Gay Men’s Bodily Attractiveness: Why do gay men have such HIGH standards??

 It is evident that many gay men feel a constant pressure to look a certain way. Some of these idealizations include but are not limited to having six-pack abs, a V-cut body shape, toned arms and legs, and having little to no body fat in the midsection. Although these desired bodily features are not impossible to attain, they become unrealistic in the sense that gay men expect themselves and others (friends and dating partners) to meet these standards. But why is it that gay men feel that they need to meet these specific physical standards? And is it true gay men have higher physical attractiveness standards than do straight men or straight women?

These questions are tricky because there is not just one simple answer. I will point out a two perspectives that might shed light on this issue.

1. Creating a High Standard through Target Marketing

One reason gay men might place such a high premium on their physical attractiveness is that they are constantly being exposed to an ideal. This ideal can be seen in various media and business advertisements targeted towards gay male consumers, and these almost always depict shirtless, muscular gay male models (note the image). It is very common to see this marketing strategy used in the gay community. Many gay businesses, bars, and events utilize the attractive appeal of a male model in order to attract the attention of young, gay audiences. Let’s not forget Grindr! However, by exposing gay men to these ideal standards, gay men may feel a need to change their behavior (exercise, eating, etc.) in order to reduce the discrepancy between how they look and how the standard is supposed to look. Though, this may be no different from the process that straight women and straight men go through to meet similar standards. For example, straight women are also exposed to fashion and beauty advertisements depicting thin, attractive women. Nonetheless, it is important to note that even though women are constantly striving to achieve an “ideal thin” body size, gay men feel a need to not only be thin, but to also be muscular.. This key distinction may reflect the higher body standards for gay men and the increased pressure to meet these standards.

2. Perpetuating the Standard through Partner Preferences

Although quite intuitive, another reason why gay men may feel a great desire to have an ideal body is to attract high-quality dating or romantic partners. There is evidence to suggest that gay men place exceptionally high value on physically attractive partners, similar to straight men

. Unlike straight men however, gay men have an increasingly difficult time finding a romantic partner because gay men represent a significantly smaller percentage of the population. Imagine taking your potential dating pool and shrinking it by 80-90%. Because of this, gay men may perceive a greater urgency to emphasize their bodily features in order to attract suitable partners that are not as abundant in the general population. In turn, this may cause gay men to be extremely picky when it comes to selecting a partner as well.  For instance, it is likely that a gay man will want to select among other gay men who meet or closely resemble the bodily attractiveness standard. This may cause other gay men (those do not meet or resemble “the ideal”) to feel rejected or generally uncomfortable with their body because they are not able to attract a desirable partner.

Body image is a huge concern among many gay men, and the standards for a desirable body are getting higher. Even though straight women and straight men face similar concerns in regards to their body image, it is important to understand that gay men are under extreme pressure to conform to these standards, which may be the result of the different dating and marketing environments that gay men inhabit.

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The Aftermath of a Heart Attack...It Could still be a Killer!!

     A heart attack is a life-threatening medical condition in which the blood flowing to the heart suddenly stops. Damage to surrounding tissues occurs immediately. Surviving a heart attack ultimately depends on the severity of the condition, as well as how quickly it is treated.
     You will need to be treated for coronary heart disease after you survive a heart attack. Adherence to the correct form of treatment may help prevent future heart attacks. The thought of another heart attack is a frightening prospect. Knowing what to do after surviving one can significantly reduce the odds of suffering from another attack.

Take It Easy Until Your Doctor Says So

A heart attack is a life-threatening event — you are lucky to have survived such a serious medical event. You might start feeling better within a couple of weeks, but it’s crucial th

at you avoid pushing yourself too soon. It may take up to three months before your doctor gives you consent to go back to work.

Ease back gradually into your everyday routine so you don’t risk a relapse. You may have to modify your daily activities if they are stressful. Your doctor will likely advise you to hold off on sex and other physical activities for at least two weeks.

