Back in 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic, a Black friend confided in me on chat. Here are his issues and my answers. He brought up three body issues: race, sexuality, and size. He’s a 6’4″ Black gay male and he’s related all three of these issues to me in conversations. With his permission, I’ll share his comments about being Black, being gay, and being tall.

He said:

Being Black? Well, there’s always the issue of avoiding a police encounter. I’m tired of being disrespected and ignored by white people even though I’m an educated professional person.

I can sympathize with his complaints but can’t empathize with them because I’m a short straight White man — the opposite in every category from my friend except for being male. Yet I know that race, sexuality, and size are real issues for many men. So I thank him for sharing these issues with me as a friend and I want to use the issues he raises to address the topic of body image. In fact, I will address three topics in this brief answer: race, sexuality, and size.  These issues are too important to ignore in the array of body issues dealt with in this blog post…and in our society.

Police harassment of Blacks, men especially, has been going on for a long time in the US. Here’s a photo from August 1970 of Black Panther members being rounded up and stripped in a search for weapons in Philadelphia, from the archives of Temple University.

Here’s the report that accompanies the photo.

The Black Panther Party had its local Philadelphia headquarters in a storefront on Columbia Avenue, from which a group of young men and women went forth to sell the party’s news paper and in other ways agitate for the Panthers’ Ten Point Program, calling for ‘land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace.’ When the party decided on Philadelphia as the site of its Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention – to begin to draft ‘a constitution that serves the people, not the ruling class, the Church of the Advocate was the location for the convention’s registration center, 1970. On the Saturday before the convention a murder was committed when a Philadelphia policeman was shot and killed in a Fairmont Park guardhouse. There were also other attacks on policemen. Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo used this opportunity to attack the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia. At dawn, August 31, 1970, heavily armed police raided three Panther Offices in the city, 2935 Columbia Avenue, 3625 Wallace Street, and 428 W. Queen Lane. Around the world flashed news photos of young black men arrested in the raids, who were ordered to strip. One photo showing them in their underwear and another showing them stripped naked at gunpoint. Reggie Schell, local defense captain, organizer for the party remembers it this way, ‘Each cop took an individual Panther and placed their pistol up the back of our neck and told us to walk down the street backward. They told us if we stumble or fall they’re gonna kill us. Then they lined us up against a wall and a cop with a .45 sub would fire over our heads so the bricks started falling down. Most of us had been in bed, and they ripped the goddamned clothes off everyone, women and men. They had the gun, they’d just snatch your pants down and they took pictures of us like that. Then they put us in a wagon and took us to the police station.’”

Black men have body image problems that have been imposed on them going back to slavery and continuing through the Jim Crow South after post-Civil War Reconstruction. Police harassment of Black is pervasive throughout the US. Black bodies in America cannot be understood or healed without consideration of their intersection with White bodies (white supremacy) and blue bodies (police). [Note: I use capital letters for Black and White since they are names of races; blues are not a race.]This was the thesis of Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies (Las Vegas: Central recovery Press, 2017).

Certainly we must continue to battle systemic racism through our work for justice, because racism is a social and cultural issue. For example, Black men are far more likely to be stopped on the street or for minor traffic violations than Whites. We must develop programs to sensitize police to their inherent racism in how they respond to Black men in particular. But having a Black body is also a personal issue that affects self-image.

Menakem, who is “a healer, and a therapist, not a philosopher or literary stylist” (he’s a licensed clinical social worker), maintains that the real seats of the problem are embedded in our “soul brain” and “lizard nerves.” Our bodies embody a history of how we respond to threats. The basic responses our lizard or reptilian brain offers are fight, flight, or freeze. (See Frank Answers About Embodied Racism.)

Menakem suggests that racial traumas are passed through families by the experiences of physical abuse; through unsafe structures, institutions, and cultural norms; and through our genes as is being revealed through recent work on epigenetics. Our bodies are actually shaped by our experiences, like Menakem’s grandmother’s hands that picked cotton. How many Black bodies slouch from stooping over to pick cotton? How much anger is passed on genetically from suffering the master’s lash?

