Don’t let body shame keep you from celebrating Pride

Mashable is celebrating Pride Month by exploring the modern LGBTQ world, from the people who make up the community to the spaces where they congregate, both online and off.

Ryan Sheldon has been on the cover of a magazine, on a billboard in Times Square, even interviewed on national television. But each June, the brawn model and motivational speaker is reminded of one place he hasn’t been: an LGBTQ Pride parade. 

For people with eating and body image disorders, the circumstances of isolation have been particularly challenging.

“It’s not that I don’t want to celebrate my identity and my community,” Sheldon explains. “Of course I do. I just don’t feel comfortable there.” 

Sheldon, who is an ambassador for the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), is one of the many queer people impacted by eating and body image disorders. The 33-year-old body acceptance advocate from Los Angeles was diagnosed with binge-eating and body dysmorphic disorder in 2015, before coming out as gay two years later. 

“I was a late bloomer,” he jokes, in a phone interview with Mashable.

Before the pandemic, Sheldon was on a national speaking tour, sharing his still-in-progress journey of self-acceptance. Last June, he was due to speak at his first Pride parade about the body image challenges facing LGBTQ people. 

That, Sheldon says, “obviously didn’t happen.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a world-shifting event for all of us. But for people with eating and body image disorders, the circumstances of isolation have been particularly challenging. 

A UK study published in February linked pandemic-related stress and anxiety with an increased likelihood of negative body perception. NEDA reported a 40% increase in calls to its emergency hotline from March 2020 to March 2021. What’s more, jokes and even public shaming surrounding pandemic weight gain have become disturbingly common. 

“This is just one of the tragedies that’s following on the heels of the COVID crisis.”

“In many ways, it’s been disastrous,” Cynthia Bulik, the founding director of the UNC Center for Excellence for Eating Disorders, said in a recent interview with CBS News. 

“This is just one of the tragedies that’s following on the heels of the COVID crisis.” 

The end to social distancing comes with complicated feelings, particularly for those with fraught relationships to our bodies. With vaccines rolling out at a steady clip across the U.S., the sense of relief that may have come for some with the beginning of isolation — “I finally had an excuse for why I shouldn’t go on dates,” Sheldon recalls thinking — is suddenly giving way to everything from social anxiety to agoraphobia.

That our physical bodies are being gradually invited back into the world, which is rife with unattainable beauty standards and weight discrimination, is causing acute stress among many. On top of that, for LGBTQ people, coming back to a super-charged atmosphere like public Pride celebrations, full of their own politics and quirks, can be overpowering, triggering, and even toxic.

“You’re not alone,” Sheldon says to those feeling overwhelmed by the timing of it all. “I don’t know if I have the best answer for you, or the right answer…But you’re not alone.”

Eating disorders disproportionately affect LGBTQ people

Dr. Abigail Saguy, a professor of sociology at UCLA, has spent her career studying subcultures and power dynamics. In her book Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are, Saguy examines how the social ritual of “coming out” occurs not just in LGBTQ communities, but among undocumented immigrants, sexual assault survivors, religious groups, and fat people.

“‘I’m fat. That’s just who I am. And I am not going to be ashamed of it.'”

“The idea of ‘coming out of as fat’ originated with lesbians, who often identified as feminist and fat, and who were able to extrapolate their experience of coming out as lesbian to this other experience of coming out as fat,” Saguy explains. “They really paved the way for straight fat activists.” 

In coming out as fat, Saguy says, individuals aren’t letting other people in on some sort of secret. Rather, they’re choosing to live openly in the body they have, and “refusing to apologize or be shamed.” Instead of talking around their bodies or buying into diet culture, many are reclaiming the “fat” descriptor as part of their identity.

“These are people who are saying, ‘I’m fat. That’s just who I am. And I am not going to be ashamed of it. I am not going to be silenced or put down because of it,'” Saguy says.

It makes sense that such a revolutionary idea would begin in the LGBTQ community; not only because of queer people’s historically badass activism, but also because of the widespread need for body acceptance among LGBTQ people. Of course, how that is experienced, Saguy says, varies among gay, lesbian, transgender, and nonbinary individuals:

“The gay community is supposed to be such an inclusive community, but so many of us feel excluded because of the way we look.”

• According to NEDA, though gay men represent only 5% of the total male population, 42% of men with eating disorders identify as gay. What’s more, NEDA says gay men are seven times more likely to self-report episodes of binge-eating and 12 times more likely to report purging, when compared to heterosexual males.

• Also per NEDA, females who identified in a 2020 study as lesbian, bisexual, or “mostly heterosexual,” were roughly twice as likely to report binge-eating one or more times per month in the last year when compared with straight women.

• And a 2015 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health found transgender participants were significantly more likely to be diagnosed with an eating disorder than cisgender heterosexual women — the group most often associated with them. 

“The gay community is supposed to be such an inclusive community, but so many of us feel excluded because of the way we look.” Sheldon says. “It almost feels like this known thing, that everybody sacrifices [a healthy body image] to be accepted in the LGBTQ community.” 

Pride spaces can trigger feelings of shame

No matter which side of the kink-at-Pride discourse you land on, there’s no denying public Pride celebrations tend to include showing a lot of skin. Yes, the sometimes hyper-sexualized atmosphere of Pride parades can inspire participants to sport booty shorts, crop tops, banana hammocks, and/or nipple pasties — but it’s also an outdoor activity in summer. As plenty of people living with eating and body image disorders can attest, it’s a notoriously triggering time for those who spend the rest of the year taking comfort in covering up.

