These days I feel like everyone is an extra from Euphoria or one of the D’Amelio sisters. It’s like every fluffy-haired boy with a square jawline is getting signed to a limited-run series on Hulu or Prime that features a Taylor Swift song in the trailer. Why can’t someone write me a coastal love story set to This is Me Trying? I’m only twenty-six. Which is incidentally the youngest age anyone has ever been, and at the same time makes me an ancient cryptid who deserves to be put away. Still, I feel like I missed my opportunity to be a teen heartthrob. In fact, I am quite certain I have missed my opportunity, and it honestly feels unethical for me to try for it now at my big age.
Just once I want to Stun in New Photo, or at the very least elicit some positive response. But I haven’t seen a normal-looking person on TV or in a movie since I was nine (needle drop: Lana Del Rey’s A&W). Whenever I watch a movie pre-9/11 I’m always struck by the teeth and hairlines, and how our movie stars could still be recognizably human. Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, Jack Nicholson, Bill Murray— they were all allowed to play convincing romantic male leads, despite their squarely ordinary appearances. Now if you aren't Jacob Elordi or Taylor Zakhar Perez you are deemed unfit to be seen, too ugly to still reasonably pass as a person. Even our character roles have to be shiny poreless eggs with Disney princess eyes and abs you used to only see on the side of an Abercrombie bag or the underwear aisle at T.J. Maxx. No one should have to be hot and interesting, both already take entirely too much effort on their own.
I want to take a year-long hermitage where I can’t look at another person or my own reflection. Maybe that will stop me from comparing myself. Burrow away in a cave or a hollowed tree somewhere upstate, and really find who I am meant to be. I’ll finally follow a recipe from a cookbook and spend the extra two minutes it takes to floss, AND do it properly.
It’s just that if my gums wanted to be picked at so badly— why are they always bleeding?
I want to believe this is what I need, that this would solve all of my problems, but I’m also afraid that when I finally emerge, the Punxsutawney Phil of body dysmorphics, I’ll be unrecognizably cronesque. More Grandmama Addams than Morticia. Hell, I’d even settle to be a Pugsley at this point, but I doubt that this sabbatical would be that effective.
I woke up the other day to this really amazing trend where the muscle gays were showcasing photos of their bodies before they started going to the gym and then again after. The goal, if we are to assume such a thing could have a purpose beyond promoting one’s OnlyFans or reminding the general public that “yup,” they are “still hot,” is to show their fitness improvement. Look how much better they are now, and how hideous they once were. Aren’t their bodies divine? As I comb through these endless thirst posts, all I can think is how I would truthfully kill to have their “before” bodies, and how most days I feel like one of those damn clay ‘Bubbie Dolls’ Cher was always sculpting in Witches of Eastwick.
My friends tell me I need to stop talking so badly about myself. This is very true, and I can’t imagine that referring to my body as “human-shaped” is doing wonders for my psyche either. But am I the only one who feels like positive self-talk is a performative sham? Whenever I try halfheartedly to compliment myself, I see another version of me (he’s blonde) turning to his friend (a Mark Ruffalo type) saying, “That is the ugliest effing boy I have seen in my whole life.” Then they high-five and have a really loud and wet makeout session (Taylor, I’ll let you choose the song for this scene). The whole thing makes me horny and confused.
I wish there was an easier way to love yourself. If my email—which has recently been compromised in a security breach from neopets.com, is to be believed, then gorilla pee might just be the answer I am looking for. For months now, I have been getting the most vulgar and urinarilly unique spam emails. I know that these are phishing attempts, but the subjects seem so pointed I can’t help but feel offended. If I had realized my desktop cookies were providing my personalized insecurities to cyber-terrorists I would have turned them off ages ago, but that would also imply I knew how to do that type of thing, or knew what a ‘cookie’ even was.
Here is an honest-to-goodness list of things my email claims can be cured or affected through the usage of gorilla piss: Can’t sleep? Gorilla piss. Need male enhancement? Gorilla piss. Nature’s Insulin? Gorilla piss. Hair loss? Gorilla piss. Constant debilitating comparison to Instagram models named Whey? Do I even need to say it? Go gorilla piss girl!
