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A Gay Dancer's Struggle With Body Image: "The Idea Of Losing Weight Took Ahold Of Me"

"I was terrified of what people might think of me if I put weight back on. "

Body image issues can plague many gay men—even those with figures the rest of us would envy. In this essay, professional dancer Harry Casella discusses his struggle to come to terms with his weight and his feelings about his body. A version of this essay originally appeared on Harry's blog in 2014.

One of the hardest subjects to tackle in the dance world, and in everyday life, is weight.

It's something us humans are transfixed on—that some individuals battle against every single day of their lives. It's something that we can let consume our every thought.

And it's something that I have a very large problem with.

In the dance world there seems to be this strange attitude towards a person's weight: Regardless of what anybody says, we've all been guilty of judging someone, or even ourselves, against the standard of "beauty" that is shoved in our faces daily.

When I was of a larger build, I had the constant feeling of being less attractive, less worthy, less likely to succeed, and other negative emotions because of my size. It doesn't take a genius to tell you that the dance world is a breeding ground for these kinds of thoughts, which can lead to eating disorders, depression and worse.

I'm not going to lie: There have been countless times when I have felt "too fat to be a dancer."

That I was "too big to succeed."

That "no one will cast me because you're fat."

More often than not I have to give myself a metaphorical slap round the head to get out of that place. I began to question why it is that I, and many others in the performing arts, feel this way?

The answer is the images we are forced to see: We are constantly exposed to images of people who seem to rarely be of a larger build. I personally think weight means nothing when it comes to beauty, but that's not the message we as a society send out.

We need to remember that the images we see in magazines, catalogs and movie posters have been photoshopped so much that the person's natural beauty—their character, flaws and all—has more than likely been erased.

Secondly, beauty is in the eye of the beholder: What might seem appealing to you, may not be to someone else.

Finally, the link we seem to make is beauty = being thin. This is wrong, and it needs to change.

It's obviously an issue for women, but increasingly men—and especially gay men—face unrelenting pressure to have the perfect body.

Through my battle with my weight, I have gone on incredible journey of self-discovery. It's made me do things I never thought I was capable of. It has made me appreciate inner beauty and realize how little a person's size actually matters.

That journey started in college, back in 2010. Most would say I went to university as a confident person, which I was—or so the facade I put on would've made you believe. Inside I was struggling deeply with insecurities about my sexuality and about my body image.

I began my weight loss battle by simply making a bet with someone that I could give up eating bread for Lent. I'm not particularly religious, I just enjoy a challenge. Forty days and forty nights passed and my waistline began to decrease. (I should point out I was also engaging in regular exercise and eating healthy, too.)

From then on, the idea of losing weight took ahold of me: The more I lost, the better I felt. The more people complimented me, the better I felt. It was all reinforcing that what I was doing was working. I began to obsess over how thin I looked. I felt a crippling responsibility to keep getting thinner and thinner, because I was terrified of what people might think of me if I were to put weight back on.

I didn't want to do all this hard work and then let it slip because I wasn't "determined enough." It became a real issue that consumed my every waking thought.

All I could think was: "Oh, you can't eat because you'll be fat." In hindsight I know that's ridiculous but, at the time, it all seemed perfectly logical.

Something that is extremely difficult when it comes to drastic weight loss, is being able to look in the mirror and accept yourself for who you are now and not who you were.

If I'm honest, this is what I struggled with the most. My weight loss happened very suddenly, so seeing that I had shed my old body was difficult to comprehend. I used to look in the mirror and see my old self.

It sounds ridiculous, but think of if you dye your hair and then can't recognize yourself in the mirror.

My boyfriend used to say that I was looking into a circus mirror, seeing an exaggerated version of myself that didn't exist. I guess he was right but I couldn't accept it.

Fighting that preconceived idea of myself, and being able to accept this new body was as hard as openly admitting my sexuality for the first time. I still sometimes don't recognise myself and see old Harry in the mirror.

But deep down, I know I have evolved into my true form and I am happy.

That's change began when I started at the Urdang Academy in London. Weirdly, being in an environment where eating disorders can run rampant, I felt the most comfortable—perhaps because I knew others were going through it, as well.

And what I came to realize was how sick I was of fighting this battle.

I'm sick of feeling less able because of my perception of myself. I'm sick of feeling like I can't enjoy life—and food—because of my warped sense of myself.

I'm sick of feeling restricted by my own mind.

And I refuse to let myself be defined by my weight—I will not be classified as just "skinny" when I am a human being made up of an extensive range of other things.

The most important bit of advice I can give to anyone who is on this journey is to only lose weight for yourself. You could be the most perfect looking apple, but if you're rotten on the inside, no one will want to take a second bite.

Never lose weight for anybody else, lose it for yourself and only yourself. If you want to change your body because deep down, you aren't happy, then that is okay.

But don't change because of what anyone else might think of you. You are in charge of your body, no one else.

I began my weight loss journey on this path, but I made the mistake of caring more about what others thought about my appearance than how I felt. Don't let anyone dictate to you how you should look.

Embrace your body. Embrace your size. Make a change if you aren't comfortable, but only do it for yourself.

You don't need to explain to anybody why your body is the way it is: Your body is your body and that is all the justification you need.

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