“Read Through the Body” – Gay Men Who Came of Age During the British AIDS Crisis’s Body Image Talk

This dissertation explores the way gay men who came of age during the British AIDS crisis understand and navigate issues of body image. Having identified gaps in existing gay body image research, this project aimed to pay particular attention to broader social structures outside of the gay community affecting gay men’s body image discourses. It thus investigates the AIDS crisis and its legacy as one such factor affecting gay men of this generation’s understandings of body image. Through a Foucauldian discourse analysis of semi-structured qualitative interviews, it was found that gay men’s understandings and navigation of body image is highly reflexive, relates to areas of embodiment beyond attractiveness, and engages with a number of discourses. Gay men construct their bodies as visible sites of a gay identity, and as risking abjection. They are able to negotiate threats of abjection by using ambivalent claims of control or authenticity and depth; and are able to resist such a construction of the gay body by mobilising a gay pride-inspired counter-discourse of the body as a source of pleasure and connection. Gay men of this generation’s reflexive accounts and navigation of body image are thus affected by several intra and extra-community discourses on homosexuality, gay identities and health; with specific discourses on HIV/AIDS and its association with homosexuality seemingly being an integral part of this discursive system.