That’s why we’ve decided to dedicate this entire issue of Attitude to exploring how we feel about our bodies. And what better way to start than by asking you, our readers, how you feel about yours?
The results of the Attitude Body Survey (see p9) may confirm what many of us have suspected for a long time but even so, they make for eye-watering reading. Perhaps most significant for me is the fact that 84 per cent of you feel that as gay men, you’re under particularly intense pressure to have a good body.
There are various theories behind this. My colleague and Attitude’s editor-at-large Matthew Todd suggests in his brilliant book Straight Jacket that, as many of us are made to feel unwanted or rejected as we’re growing up, we can spend much of our adult lives trying to prove to the world — and to ourselves — that we are good enough, that we are attractive, that we are worthy of love.