Menakem proposes therapies leading to behavioral changes precisely by the interaction of these three bodies. Black bodies can’t be healed without healing White bodies and blue bodies because otherwise they will always be responding to White supremacy and blue harassment. If Black bodies embody the traumas of enslavement, KKK terrorism, and the memory of the hanging tree, White bodies also embody the traumas of our ancestors whose experiences compelled them to leave Europe for America. Nobody left Europe because their life there was good. For example, I wonder what traumas my grandfather experienced that brought him to America in the late 19th century at age 14 with his 12-year old brother in tow? What traumas did he pass on to his children (my father among them)? These traumas can be passed on from generation to generation unless we identify and recognize them and develop ways of acting on that information.

Did our White immigrant grandparents, poor and struggling, see themselves as a notch above Blacks because they were White? What experiences have blue bodies had that makes them so quick to take down Black bodies? Do they have an embodied fear of big Black men? Does blue culture itself have an embodied instinct to protect (White) social norms that gets transmitted through police culture?

Healing the racial traumas in our bodies (for Blacks, Whites, and blues) comes by “fostering resilience in our bodies and plasticity in our brains.” Menakem’s hope is that through reading the book in whole or in part readers will create a “little extra room in your nervous system for flow, for resilience for coherence, for growth and above all, for possibility.” I strongly recommend it for all Americans. All bodies—Black, blue, and White—need healing from the effects of embodied racism. We must continue to work for justice. But that can take us only so far. The real issues of racism are embodied. That’s what we need to work on in our own bodies and then in a mix of bodies — Black, White, and blue.

Black Gay Body Issues

My friend adds:

Being Black and gay? After being subjected to slurs and taunts from school mates, friends, and family in my country of origin, I moved to Chicago where I received insensitive comments from gay White boys.

Gay Black bodies aren’t immune from body image problems imposed on them either. Trawling through a grid of shirtless men on Grindr for sex or companionship is a regular pastime for single gay men. Often for queer Black men who don’t display the White beauty standards that predominate on social dating apps, navigating online sex can be frustrating. They either experience rejection (“Sorry, I’m not into Blacks”) or fetishes (“Oh, I’m SO into Blacks”).

Having struggled to be accepted by parents and friends, gay youths gravitate toward the gay ghettos of major cities. But just living in a gay-oriented community can be frustrating for gay men of color. Michael Hobbs wrote a shattering account of gay life in the gay ghettos in his article, “Together Alone,” in Huffington Post Highline (March 2, 2017). https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/gay-loneliness/

He reports that mental health issues, physical health issues, sexual addiction, erectile dysfunction, substance abuse and suicide are higher among gay men than among any other group in American society. These statistics would ring true in other countries as well. Gay men also embody traumas. Many struggled with coming out to family and friends and experienced marginalization by society. They gravitated toward gay ghettos like Boystown or the Castro but found that others came to those communities with the same baggage. Gay men grew up being perpetually wary of how straight people perceived them and found out that they also needed to be wary about how other gay men perceived them. Body shame abounds for gay men because, as my friend said, “they say mean things.” As one of Hobbes’ interviewees (Paul) put it: “…it’s not your gayness that gets you rejected. It’s your weight, or your income, or your race.”

Alex Keuroghlian, a psychiatrist at the Fenway Institute’s Center for Population Research in LGBT Health., says: “We see gay men who have never been sexually or physically assaulted with similar post-traumatic stress symptoms to people who have been in combat situations or who have been raped.” Gay men are “primed to expect rejection,” says Keuroglian. “We’re constantly scanning social situations for ways we may not fit into them.” Like most people, gay Blacks connect with their own kind where acceptance might be expected.