Clarify Any Questions About Medications

Medications are just one part of a typical post-heart attack treatment plan. The medications your doctor prescribes you will be based on how much your heart tissue was damaged as well as your other risk factors. Your doctor might prescribe drugs for

• high blood pressure (hypertension)
• high cholesterol
• chest pain
• diabetes
• weight loss
• overall discomfort

  Makeover Your Lifestyle

  A heart-healthy lifestyle can complement a medical treatment plan for heart disease. Consider your current lifestyle habits and look for ways you might improve them.

  Exercise  

  As long as your doctor gives you the go-ahead, you may begin an exercise program after you have recovered from a heart attack. Regular exercise is certainly important for weight maintenance, but it also works your muscles — the most important muscle being your heart. Any form of exercise that gets your blood pumping is beneficial. When it comes to heart health, however, aerobic exercise is best. Examples include:

  
  • swimming
  • bicycling
  • jogging or running
  • walking at a moderate to brisk pace

  

  These forms of exercise help increase the amount of oxygen in your body and also strengthen the heart’s ability to pump it through the bloodstream to the rest of your body. As an added bonus, regular aerobic exercise also helps reduce hypertension, stress, and cholesterol.
• If you notice any unusual symptoms during exercise, such as prolonged shortness of breath, weak limbs, or chest pain, stop right away and call 911

  Eat Right

  A low-fat, low-calorie diet has been proven to help prevent the risk for a heart attack. However, if you have already had a heart attack, eating right is simply a must to prevent future occurrences. Avoid trans fats and saturated fats whenever possible. These fats directly contribute to plaque formation in the arteries. When your arteries become clogged, blood can no longer flow to the heart, resulting in a heart attack.
  Eating too many calories and being overweight can also strain your heart. Controlling your weight and eating a balance of plant foods, lean meats, and low-fat dairy products can help. Avoid animal fats. Instead, eat fats that come from plant sources, such as olive oil or nuts.

  Quit Smoking

  You may have considered quitting in the past, but doing so is even more crucial after a heart attack. Smoking is a risk factor for heart disease because it increases your blood pressure and risk for clots by reducing oxygen cells within the bloodstream. This means that your heart works harder to pump blood and has fewer healthy oxygen cells to maintain optimal performance. Quitting now can significantly improve your overall health and also reduce the occurrence of future heart attacks. Be sure to avoid secondhand smoke, as this poses similar dangers in terms of heart health.

  Control Other Risk Factors

  Heart disease can run in families, but the majority of heart attacks may be attributed to lifestyle choices. Aside from diet, exercise, and smoking habits, it’s important to control other risk factors that might contribute to future heart attacks. Talk to your doctor about:
  • hypertension
  • high cholesterol
  • diabetes
  • thyroid disease
  • unusual amounts of stress
  • mental health concerns, such as anxiety and depression

    Know When to Seek Medical Attention

    You’re at a huge risk for having another heart attack after you recover from your first one. It is vital that you stay in tune with your body and report any symptoms to your doctor immediately, even if they only seem slight. Call 911 if you experience:

    • sudden and extreme fatigue
    • chest pain, and pain that travels to one or both arms
    • rapid heartbeat
    • sweatiness (without exercising)
    • dizziness and/or faintness
    • leg swelling
    • shortness of breath

      Long-Term Outlook

      Improving your heart health after a heart attack depends on how well you adhere to your doctor’s treatment plan. It also depends on your ability to identify potential problems. You should also be aware of the difference in treatment outcomes between men and women post-heart attack. Researchers found that 42 percent of women die within one year of having a heart attack, compared to 24 percent of men.

      The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 735,000 people have heart attacks every year in the U.S., and that 210,000 of these are second heart attacks. Knowing your risk factors and making over your lifestyle can help you become a survivor for life.

What is Love? What is not Love? Do you know the difference?

