Body Dysmorphia in Gay Porn 

Body Dysmorphia In Gay Porn 

By: Taylor Spaziani

Tayte Hanson is a gay man who is involved in the adult film industry as a performer and speaks openly about his diagnosis of body dysmorphic disorder. In Tayte’s Vice article (2017), he explains that his body realistically is incredibly athletic and fit. He is 5’9”, 160 pounds, and measures at a cut 4.3% body fat percentage. He understands that by definition, he is literally one of the most fit bodies in the world. Tayte engages in extreme exercise like an hour of heavy lifting after an 8-mile run and eats perfectly clean. However, when Tayte looks in the mirror, he sees nothing but horror. Tayte explains that he has suffered from body dysmorphic disorder for most of his adult life, and consistently seems to feel inadequate even with the amount of success he has had helping himself and others look physically fit. 

            Tayte Hanson is also a porn performer which seems to add a heavy weight to his body dysmorphic disorder. In the adult industry, adult film performers sell their bodies for money and in order to keep up in  the industry, one must compete with the bodies around them. Although Tayte sees nothing wrong with selling his body for a living, he understands that he signed up for a career like this but was not aware of the mental health implications he would run into. He attributes his body dysmorphic disorder to reading “ trolls’ ” comments on his videos and images. Although he received advice to not read or listen to comments made by strangers on the internet, Tayte could not help himself but to see what others thought of him. He read comments like “it looks like you have been eating a lot,” or “you would look sexier with more muscle.” These kinds of comments were burned into Tayte’s mind, and he was forced to begin doing his work around not letting these become his everyday way of thinking. Tayte knows many others in his field that struggle with the same issues about their bodies that he does and knows many who have struggled so deeply that they have had to be hospitalized. He explains, this is an “issue that affects us all, regardless of age, sex, sexual orientation,” or occupation. However, he now realizes that when impossible standards of beauty become someone’s ultimate goal, mental health struggles will follow. 

            After reading Tayte’s story, I learned a lot about the feelings and affects associated with body dysmorphic disorder and can even relate to a lot of these feelings myself. I think that any occupation that promotes someone’s “perfect” body will inevitably lead to mental health issues with people employed in these professions. It is impossible for us humans to maintain a “perfect” body all of the time. Our bodies change throughout our lives and having a job that requires you to maintain a certain body type would create barriers around what some people can or cannot do regarding food and exercise. Although I absolutely support any job or career that uses one’s body for income, I do encourage and promote these individuals to seek support to maintain a healthy mindset about their appearance. After researching a few different people who struggle with this disorder, I found one prominent theme: body dysmorphic disorder is not simply experiencing low self-esteem. Body dysmorphic disorder is much more than this, and leaves someone stuck in a feeling of inadequacy about the way that they look.  

I feel a deep sense of empathy to those that struggle with body dysmorphic disorder, as I too, know what it feels like to obsess about looking different than how I would like. Counting calories, tracking macros, weighing myself on the scale, measuring my waist, structuring my diet days in advance, making body comparison photos of myself from years ago, using makeup to cover up my blemishes, using filters on my photos, the list goes on and on. I may not have ever been diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder, but I understand that it is very, very real. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be someone with a huge social media following and reading terrorizing comments about my appearance and my body. It only makes sense to me that celebrities and people who rely on their body image push themselves to meet society’s “perfect” beauty standards, and I can only have the deepest empathy for them.

 Read the full article here! https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/9kkg78/having-body-dysmorphia-in-gay-porn-is-a-nightmare

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