“It is literally a parade of your person,” notes Sheldon, saying the annual deluge of Pride-related thirst traps on social media make him dread the month. The “Adonis-like” ideal for gay men, sometimes even described as a “Pride body,” has frustrated Sheldon his whole life, he says.

“You start comparing yourself and thinking, ‘I don’t look like that, so I don’t fit in,'” Sheldon shares. “That is something that plagues me all the time.”

Sheldon admits it can be hard to understand feelings of physical inadequacy coming from an actual model, but many of his experiences in the gay community have been enduringly harmful. From toxic “no fats, no fems” rhetoric on dating apps to rude remarks in LGBTQ bars, Sheldon has been bullied, shamed, and fetishized for how he looks.

“It’s an almost glorified thing,” he says. “People try to make jokes out of it, but I don’t know if they realize the severity of the harm they’re causing. It’s like they think it’s just normal.” 

Of course, Sheldon would like to join fat celebrators at Pride parades, those effervescent warriors who wear little more than a thong and fishnet stockings no matter their size; “I wish I felt empowered to do that,” he says. 

But that’s not where Sheldon is on his body acceptance journey. If you’re not there either, he says, theres’s no rush. If all the quiet time at home this past year taught him anything, Sheldon says, it’s that you should take your time to have the right, supportive experiences on your own terms. After all, it’s your body, your queerness, your life.

“I haven’t had that yet,” Sheldon says, adding that he usually spends Pride at private house parties with friends. “But who knows? Maybe this year I will.” 

Being a body acceptance ally to others and yourself

According to a recent Harvard University report on disordered eating, 28.8 million Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetime. That’s 9% of the U.S. population. We can work to make the world a safer, more welcoming space for ourselves, those who have or will develop an eating disorder, and future generations. 

“Oh, and don’t make people feel shitty!”

Fat acceptance is a growing space in activism (Saguy recommends books like The Fat Studies Reader, Fat: The Owner’s Manual, and Shadow on a Tightrope, if you want to learn more). 

To get involved as a body acceptance ally, Saguy urges speaking out against discrimination and stigma when you see it; being mindful of how you speak about your body and eating habits; and physically accommodating those who need it. That’s, of course, easier said than done.

“It all requires people to think outside of their own experience and put themselves in someone else’s shoes, which is harder than we think,” she says. “But with practice, it becomes easier.”

One Pride organization we spoke to is trying to make body inclusivity a priority at its events. Los Angeles Pride has worked with the nonprofit group Accessible Festivals to ensure welcoming support and accessibility for all who want to attend.

“We continue to prioritize all types of diversity, including body diversity, which we’re committed to highlighting in our activities and materials.” LA Pride board treasurer Gerald Garth said in an email to Mashable.

For Pride organizations looking to make their events more welcoming, NEDA’s associate director of communications Chelsea Kronengold suggested the following in an email:

• “Provide sturdy chairs without arms so people of all sizes and abilities have the option to sit down during the event.

• Organizers, sponsors, or vendors who are selling or giving away items should offer a range of extended sizes (ideally up to a 5x or 6x) and/or accessories that are not size-specific. Likewise, do not enlist sponsors or vendors who promote diet culture and/or harmful weight and body messages or products.

• Advocate for bathroom stalls that are accessible for larger people, as well as people who use mobility aids.

• Include people of all bodies in the parade itself. Representation of body shapes and sizes in the event proves the organizer is taking a body-inclusive approach from beginning to end.”

“My number one thing is education,” Sheldon says of what he recommends to those trying to help. “I know that I might be really boring when I say that, but educating yourself on what eating disorders are, what body acceptance is, what fat phobia and weight discrimination look like, these are all things that go a long way.”

After a pause, he adds: “Oh, and don’t make people feel shitty!” If some joke or comment you’re thinking about making could be interpreted as derogatory or hateful, he stresses, then just don’t make it.

For LGBTQ people with eating and body images disorders, NEDA has prepared a “Pride Month Checklist” that offers four steps for healthy celebration: 1. Celebrate myself as I am; 2. Celebrate others as they are; 3. Prioritize my mental health; and 4. Promote body diversity. 

“In a way, [social distancing] taught me that I needed to start really loving and valuing myself.” 

“I’ve only socialized with friends maybe a dozen times in the past year and a half,” says Sheldon. “In a way, [social distancing] taught me that I needed to start really loving and valuing myself.” 

By their very nature, all Pride parades and parties should offer LGBTQ people a chance to celebrate their unique identities. We know not all of them actually do that. But after one of the most hellish years in modern memory, you deserve to enjoy Pride. 

If you need to avoid your triggers right now, do that. Gather up your friends, turn on your favorite LGBTQ movie, and relax. There are tons of unconventional ways to celebrate, even if it’s your first time, even if it’s just you, a mirror, and a few positive affirmations. 

Conversely, if you need to get out into the streets and party, then do that! Gather up those same good friends, slap on your favorite outfit, and go have fun at one of the many events nationwide.  

“Just take care of yourself,” says Sheldon, emphasizing the important role mental health treatment has played in his life. “Maybe soon we’ll have our own Pride parade.”

If you feel like you’d like to talk to someone about your eating behavior, call the National Eating Disorder Association’s helpline at 800-931-2237. You can also text “NEDA” to 741-741 to be connected with a trained volunteer at the Crisis Text Line or visit the nonprofit’s website for more information.