From the journal Eating Disorders, 7:167-169, 1999:

As the title suggests, Looking Queer is an exploration of how members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) communities think and feel about their physical appearance. Editor Dawn Atkins includes a few research articles and poems in this collection, but the book's greatest strength is the many personal narratives that combine to weave a complicated tapestry. Atkins provides divergent views that create a multicolored snapshot of the strengths and struggles that GLBT communities have in regard to body image. Her introduction provides a thorough review of research on gay and lesbian body image, thereby providing a context in which to understand these strengths and struggles.

Looking Queer is divided into four sections, each with its own theme. The first section provides a variety of lesbian responses to beauty standards: actively challenging and rejecting narrow, culturally defined standards of attractiveness; admitting the power these standards continue to have; and relating the pain inflicted (both from other lesbians and themselves) by rigid societal standards of attractiveness. The existence of beauty standards within the lesbian community is acknowledged, but so is the existence of greater flexibility in how attractiveness is defined. Contributor Naomi Tucker notes the irony that although size acceptance in the lesbian community has increased, empathy for body dissatisfaction has decreased. She offers a touching example of a lesbian with bulimia who has compounded her pre-existing guilt over her bulimia with added guilt that she "should" be able to accept her body. Permeating all of these perspectives is a conviction that narrowly defined beauty standards hurt women and, therefore, are to be actively challenged. The picture is complicated, but stories of acceptance and a softening of the beauty ideal are offered as signs of hope.

The second section provides thought-provoking stories from intersexuals and members of the transgender community. Here body image takes on new meaning, as individuals explore their identities and find that gender labels confine them in ways that compromise them. Chapters by Cheryl Chase and Morgan Holmes, in particular, challenge our culture's need to dichotomize gender even when nature does not support the dichotomy. Chase's desire to live as an intersexual (i.e., hermaphrodite-an individual who possesses both male and female sex organs) in a culture that cannot envision possibilities beyond male-female is powerfully articulated and moving, as is Chase's struggle with a clitorectomy (condoned as medically "necessary" reconstructive surgery).

The third section integrates race and disability into the discussion of body image in the queer community. Paul EeNam and Park Hagland's chapter on the exploitation inherent in the objectification of Asian men as gay sex objects sounds remarkably similar to feminist critiques of the effects of female beauty norms on women. Kenny Fries attacks the increasingly rigid standards of attractiveness portrayed within gay media. He recounts his exclusion from this standard as a disabled gay male and shares his efforts to broaden our conceptualization of beauty.

The fourth section captures the tension felt by the gay community over body image issues. AIDS, internalized homophobia, and a desire to conform to heterosexual culture all are acknowledged as powerful factors that promote a young, muscular ideal within the gay community. However, gay men are beginning to challenge this narrowly defined stereotype of gay men as "buff, well-hung white males." Patrick Giles, a 315-lb gay male, expresses both anger and pain over how these narrow standards of "ideal" beauty cause him to feel more stigmatized within the gay community than within the straight world. Giles points out the hypocrisy of a community that excludes him because of his size yet complains of homophobic exclusion by the straight community. In a challenge of a very different sort, Gene-Michael Higney offers a wildly funny poke at gay appearance norms, robbing them of their power by forcing us to laugh at their ridiculousness.

The four sections combine to form an insightful book that explores the pervasive influence of "looksism" in GLBT communities and actively challenges narrow conceptualizations of what it means to be an acceptable human being. Atkins recommends Looking Queer for lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgendered people, as well as academics and health care providers who have an interest in the GLBT communities. I would go further and recommend this excellent book for anyone who has grappled with body dissatisfaction from within and without.

Pamela J. Freske, M.S.
Washington State University Doctoral Student in Clinical Psychology