     Love is a force of nature. However much we may want to, we can not command, demand, or take away love, any more than we can command the moon and the stars and the wind and the rain to come and go according to our whims. We may have some limited ability to cha

nge the weather, but we do so at the risk of upsetting an ecological balance we don't fully understand. Similarly, we can stage a seduction or mount a courtship, but the result is more likely to be infatuation, or two illusions dancing together, than love.

Love is bigger than you are. You can invite love, but you cannot dictate how, when, and where love expresses itself. You can choose to surrender to love, or not, but in the end love strikes like lightening, unpredictable and irrefutable. You can even find yourself loving people you don't like at all. Love does not come with conditions, stipulations, addenda, or codes. Like the sun, love radiates independently of our fears and desires.

Love is inherently free. It cannot be bought, sold, or traded. You cannot make someone love you, nor can you prevent it, for any amount of money. Love cannot be imprisoned nor can it be legislated. Love is not a substance, not a commodity, nor even a marketable power source. Love has no territory, no borders, no quantifiable mass or energy output.

One can buy sex partners and even marriage

 partners. Marriage is a matter for the law, for rules and courts and property rights. In the past, the marriage price, or dowry, and in the present, alimony and the pre-nuptial agreement, make it clear that marriage is all about contracts. But as we all know, marriages, whether arranged or not, may have little enough to do with love.

Sexual stimulation and gratification, whether by way of fingers, mouths, objects, fantasy play, whips and chains, or just plain intercourse, can certainly be bought and sold, not to mention used to sell other things. Whether sex should be for sale is another question entirely, but love itself can not be sold.

One can buy loyalty, companionship, attention, perhaps even compassion, but love itself cannot be bought. An orgasm can be bought, but love cannot. It comes, or not, by grace, of its own will and in its own timing, subject to no human's planning.

Love cannot be turned on as a reward. It cannot be turned off as a punishment. Only something else pretending to be love can be used as a lure, as a hook, for bait and switch, imitated, insinuated, but the real deal can never be delivered if it doesn't spring freely from the heart.

This doesn't mean that love allows destructive and abusive behaviors to go unchecked. Love speaks out for justice and protests when harm is being done. Love points out the consequences of hurting oneself or others. Love allows room for anger, grief, or pain to be expressed and released. But love does not threaten to withhold itself if it doesn't get what it wants. Love does not say, directly or indirectly, "If you are a bad boy, Mommy won't love you any more." Love does not say, "Daddy's little girl doesn't do that." Love does not say, "If you want to be loved you must be nice, or do what I want, or never love anyone else, or promise you'll never leave me."

Love cares what becomes of you because love knows that we are all interconnected. Love is inherently compassionate and emphatic. Love knows that the "other" is also oneself. This is the true nature of love and love itself can not be manipulated or restrained. Love honors the sovereignty of each soul. Love is its own law.

Bring on the Flux Capacitor...

     Oh to go back to the Future!!
There have been so many days that I sit on the couch and just wonder.....what if I COULD go back in time? What would I change? We all want to be rich, but what would I do to get there? We all want to be famous in one way or another, how would I get there? The friends we choose as time goes by, would I choose the same people again if they crossed my path. If I was to fall in love again, would it be with the same person, or someone I was with in the past that I let slip away? So many what ifs......Life is really strange as you get older. There always seems to be what ifs. What if I started working out in High School instead of smoking pot every day with friends? Would I be as big as Stallone? Like I said, A lot of what ifs.....
     The one thing that we can do as we get older, is take those what ifs, and turn them into realities today. If you want to be popular, make a name for yourself some way. You want to be rich, use that brain power and figure
out how.We, as adults, need to sit down , and make goals for ourselves. Write them down, Then check off each one as we complete them.
     What it comes down to is the only person to blame for the lives we have today, is ourselves. We have always been in control. But we choose to play the victims. You don't like your job, get another one. You are not happy with the person you are with. End it, move on, and let love find you for once. Stop looking for it all the time. It will avoid you.

     Well, I have to get ready for work...until next time, here's to going back and doing it right the second time around!!

