortified.

Later that evening I joined a gym with a mission to ‘Make-My-Legs-Manly'. That was the day the gym became my life.

What I say from here makes me sound incredibly conceited, but I write with my truth; and in the context of what I see today on social-media; where (some) young men strive to sculpt gym-ripped bodies to seek the validation that comes from social media ‘likes’, ‘views’ and ‘complimentary-comments’.

I was one of those young men. I ditched my morning tea and toast for chicken breasts and protein shakes, before hitting the gym at 6:30am. Each muscle-group was assigned a day (Saturday was leg day, extra emphasis was assigned to that group). I began supplementing protein with creatine to sculpt a physique that was hyper-male. With time, the ‘likes’ and ‘views’ started rolling in, and they spurred me on to add evening gym-sessions to my protein and creatine intake.

“But where did the ‘likes’ and ‘views’ come from, there was no internet, then?” You might ask. Back then the validation came from real-world ‘glances'. London-City was my Instagram, and the ‘glances’ both furtive and obvious were noted and counted. Come summer, us gym-buddies showed off our discipline-driven contours and competed for ‘glances’ on the underground, overground, or in whatever city-park our vanity trained eyes saw them. Comments were coveted, “You’re HOT,” shouted an American tourist as she passed me on the escalator, comments like that gave us our ‘viral’ moments.

Sunny Saturday afternoon’s in Soho were our TikTok, where views were bolstered by gay-guys and drag-queens. Looking back, they were shallow days fuelled by a vanity that ultimately left me feeling hollow. Like most things, I aged out of that time. On my fortieth birthday a friend presented me with a painting she did of me; in it I saw a sadly aging man who looked slightly lost.

We all have body insecurities to a degree. But I know from my experience that all it takes is one flippant comment to turn an insecurity – to obsession – and into a potential disorder. I’m thankful my body-obsessive days occurred when ‘views’ and ‘comments’ were real-world-fleeting, without the lasting pressure of social-media metrics. My mother gave me lots, and now one of the things I’m most grateful for is the inheritance of her slim-physique.