Gay men don't get fat? Maybe it's because they care more

One of my friends sent me this hilarious article on a new diet book called Gay Men Don't Get Fat.  Simon Doonan, the author (yes, a gay man) divides foods into "gay food" and "straight food".

"The way he sees it, gay food is lighter and brighter. It feels art-directed, not just tossed together and deep-fried, with an attention to aesthetic and dietary detail."

"Straight food, according to the Doonan rubric, tends to be leaden, full of protein, thick with fat. "

Clearly, this type of approach could only be promoted by someone who is gay, otherwise the PC Police would knock down your door, put a bag over your head, and send you on a mandatory vacation to Guantanamo, Cuba.  Thankfully, most gay men I know have great, irreverent senses of humor, and so does the author.

“I love sweeping generalizations,” he said. “Sweeping generalizations are the key to everything, and they invariably contain nuggets of truth. Sometimes infinitesimally small nuggets.”

But when you look more closely at his categorization, what he's actually describing isn't straight and gay food, but a stereotypically masculine and feminine diet - and he's advocating a stereotypically feminine diet.

The readership is straight women

The first clue is that Doonan's readership is women, mostly straight women presumably:

“...Gay Men Don’t Get Fat” is largely laid out as a larkish lifestyle primer for his female fans (“Most of my books are aimed at empowering women,” he said)..."

Lesbian food is masculine

The second clue is that Doonan has a separate category for lesbian food, which is:

"earthy, healthful", such as “Organic olive oil, thick porridge, heaping helpings of wheat germ,” he said. “A crusty loaf of whole-grain bread is both ferociously lesbian and wildly heterosexual.” 

Hearty, earthy, "ferociously lesbian", and "wildly heterosexual" -- that is to say, masculine.

Meat is disgusting

The third clue is that Doonan is somewhat afraid of meat and animal products.

• “You must be on guard when you see a panini coming toward you, because they can cram an enormous amount of meat and cheese in there...”
• “Because the Black Angus meatloaf, that’s a whole lot of hetero to digest,” he said.
• “Um,” he said. “A Caesar salad’s pretty heterosexual. They whip a lot of egg into it.”

I could go on.

Of course, this fits with the significant gender skews in veganism, which tends to be heavily female.  Not exactly a surprise when you consider that the disgust reflex tends to be more sensitive in women, and vegans explicitly use disgust to recruit converts.  Disgust is a mental module that likely evolved to keep us from eating the types of foods that could carry germs and pathogens, and women who were pregnant or feeding children would have benefited from a more refined disgust reflex.

Fat makes you fat

Doonan plays off of the same phobias that have plagued the dieting world (mostly female) for decades: fat and calories.  Get this:

As if fending off a lard-sucking vampire, Mr. Doonan held up his fork and knife as a makeshift cross.

“There’s a lethal amount of fat in guacamole,” he went on. “A friend of mine was just going off to Mexico, and I said to her: ‘If you get kidnapped, remember to tell your kidnappers: no guacamole. You cannot be in a confined space ingesting guacamole. You’ll become so enormous.’ ”

But wait, I wondered. Isn’t avocado supposed to be good for your skin?

“Maybe if you apply it topically,” he said.

Nonsense on stilts.  You'd have to be an idiot to read this book for anything other than entertainment value -- which, given situations like this, seems quite high.

But what you're probably seeing here -- and this is just a hypothesis -- is the result of gay men absorbing dietary myths from the dieting women they hang around with, and now that same nonsense is being re-packaged and sold right back to dieting women as a secret of gay men.

So why aren't gay men fat?

But gay men, in my experience, do tend to be lean and fit.  They're certainly less fat than most straight men and women.  Why?

If there is a reason why gay men aren't as fat, it's probably because they care more.  They try harder.  They actually make it a priority to be physically attractive.

That's because the gay sexual marketplace (SMP) -- and I'm purposefully not referring to lesbians here -- places enormous emphasis on looks and youth.  To be clear, this has nothing to do with being homosexual, per se, and everything to do with being male.  Straight men look for many of the same features in women (looks, youth) that gay men look for in men.  (As if it needed to be said, youth and looks are not the only traits men - gay or straight - look for in partners.)

Clearly, the straight SMP places enough emphasis on looks and youth to drive the dieting, beauty care, and plastic surgery industries among women.  Now imagine that both parties in the SMP care about much the same things, and you'll see why gay men have an enormous motivation to be in shape.  I can't tell you how many guys I know who came out of the closet, and then pretty much immediately started working out and buffing up.  Sound familiar?  Coming out is a natural experiment in the power of motivation.

So if gay men don't get fat, it's probably because they have greater motivation to be lean than most straight men (who aren't judged on looks as much) and even many straight women.

The importance of motivation

At the end of the article, Doonan shows the importance of motivation.  The end of the meal comes and he takes a look at the dessert menu.

“Desserts now have a very gay sensibility,” he said. “If you’re looking for a basic apple pie, you’re going to be out of luck.” He kept scanning the menu. “There’s a fresh-baked pie of the day. See, I want to know what that is. I might succumb to it. Because I’ve been quite abstemious.”

Mr. Doonan asked about the pie.

“It’s a cappuccino mousse with an Oreo-cookie crust and whipped cream,” the waiter replied.

Mr. Doonan made a gurgling sound.

“I thought it was maybe going to be organic pears lightly braised in ...” he said, then trailed off.

“We are, how you say, comfort food,” the waiter said.

“Yes,” Mr. Doonan said. “Thank you.”

The waiter dashed off. I asked my lunch companion if he’d be finishing off with that pie.

“God,” he said. “Are you out of your mind?”  

He turns down dessert.  Yes, you read that right: he turns down dessert!

This was Doonan's great exception to the masculine and feminine foods, and where his definition of gay food really does diverge from stereotypically feminine food.  He has the fortitude to turn down comfort food, i.e., a bunch of sugar.  Remember, no matter what dietary approach you adhere to, as long as it excludes industrial foods, it will work pretty well if you stick to it -- even if you have a delusional fear of guacamole.

So if you want to look for the secret of gay men, look no further.  They care more.