~JC

A Cheating husband

     Well, It has been a while since I have posted anything here on my blog. There is a reason for that and I will now explain....

     About a year ago, my husband out of the blue had asked me for a divorce. Took me and everyone that was around, by surprise, when he yelled it out at the top of his lungs while doped up on Aderal and drunk on liquor while we were at our friends wedding. Surprise!! He had been having an affair with another guy a little younger than him named Bob Clasby. He was a newly, out of the closet, still living at home with mommy and daddy gay, who would do anything for Jason, and wait on him hand a foot. Mind you, I worked 70 hours a week, different hours than my Husband did, and I was also going through a severe depression because my sister, that I spoke about who had cancer in an earlier blog, died. It hit me hard. So I wasn't there for Jason emotionally or physically. The only thing I knew or cared about was waking up, eating, going to work, sleeping , and shitting. Nothing else mattered. That is how big of a dark hole I fell into. It didn't matter to Jason. So he ran away from the problem to find comfort elsewhere, instead of maybe grabbing me by the hand and saying,"Babe, we are going to the doctor. We need to get you out of this funk." Nope just ran off and found the next dick that possibly had a thing for him and had sexual contact with him. How's that for better or worse?

     Now, flash forward a year....
I have been through counseling, got myself together and am feeling better everyday. I had even for the past year, told my husband that I was willing to look past what happened, due to the circumstances and that he didn't know what to do. During this time I had separated myself from him and moved back with my parents for about 5 months.

     What's happening today.....
I have for the last year, worked on myself, got my credit straightened out, secured a new place (for my husband and Me) because Jason was claiming personal bankruptcy because he let the bar get way behind on bills, and behind on the lease. Racked up all the credit cards and ended up being $160,000.000 in debt. Now mind you, he is going to lose his house. So like I said , I secured a place for us to live as a family. Little did I know that the relationship with Bob Clasby, was going to continue. He came over to OUR house when and stayed there, he stayed the night (Jason claims he slept in the spare room on the Futon which I think isn't the truth) and the continued to go out together and hang out. It's funny I asked Jason for 2 hours a week on the days I was off because he said with this bankruptcy and his BIG shows he was always busy so I said,  "Either Monday or Tuesdays." I couldn't even get that. But he had time to do other things with friends and Bob and didn't seem to be busy then. He was able to push everything aside for them, Just not for me.

     What I have noticed in the past year, that my husband has narcissistic personality traits, and that Bob Clasby has obsession and possessive traits. You can tell what I am talking about by looking at Bob's Facebook page (see the inserted pictures of him and Jason.) Well all I can say is Bob has his nose so far up Jason's ass that Jason is just loving it. And Bob loves it too because he gets to throw it in my face. "Ha! Look at me, I got your Husband and you are still married, I WIN" That's the mentality. I swear it takes every ounce of energy not to rip his face off every time I see him!! I know I would just get in trouble.

     The present here and now......
I have filled out the divorce papers and went to the court house to try and File them but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I sat in my car for 1.5 hours and did nothing but cry. I had 2 people come up to my car and ask me if I was ok. Of course, I told them Yes, but truly I wasn't. I was hurting inside. Something inside was tugging at my heart and I just couldn't go through with it. I was hurting, and I was hurting bad. I decided to go home and try another day. I just wasn't ready.

     Ironically, 2 weeks ago, Jason told me that he and Bob were just friends and that is all they were was friends. Now, Bob has posted that he and Jason are in a relationship. After 2 weeks? That proves my point that Jason was nothing but deceitful and had lied to me for the past year. They had been having an affair for the past year, while Jason lead me on this whole time because he didn't want to lose his health insurance. That's ok, because Karma is a bitch, and she will come for her revenge!!

So this is where I am at in this point in my life. Being strung along, lied to, and just being treated awful. I feel like there has to be something going on in Jason's life because he is not the same person I have known for the last 12 years.

     Until next time......