Are Gay Men Really That Shallow?
- Chris Tompkins
- Jun 28
- 4 min read
Why stereotypes persist, and how we can start to see past them.
KEY POINTS
A growing genre of online discourse portrays gay men as shallow, image-obsessed, and emotionally unavailable.
Research finds higher rates of body dissatisfaction among gay men, closely linked to minority stress.
Confirmation bias is when we notice what supports a belief we have while overlooking everything else.
You've probably heard that gay men are image-obsessed, promiscuous, and unable to sustain relationships.
Are we image-obsessed, or did this single story come first, repeated until we internalized it as how we see ourselves, and eventually how others see us, too?
I was recently interviewed by Pat Brothwell, a journalist who writes about identity and culture, for a Pride Month piece exploring this phenomenon in his journalism.
He'd come across an earlier article I wrote drawing on Chimamanda Adichie's talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” one of my favorite talks, where she describes the consequences of using one narrative to define a person or a group.
As she puts it, the problem with a stereotype isn't that it's untrue, but that it's incomplete. It takes one story and makes it the only story.
Pat told me he'd been watching a single story spread through a growing genre of online discourse, where people make sweeping claims about “the gay community” being shallow, image-obsessed, emotionally unavailable, or incapable of commitment.
So why are we, both inside and outside the community, drawn to these broad narratives, and are they true? What's more, why does it matter?
A few things are happening at once, I told Pat. Part of it is introjection, the process by which we unconsciously take in the thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes of the people and culture around us. Most gay men grew up introjecting messages about who gay men are, and those narratives become part of how we see ourselves and each other—the single story.
I grew up without marriage ever being an option. Same-sex marriage wasn't legal nationwide until 2015, and for most of my life, gay male relationships weren't modeled for me. I had no sense of what two men in a healthy, loving relationship looked like. It wasn't technically even "real" in my consciousness. Going from the closet and the fear of being gay to almost no understanding of gay relationships informs how many gay men relate to one another.
For gay men, introjection can manifest as internalized homophobia, which influences the second component, projection, where we take what we unconsciously fear about ourselves and place it onto an entire group.
Part of it is also confirmation bias, our tendency to notice what supports a belief we already have while overlooking everything else. Once someone believes gay men are shallow or image-obsessed, they'll register every example that fits the single story and skip past the ones that don't.
As a therapist who specializes in working with gay men, I hear a lot of clients talk about the very aspects of the gay community Pat described. For many, the community can be a retraumatization of the childhood experiences of exclusion they were hoping to leave behind. I want to validate their experience because there are certainly elements that are true. I also want to help them develop insight into their schemas, or patterns of thinking, and look for the exceptions that challenge the single story.
As much as there are gay men who are emotionally unavailable and image-obsessed, there are also gay men who aren’t.
When we rely on the single story of gay men, it’s easy to see them as shallow or image-obsessed. Research shows that gay men have higher rates of body dissatisfaction than heterosexual men, which is clinically relevant in my work.
When we explore what's underneath, though, it’s often related to minority stress—the chronic stress gay men experience as a result of ongoing stigma, discrimination, and exclusion, from society, family, and early environments where their identity was ignored or invalidated. So the single story becomes a conversation about minority stress, and less about vanity.
By understanding the connection between unhealthy body standards and minority stress, we can challenge one of the more pervasive single stories about gay men.
Gay men are bombarded with images about body standards, and it's important to acknowledge how inescapable these images are, everything from pornography to social media to marketing at gay bars, to the images the media uses when reporting on gay men. Most marketing directed toward and about gay men relies on a narrow, sexualized standard of bodies.
Take, for example, the viral article Wired published earlier this year. The illustrations depicted gay men as hypersexualized stereotypes, including two limp wrists reaching out to give a handshake coming out of the zipper of their pants. Just now, I searched "gay men" in Google images, and the vast majority were shirtless and muscular.
Challenging the single story means asking whether the narrative we've accepted is true. Gay men are not a monolith, and our relationships, desires, and values are as diverse as we are. Shared identity doesn't mean shared experience.
The work of separating who we are from what we've internalized is at the heart of my forthcoming book, Becoming Worthy, which helps gay men heal shame, love themselves, and become worthy of the life they want.
The moment we trade the single story for a more complete one, we start relating to people as they are, rather than who we assume them to be.
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Chris Tompkins is a gay male therapist in West Hollywood (Los Angeles) who specializes in working with adult gay men, individuals and couples. He supports clients navigating identity, relationships, religious trauma, addiction, and self-esteem. To learn more, explore therapeutic services or schedule a free consultation.
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