Navel Gayzing: Gays and Vanity

Tacky or not, I'm not shy about openly joking about how vain I can be. Ever since I can remember, I've been concerned with personal style, my physique, and, of course, my hair. Even when I was a mere fashionable three years-old, I once had a sobfest in the middle of Stride Rite because they didn't have the zip-up high tops in my size. Part of this is probably due to growing up in a pop-culture obsessed society and around an older sister who once chastised me for getting her the "fatty" popsicle from the ice cream truck; but I often wonder if another part of my vanity stems from being gay. Part of spending much of my life unaware of my sexuality often meant that girls who I probably had crushes on - whether they were soccer coaches or celebrities - became girls I would simply idolize and try to mimic. Instead of just having dirty adolescent thoughts about Natalie Imbruglia, I would stare at her album cover and obsess over trying to exactly replicate her haircut. Since understanding and coming to terms with the fact that I'm gay, I've obviously become much more aware of when I am sexually attracted to a girl; however, the ambiguous morphing of what I want in a girl and what kind of girl I want to be like has hardly subsided.

When I think about it, then, it kind of makes sense that being gay might add an extra sense of vanity to one's life. If you're going after certain qualities in a person because you find those qualities appealing, doesn't it make sense that you might want those qualities yourself? Just like I was unintentionally doing when I tried to mimic the women I had the hots for - can't desiring something in someone else easily translate into desiring that same thing for yourself? For example, if you prefer people with what you consider to be an ideal physique, doesn't it make sense that you would also want that physique?

I imagine that if a straight guy looks at a picture of Rhianna and thinks, "Hot damn, that's a hot haircut!" he doesn't have to decide if he just thinks Rhianna is hot, or whether he wants to tear out the picture and take it with him on his next trip to the hair salon. Similarly if a straight girl prefers guys with big ol' pecs, she doesn't look in the mirror and think, "Damn, I actually wouldn't mind if my pecs were a little buffer, too." Us gays, though, are stuck constantly ogling members of our own sex - unintentionally noticing what we find attractive, and what we're turned off by. At times, this can be an advantage, like living a real life version of the Mel Gibson movie What Women Want. Other times, however, it can lead to being overly self-critical and, consequently, vain.

Of course, all this isn't to say that gays have a one-track mind - ourselves. Most gays I know who care about their physical appearance also care more about other, more pressing social issues. So, before anyone accuses me of calling gays superficial or self-absorbed - that's not what I'm saying. What I am attempting to say, though, is that maybe all we hear about gays being gym-, style- and appearance-obsessed kind of makes sense, and has some logical validity. We know what we want in members of our sex, and we set a standard of "well, if I want it, I should offer it" for ourselves.

Point of discussion/bashing narcissistic me: Is it possible that gays are narcissistic by mating nature?