I’m not a gay man and I’ve never lived in a gay ghetto. I suppose I’ve lived in White ghettos for much of my life. And my reaction was to get out of them, to go to other places and experience more of the world’s diversity. I have actually lived in a Black community on the near south side of Chicago when I served as the pastor of a predominantly Black congregation in the 1980s. We had gay members in the congregation, both Black and White. I had two AIDS funerals in the church — Black brothers, both gay. The interesting thing is that our congregation’s Black youth got out of the community when they went off to college. Some returned to Chicago, but most got jobs after college and went where their jobs took them, just like the White college grads did.

My recommendations to young gay Blacks are: get off Grindr and get out of the gay ghetto. Many of you have good jobs. Instead of being together alone with your own “kind,” be alone together with all kinds of people. Socialize with school friends or business/professional associates. Navigate relationships with real people you can meet in the flesh rather than virtually on a dating app. You never know where it could lead.

Body Size Issues

My friend continues:

Being tall? Try finding a mattress to stretch out on or fit comfortably into an airplane seat, at least in coach.

I answered: As for body size issues, it’s true that tall people encounter a lot of size issues, which can be a real inconvenience to themselves and to others, like sitting in an airplane seat. Whole lists can be compiled of problems tall bodies present. (Just check Google.) My problem was the opposite. I was a small, skinny kid who wore glasses and was easily picked on by bullies in middle school. It ceased in high school, but I was still small for my age.

As I thought about these issues of body image, whether it’s one’s race, sexuality, or physical size, I have some suggestions to make.

First, talk about your insecurities with a friend. Don’t keep your negative self-image bottled up within you. A buddy will probably counter your arguments and give you reason to reconsider your assessment of yourself. I still remember when I went on a canoe trip in the Adirondacks with a college buddy, a real outdoorsman whom I admired because I thought he had good looks and easy relationships with girls, he complimented me on how I handled the canoe. “You’re a wiry little guy,” he said. I was on cloud nine. Little but wiry. Bits of affirmation can go a long way.

Second, get away from social media with all its critical chatter and spend time in places where you can talk with a friend, like in a coffee shop or even taking a walk through a park. I’ve enjoyed “walks and talks” with friends. I had a younger friend a few years ago, who suggested that we walk barefoot and shirtless across a grassy field while we talked. I thought the feeling of Earth under my feet, the warmth of the sun on my torso, and the breeze on my body made our conversation also more natural.

Third, take care of your body. If you take steps to be healthier through exercise and diet, you will feel better about yourself. Instead of focusing on what you are not, focus on what you take control of. For me, it was getting into yoga after surgery and a year of chemotherapy for colon cancer. I couldn’t control what the disease and its treatment did to my body, but I could control how I rehabilitated it. Yoga poses also brought to mind the fact that I had been in the elementary school boys’ gymnastics show in 7th and 8th grades and I realized how much more I was in my body as a youth than later in life.

Fourth, don’t compare yourself to media-portrayed bodies. Working out will help strengthen your muscles and focus your mind, but you’re not going to develop the physique of the models whose job is to work on their bodies full time so they can display the ideal body advertisers are looking for. If I can hold yoga poses supported by my breath without collapsing, that’s an accomplishment. I feel good about being in my body. My friend, whom I met in a yoga class, also lifts weights—heavy weights that I can’t even think about lifting,

Fifth, be willing to be vulnerable. If you’re feeling low and need to be held in a hug, ask for one. I have my wife to hug, and she needs my hugs. But men also need bonding with other men. We did when we were kids when a boy was feeling low and another boy held him because he didn’t know what to say. (I think of this scene in the coming-of-age movie Stand By Me where River Phoenix put his arm around the distraught Wil Weedon.)

Adult men need that kind of affirmation and support too. Loving touch is itself healing. In fact, a hug is probably the most healing thing we can give to another. Male cuddling is therapeutic. Men need affirmation and affection from other men. Hopefully when this COVID-19 pandemic is under control we can end social distancing and everyone can hug again. One of the major things we’ve lost in this pandemic is human touch.

Pastor Frank