The Very Thought Of It: Are gay dating apps giving us all body complexes?

I remember setting up my Gaydar profile in the early 2000s. Deciding on a name was hard enough - should you go all in? Maybe a sexual pun? Perhaps a clever play on words involving your real name? Next, an appropriate profile picture that showed my best angles but still was ‘me’, then filling in the details: age, location, what I’m looking for. And lastly your physical attributes: hair colour, eye colour, dick size (optional) and… body type.

Back then I was an awkward teenager for one main reason: my body. By the age of 18 I’d already developed a terrible relationship with food and a worse one with my body. I hated it and didn’t want anyone coming near it. This is an age where hormones and sex drive are running wild. Lots of gay friends were running around town being promiscuous (absolutely no judgment, in fact sometimes I wish I had the confidence back then), but I was petrified of sex. The thought of someone touching my body made me sick. I was much more of ‘let’s go on a date’ kinda gay.

But Gaydar wouldn’t allow you to complete your profile without attaching a label to your body. I remember choosing ‘large’ or ‘big’, I can’t remember the actual terminology. At the time I had lost over seven stone on a total food replacement diet, and although I felt better than I ever had done before about myself (which isn’t saying a lot), I still felt big. I still saw big. I still didn’t have a rippling six pack or abs. I didn’t have the ‘normal’ body for a gay teen. That is, what we are shown in gay media. I didn’t want my body to be a surprise to anyone if and when I met them in real life so to save embarrassment on both sides, I opted for ‘large’ or ‘big’. I did go on to meet people, I actually found my first boyfriend on Gaydar, but I vividly remember coming away from every single date with the same thought: He definitely thinks I’m too big.

You can imagine what that does to a young, impressionable person. And yes, most of it was in my head, but that doesn’t make it any less real. For a long time I believed I wasn’t worthy of going on dates with men who were smaller than me. I’m not saying that it was all due to having to label my body on these sites, but that was a big part of it. Imagine, just for a minute, being an 18-year-old who already had a turbulent relationship with his body, seeing people state on their profiles for all the world to see: NO FATS. NO CHUBBY MEN. NO ONE BIGGER THAN ME. It really was disheartening.

Fast forward 10 years and I found myself single and putting myself on Grindr. And guess what? Labelling your body was STILL a thing. In fact, MORE of a thing. There were more options to choose from, more options to obsess over, more options for men with body image issues to feel awful about. Being older (and I hope slightly wiser) now, I’m totally not surprised. Growing up gay now, like back then, is still lots about your appearance. I’m sure it is in the straight dating world too because, let’s face it, you really only meet potential dates or shags on sites or apps now no matter your orientation, and said sites and apps are ALL about physical first impressions. If you don’t like someone’s nose or facial hair or arms, you swipe right (or is it left?).

And part of me gets why you’d want to declare your body type. For starters, there are lots of people who are totally body confident, able to proudly state what’s under their sweater in order to attract a mate. I salute you. There’s also the factor of time - you definitely don’t want to waste yours, and god forbid you waste someone else’s who could have been sending cheesy one liners to some other poor folk, you’ll definitely know about it. It’s also a blatant, overt tactic for the people swiping to really whittle down their type. And yes, it is sometimes hard to see someone’s full physic if they choose to only post selfies as their profile pictures - you want to know what you’re dealing with.

But, and I’m very confident in my assumption here - there will be many many young gay guys who think and thought like me. ‘Am I large or stocky?’ ‘I’m not thin and I’m not fat.’ ‘Oh god, I’ll put this but I bet I don’t get any matches.’ ‘I’m just going to put this and see what happens.’ ‘I don’t have a six pack, I might as well say I’m large.’

You see the damage it does? Most gay men have some kind of trauma around their sexuality: coming out, bullied at school, terrorised in the streets. You think you’ve made it once you get through these things, but it’s almost as though you have to come out twice - once as gay, then again with your body type. And it doesn’t help that we’re served, in the main, images and content of bodies that are probably not achievable for the majority of people. So you’re left confused with what people will actually be looking for on dating apps.

It’s hard to suggest an alternative, other than taking the option off the sign up screen altogether, but we’ve been inbred with the notion that body comes before much else. Maybe we can just rely off profile pictures alone? Now that’s an idea! Maybe it will get people falling for types they only just presumed weren’t for them? What I do know is that if I were to sign up to a dating app now, I can guarantee that I would revert to the way of thinking that 18-year-old or 28-year-old Simon did - WTF do I put? WTF will they think of my body? Am I large or stocky? This is stressful.

I’m pretty sure I’m not on my own here. There will be hundreds of single gay men right this second logging on for the first time, filling out their profiles, choosing their preferences and picking their body types. I hope to god that most won’t be so in their head like I was about choosing one, but we all know there will be a fair few who aren’t confident just yet with their appearance. And my heart goes out to them. It’s hard, but it gets easier. I hope.