Even the Quote Comes with a Rainbow Flag

“When was the last time you went dancing? When was the last time you went on holiday?”

Those questions could open a conversation. I might tell you that I cannot afford it, that my friends have moved away, or that sometimes going out alone feels difficult. Or perhaps I am perfectly happy at home and do not owe anyone an explanation.

But if the answer has already been decided — you do not go out because you do not feel comfortable with your body — then the conversation is over before I have had the chance to speak.

You asked me a question only to lead me towards the service you sell.

That is what makes me angry: the ease with which an entire life is reduced to a physical problem, preferably one that can be solved by buying something. And the confidence with which that problem is assigned to gay men, as though sharing a sexual orientation meant sharing a diagnosis.

A body that is not trained is not a body that has been neglected.

I could stop there. Because inside that confusion sits a judgement that almost passes unnoticed. If you have not worked hard enough on your appearance, you have let yourself go. If you do not put yourself on display, perhaps even you know that you are not presentable. And if you do not take part in the life someone else has chosen as the measure of happiness, then the fault must be yours.

Can we really imagine no other explanation?

Being gay does not mean wanting to go clubbing. It does not mean having the money to travel, being extroverted, or constantly looking for someone. It does not even mean feeling unhappy with your body. Some people like themselves without being sculpted. Others can spend months in the gym and still dislike what they see.

A question should help you discover the person in front of you. If it exists only to confirm the problem you already know how to sell, you are not listening to a person. You are listening to your market.

The term is pink money: our purchases, our spending power, the market built around us.

Spending money does not offend me. I want to be able to buy a holiday, pay a trainer, choose a night out. I also want people to be paid for their work. I do not expect every business aimed at LGBT people to operate as a charity.

What interests me is how they reach my wallet.

You can offer me something I want. You can help me pursue a goal I have chosen. But you can also plant a doubt: perhaps the reason you do not feel included is that you have not improved yourself enough yet.

At that point, the product changes. The price now includes a promise no professional can guarantee: afterwards you will be desired, you will feel at ease, people will finally see you.

That may be exactly what the customer is searching for. Which is all the more reason to be honest about what is actually being sold.

Training can help me train. It cannot make someone love me. It cannot turn a judgemental environment into a welcoming one. It cannot guarantee that I will stop feeling out of place.

The most uncomfortable part is that the person selling this promise may be another gay man.

We like to believe the problem always comes from outside: the corporation draped in a rainbow, the brand that discovers inclusion whenever it becomes profitable. It is harder to recognise the same mechanism in someone who speaks like us, moves through our spaces and knows our fears.

We expect a different kind of understanding from him. That is why his words can get closer.

“I know how you feel” can be comforting. It can also lower the defences of someone who needs to feel understood. What matters is what comes next.

Belonging to the same community does not automatically make us sensitive, competent or selfless. We can support one another. We can also hurt one another. And among ourselves, we can reproduce the same conditions of acceptance from which we once hoped to escape.

Outside, we were asked to make ourselves less visible. Inside, it can sometimes feel as though being seen requires us to become younger, leaner and more marketable.

At that point, welcome begins to look like selection.

Not everyone encounters these messages from the same place of confidence.

One person watches a video, rolls his eyes and scrolls on. Another watches it after being rejected, after a night when no one spoke to him, after deleting a photograph because he could not bear to look at himself.

You do not know what kind of day you are reaching him on.

For some people, their relationship with their body is uncomplicated. For others, it is tangled up with years of shame and silence, with the struggle to feel finally entitled to exist without apology. These are serious things. They do not become less serious because we discuss them in a short video with cheerful music underneath.

The danger is that the message will be heard like this: if I am still alone, it is because I have not tried hard enough. If nobody chooses me, it is because I have failed to look after myself. If I feel bad, I must still have more work to do on myself.

And what about everyone else? The way we treat one another? The spaces we call inclusive? When do they enter the conversation?

If the answer is always to modify the individual, nobody ever has to question the welcome he receives.

I will not pretend that appearance plays no part in desire. It does. We have tastes, preferences and attractions that cannot be imposed by decree.

But there is an enormous distance between not desiring someone and treating him as a person of lesser value. We can choose whom we want to sleep with without turning everyone else into a body in need of repair.

And we can love the gym without turning it into the place where we earn the right to go to the beach.

Anyone helping me should also be able to say this: you can begin living now. While you train, while you change, or while you decide that you do not want to change. You do not have to postpone everything until some future version of yourself arrives.

The version that, conveniently, is never quite ready.

I left a critical comment beneath one of these videos. Later, I could no longer see it. I do not know why it disappeared.

But I do know that the question remains, even without that comment and without the name of the person who posted the video. It concerns the way we speak to people when we know they may be vulnerable. It concerns what we are prepared to suggest in exchange for attention.

I want to be able to ask for help without being told that I am defective. I want the idea of “self-care” to leave room for rest, health, limitations and age. For a body that does not have to be displayed as proof that it has been loved.

My body is not an application for admission.

Before you offer me a programme, at least let me answer your question.

Perhaps I did not go dancing.

Perhaps I simply wanted to be heard.

— MOREL