“Whenever we left the gym, he would feel like shit about it. “He took more steroids and he definitely got bigger and stronger, but he never felt good about it,” Waltman says. It’s also where he gained his internet fandom for growing huge, or “a monster,” as Waltman put it. It’s this community where Dovak found most solace in his size. It’s a site for all the guys who spent their childhoods stuffing pillows under their shirts or staring a little too long at big-bellied men in the supermarket.” (Grommr does not advocate for silicon injectors, which is a small portion of the gainer subculture, and the site’s online community has been adamantly against silicone enhancements.) The site coins itself as a place, “for guys of a similar mindset - that bigger is, most often, better. Gay men are also more prone to eating disorders and other body dysmorphia conditions that result in poor self image.īut until the gainer community became more popular with the introduction of a niche hook up app dedicated to them, “Grommr,” larger gay men had few places to find satisfaction or admirers of their bigger appearance. But the community isn’t only based around fetish - the gainer community is well known to encourage body positivity, which is sorely needed among LGBTQ communities.Ĭompared to straight men, gay men are more prone to focus heavily on their weight and appearance. The community lives online, mostly, with Tumblr blogs dedicated to idolizing bigger guts and monstrous testicles. Though the trend has appeared to decline recently - at least among trans women in New York, according to Radix - as quality care for trans-identifying people continues to grow, it’s now become more visible among the body modifying subculture of gainers.
“You’re desperate to change your body, people will go through great lengths. “When people come in and say silicone, they don’t really know what they mean because it could be anything,” says Asa Radix, senior director of research and education for Callen-Lorde in New York City, an LGBTQ-focused health center, adding that some of his patients even had quick cement or peanut butter injected in them. It makes health experts reticent to even call the mixture “silicone,” at all. In one Florida woman’s case, tire sealant and cement were both injected into her face.
But over the past five years, there have been a number of news reports exposing “pumping parties,” where groups of trans women pool their money to get injected with silicone, and the practice has now become more underground and more risky.Īnd much of that has to do with what’s being put in the mixture, which many times is unknown by those who receive the injections.
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Later videos on his channel, like “ How To Know If A Guy Likes You” or “ Things Girls Should Know About Guys,” talk about heterosexual relationships in the first person “I know that anytime I’ve liked a girl …” and so on.Among trans women, silicone injections are a well known way to achieve the ultimate body: curvy butt, thick thighs or larger breasts. The insincerity is quite painful to watch. In June 2011, in response to what he has said were rude comments about his sexuality, he posted a video titled “ I’m Not Gay.” In it, you can clearly hear him artificially deepening and flattening his voice and see him restricting his mannerisms. Franta-who’s from a small town so deep into southeastern Minnesota that it’s basically in Wisconsin-began vlogging in August 2010. YouTubing becomes an extension of closeting.įranta, 22, provides perhaps the best example of YouTubing as closeting. In other words, for someone who doesn’t want to give the game away about his sexual identity, YouTubing is perfect. Strangers who, say, watch a YouTube vignette in which a young man talks about his perfect girl have no reason to doubt nor any reason to question the content of the video or the authority upon which the vlogger speaks. Vlogging also allows people to construct a narrative of their lives, a narrative that can go largely unchallenged-except in the comments section, of course-and, therefore, have only a loose grounding in reality.