PJ BRENNAN

Gym rats.

‘I feel like I could have been really effeminate if I hadn’t gone to the school I went to, where I felt like I had to toughen up. If I’d have been able to relax, prance around, sing in the street, I might be a different person now. I thank my dad for that, for not allowing me to go down that path. Because it’s probably given me the unique quality that people think I have.’

That’s a quote from Russell Tovey from a

2015 interview with the Guardian. When it was first published, trust me, I went in on him. I had a problem with him creating a hierarchy of masculinity within the gay community. I felt faggy just reading it, my twig-like arms struggling to hold the newspaper.

But there was more to what he was saying.

For starters, as he made clear in the same interview, he was – and still is – a rarity: an openly gay actor who most audiences ‘accept’ as straight. I remember when Hollyoaks called me up to the office to let me know they were making my character gay and my heart broke.

I felt like a failure. I’d been successfully ‘tricking’ people for a year that my character was straight, but clearly, I wasn’t as good as I thought I was. Intrinsically, this meant to me that I was not good at acting. A gay actor who has leading man looks, like Tovey, has to deal with the prospect of never quite having the career he is capable of or deserving of, simply because of his sexuality.

So, Russell went to the gym and bulked up. And for sure, it’s helped him, or it certainly hasn’t hurt him. He’s working steadily, his social media accounts have huge followings, and he smiles like he’s actually happy. That cute ass dog doesn’t hurt either.

By contrast, I’m lonely. I see a lot of muscular men dating each other and I’m officially at the Russell Tovey fork in the road. I want to try to bulk up because I think it will make me happier.

Most of you are shaking your head thinking, ‘Someone needs to tell this guy that the gym won’t make him happy.’

Well, they say money can’t buy you happiness, but I’ve always believed that money certainly affords you the time and space to find happiness.

Perhaps this obsession with

masculinity and gym bodies is our own internalised dysphoria. Maybe

we want to simply ‘pass’. And what’s so wrong with

that?

The gym won’t solve my problems but I’m not so sure it’ll hurt them either. If I sat more comfortably in my body, maybe I’d shine a bit more of my light on this world. You know, some of that good shit that makes everyone smile.

Hear me out, please. Some critics believe there are those within the trans community who place too much importance on their external physical appearance, and in effect reinforce patriarchal and misogynistic practices.

However, others argue that a focus on ‘passing’ or being ‘unclockable’ is an important factor in maintaining personal safety. If some kind of body dysphoria is involved and external modifications help alleviate that pressure, who are we to judge?

Perhaps this obsession with masculinity and gym bodies is our own internalised dysphoria. Maybe we want to simply ‘pass’. And what’s so wrong with that?

If the trans community can afford a bit of leeway to those members who want to work on their external appearance to match their inner vision of themselves, why are we, the gay community, so quick to tear each other down? Why was I so prepared to have an opinion of Russell Tovey’s body as though I claimed some sort of possession over it? Sure, he’s in the public eye and there are young impressionable people reading his interview, but he was being honest and attempting to make sense of something we all struggle with.

If you’ve ever been attacked because someone clocked you as gay, even as you tried your best to mask it, you know how that feels. Russell sums it up quite well in the same interview:

‘If they’d asked for my wallet or phone I would have understood it. But it wasn’t anything to do with that. They just wanted to fucking hurt me.’ His mere existence was crime enough.

And now he says he doesn’t feel that innate fear because he started going to the gym. And I effectively spat on this interview when it was first published in 2015. Today, I’m glad he doesn’t feel that fear anymore. I’d love to know what that feels like. I might try the gym and see if it helps.

And you can judge, I guess I’ll just deal with it.