These politics of exclusion leave many feeling left out of a community that, after coming out, they hoped would embrace them.

Gay men face enormous pressure to fit into a very narrow view of beauty-often defined on hookup apps like Grindr and Scruff by the groups they leave out: “No Fats, No Femmes.” Because it’s hard to speak with accuracy about the habits and preferences of an entire community, this is a generalization, but it’s one that is often true. In the ’90s sitcom Will and Grace, there’s an old joke that men could be considered skinny by straight standards but labeled fat among their gay peers.

These forms of everyday discrimination most commonly included “rejection by potential romantic partners on the basis of weight.”įor instance, were a “fat” gay man to approach someone in a bar, Foster-Gimbel and Engeln found that there was a “greater likelihood that the overweight man would be blatantly ignored, treated rudely, or mocked behind his back” than a heterosexual male of the same size. Have you ever been told you’re too fat for Grindr? A recent study from the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity shows you’re not alone.Īccording to researchers Olivia Foster-Gimbel and Renee Engeln, one-third of the gay men they surveyed reported experiencing “anti-fat bias”-even among those who weren’t classified as overweight by the Body Mass Index.