Maybe this is why I’ve been trying to read the same book since the third grade. My audiobook app, Libby, informs me that many books should only take 7 hours to complete, and this drives me utterly crazy. Libby, girl, you were wrong for that one. I’m on to you, and know that this is surely a cruel trick. Every book takes 2 weeks to complete. That is why the library has that timeframe as their checkout period, to suggest otherwise would be actively sinister. Even still, I probably could finish reading a book a scoche faster if the majority of my brain’s CPU wasn’t constantly spent spiraling out about my own appearance. I feel like every day I wake up, and put my brain on one of those King Arthur apple corer/slicers, and throughout the day I spin the handle round and round until, when it’s finally time for bed, all I have left is a long curled ribbon that hardly resembles the initial fruit. Get yours through the link here (non spon). Then I spend the rest of my night trying to mush and reform the spiral back into it’s initial shape, so I can start the whole self-mutilating thing over again bright and early the next day. This is also why, even though I am exhausted, I can’t sleep. I’ve found that the only thing that works (sans gorilla piss, since I am still unable to access the dark web) is furniture restoration videos.
There is just something about the sound of sandpaper on an MCM credenza or the way that paint thinner bubbles up the finish in these noxious globules like slime videos for Home Depot dads. The whole arduous process soothes me, it’s my Cocomelon. That was until I found out that one of these DIYers, who’s videos once mind-numbingly lulled me to sleep, was hot. Suddenly I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to see what that paint stripper would do if poured on me, would it reveal something worthwhile in my veneer or just more deep-set water stains? He spends his days building ornate and beautiful creations while I sit in my bed in an oversized skull tee I’ve had since sophomore year, absolutely gnashing my way through another bag of wet-ass baby carrots.
Comparison is a killer. Rationally, I do know this. But at the same time, whenever I see someone be hot and successful I want to eat my own fingernails. Just pop each one off right down to the nub— but this will never be enough. (And not just because I only have a finite number of nails to devour.)
I’ve tried the whole “clean up your social media” thing. I’ve unfollowed fitness influencers and movie stars, and I’ve tried to connect with more academics and artists, but that too has become poisonous for me. Online, even skilled painters have to effectively become underwear models. In many ways, your body, or digital presentation, has been converted to the only product. We all know why you really came to my page and it isn’t just because you’re a woodchopping enthusiast. TikTok is lousy with this kind of man. Men in their Greenpoint lofts hurling paint at canvases in their underwear like self-professed Jackson Pollock’s.
And I say all this with no disrespect, if I looked like the strongest sheep herder in my village I too would film myself in a G-string splatter painting some tarp like the mom from The Princess Diaries. There’s nothing wrong with using sex to sell yourself, but it is increasingly feeling like the only option for anyone who wants to break through. And thus starts the whole horrible comparison game once more. If I can’t mold myself into this kind of man, into an idealized form, then do I have any business taking up any space at all? Do I deserve to be seen, if I can't make myself something lovely to look at?
The men I’ve loved have rosacea and dry patches of skin and a few hairs in their moustaches that always stick up. They get poppy seed bagel stuck in their teeth and sometimes have small dark coffee stains on their shirts. They laugh so hard spittle flies from their mouths and say “like” and “umm.” Everyone I have ever loved looks more like this than the image of perfection I have in part created in my mind. It’s so much easier to love anyone else than to love even some part of myself.
On my way home from work, I saw a boy wearing a steampunk top hat like a cartoon tap-dancing frog and teeny tiny square glasses. He wore an oversized purple Church musical tee and was running past me like Naruto. I wondered how he conceptualized himself, wondered if it took him an hour and a half to get dressed that morning, was he free from second-guessing, liberated from self-doubt? Did he not care, or did he just not allow his obsessions to run his life?
Anyways, here’s a link to his top hat, maybe it’ll help.
I deeply feel you on the social media clean up... it feels like no matter how hard I try, the content I want to avoid is always there. I’ve even felt that, now, it’s even worse than before at really jumping from something innocuous to something that will harm my mental state pretty severely