My butt is on the internet. Who cares?

I do...

This past Tuesday, in the middle of lunch with a friend, I received an instagram notification. I was being asked to review and approve a collaborative post—that new-ish feature where two different instagram accounts can post the same image or set of images together on both their accounts—with Jack Adams, the underwear brand. I had posed for a promotional campaign with the company a couple weeks prior, in a variety of briefs, thongs, and jockstraps, so I should not have been shocked when the image of my butt popped up on iPhone screen. Nonetheless I was.

The butt in question

Then it happened again. And again. Now, a week later, my instagram grid is filled with pictures of my ass. What have I done?, I thought. My boyfriend anxiously sat me down and expressed his concerns that no one would take me seriously, that my writing career would never flourish if this was my public image, and I hate to to admit that I had similar concerns. But is this the case? As I begin to interrogate my own fears, I find myself filled with embarrassingly conservative ideals. In an age where Mia Khalifa can garner a New York Times Magazine interview, where every other gen-z homosexual I know has an onlyfans profile, where Hollywood actors can be capable of both sex star status and an Academy Award, why am I so unnerved by these pictures of myself?

I’ve been trying to write about this for the last week—writing entire blog posts—and then fully deleting them an hour later. Why was I so conflicted, both proud and disgusted with myself all at the same time? Who was I, now that I had posed for an underwear campaign? What would people think of me with these photos? Who would write me off and think less of me? Questions of identity and perception kept swirling through my head, causing me to second guess every aspect of my persona. It’s funny, for all the internal strife, the pictures feel so innocuous as I look at them right now. Sure, there is my butt in a thong or there is the outline of my penis in some briefs, BUT THEY’RE JUST UNDERWEAR PICS! Are they really that transgressive or am I just prone to shame because of what?—my religious upbringing, society’s views on sex, America’s puritanical beginnings?

On the day of the shoot, I hadn’t felt this way. I had been ecstatic. I had spent long hours in the gym; I had been consistent with my routine. I was proud of my body, proud of the work I had put in, and proud of the commitment I had made to myself over the last several months. Posing for the campaign made me feel powerful and impenetrable. Much of my life had been spent tweaking my body for others, first as a dancer for choreographers and directors in the modern dance world, and later as a high profile group fitness instructor in New York City. Working out, dancing, rehearsing, taking class, in whatever form this regiment had occurred, had always been for other people, never for myself. But now, for the first time in my life, I was exploring the limitations of my physical form, solely for myself. I was finally enjoying my time in the gym and fascinated by the ways my body was changing and evolving. After a challenging year—being fired, my father passing away—these hours felt like a gift: time to be with myself, to meditate, to breathe, to grow.

Posing for the shoot felt like an act of love, an act of celebration. This body of mine was aging; it had seen abuse and betrayal, poverty and unbearably hard times, but it was resilient. The shoot was my own ceremony of gratitude and a way of honoring this structure of mine—this body—that had sustained me through hardship and joy. It was agency and bodily autonomy exalted and revered.

Paradoxically, seeing the photos posted felt like a betrayal. Who was this brazen individual, this slut? Who would believe this person was thoughtful or worthy of their time? Who would think of me as anything other than a sexual object? And what did it say about those around me? Suddenly the inner me was loud and persistent—I was an embarrassment to myself and to a career I was working toward, to my partner and his business, to his family and mine. But why?

I think I’ve been struggling to write about this discomfort, about these inner voices, because I am ashamed of my own shame—not with the photos themselves, but with the biases and binaries they have magnified within me. I’m uncomfortable because all this shame falls directly into a hierarchy, a damaging belief system, that feels shockingly right wing when I say it out loud—that certain people are better than others, that sex work makes a person less than, less worthy of consideration, less worthy of compassion and less worthy of my time. Fuck, I hate writing that. If I take it a step further, it’s a belief system that inherently believes that the human body should and must elicit shame when on display; that the human body, when used as a vehicle for sexual expression is the lowest form of work in our society. In simple terms, that it is reprehensible and disgusting. What I am coming to terms with is a hierarchy that I didn’t know I still held onto, that I didn’t know was part of me at all. It’s a hierarchy that purposely chooses to denounce certain people, to hold them down. And why does this hierarchy exist—this judgement and critique of others? This hierarchy allows us to mask the inherent shame we feel about ourselves. Like any form of judgement, we attack what we feel lacking, wrong, uncomfortable or awful in ourselves.

Now before I proceed, let me clarify a couple things. I do not think that my photo shoot classifies as sex work, not because I want to disavow what I did, but because I want to show respect to those who do work in the sex industry. Secondly, while the above statements I shared are common in much of America, I don’t want to own them. I don’t believe anyone is less than, I want to state that clearly. BUT if I am to investigate my own complicated feelings of identity within this hierarchy, then I must, first, announce my own biases, my own moralistic foundations, and the way they still shape and color my thinking.

So where do these feelings come from? What is this crisis of perception I’m muddling through in front of you right now? I do think it’s about shame at its core, and I would argue, that’s probably what it is for most of us. But what is shame, really? To quote my queen, Brené Brown, “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.” And there it is, I’m unworthy, and so you are too. My sexual desires are flawed or disgusting, so yours must be too. Me being an open sexual being is unworthy of respect, so I won’t respect you if you proceed similarly.

For me, this shame, most probably, begins in the church, in my Christian upbringing. This shame tells me that my homosexual desires are inherently wrong, that even lust or the desire for sexual exploration is wrong, even as I live my life as an out and proud gay man. This shame tells me that homosexuality is still, even to do this very day, somehow less than. It’s a belief system that I carried with me every day of my adolescence. It’s a belief system that kept me segregated from my classmates in high school, too scared my true identity would be revealed. With time, this shame morphed and grew—the time my parents found journal entries I had written expressing my desires and threatened to send me to a conversion camp or the moment my mother told me her greatest fear was that I would “turn out gay.”

As an adult, I felt this shame working in the group fitness industry; never big enough, strong enough, masculine enough. I felt this shame every time I was referred to as sassy by my colleagues at the Fhitting Room. I feel this shame, even now, when I walk down the street in my Illinois hometown, cognizant of the sneers and double takes. I felt this shame this past weekend in small town Maine when my partner held my hand. Unfortunately it’s a feeling that also accompanies real world fear: fear of violence, fear that I will be attacked on the street, that I will be physically assaulted for speaking too loudly or openly showing affection. It’s this shame and fear that I carry with me every second of my life, and because these feelings envelope me, because they color every experience of every day, I use them to judge others who live more openly than I do. I use my shame to laugh and judge the way others have done to me; it’s my way of feeling superior when I actually feel so, so small. I use my shame to uphold a hierarchy that holds me down, because it is easier to live within a hierarchy of hatred, then to tear it down and show myself compassion. So yes, it was just a photo of my ass, but it was also, so much more. It was my entire life cruelly exposed and symbolized in a single post.

But back to those pictures of my ass. I could have easily not approved the posts. I could have told the company I was fine with them posting the content but preferred to keep them off my grid, but I didn’t. And while still conflicted, I’m glad I didn’t, for now at least. Maybe I will take them down, not because of any self-loathing, but because a little mystery is also sexy, and maybe I don’t need to share that much. I’m honestly not sure. The pictures have momentarily put a strain on my relationship. But maybe that strain is good; maybe it’s forcing us to confront our own ideas about ourselves and our worldviews. Or maybe, it’s just a picture of my butt. I’m not sure, but for now seeing those pictures on my grid feels like a radical act. And I could stand to be a little bit more radical. I think we all could.