something interesting ive noticed in dennis' body image is that he always seems to aspire more to the "ideal female" than the "ideal male." like not just talking about him wearing makeup but i think of the comment in macs banging the waitress abt taking in his jeans to "accentuate his female form," i think about some of his comments in the self-help book, and stuff from aluminum monster. i dont know, i dont have a fully-formed analysis on this and i wld love to hear if u have anything to say about it.. i think its interesting esp in comparison to mac whose body issues all seem to be about achieving masculinity, dennis doesnt seem to care about being masculine as long as he feels like he looks good
(if youve already made a post like this, sorry)
oh yeah, undeniably, for sure! i think the reason behind this is open to interpretation, as it kinda depends on which angle you take when analysing the characters, and basically means there are so many different possibilities, so i’m not actually sure where i stand, but i will give it a go!
edit; having already spent over sn hour trying to phrase all of this correctly, i feel like i have yapped for eternity without actually even answering your question, so i apologise if this ends up just being a load of nothing 😭 i wanted to offer a coherent response but, similarly to you, i don’t think i have a fixed opinion on any of it, and i also haven’t properly proof read it - i’ve just been on a roll typing away in-app as not to forget anything - so this may all read a little all over the place, but i hope you enjoy it regardless, as i love when people engage with me, and i appreciate that you are interested in what i think, and i hope nothing i have said comes across incorrectly - please feel free to ask if you need clarification!
on a whole, when it comes to aspects of the show that are a little more grey - like suggested gender identity or implications of unconfirmed mental health - i always struggle to form definitive opinions, because all interpretations are completely valid if there isn’t a fix conclusion and i don’t want to dismiss any particular angle, but its good because it means there are actually lots of options here, which only makes the topic more fun to dissect!
a lot of people find solace and representation through the idea of trans dennis, and therefore may believe that these traits reflect gender dysphoria. this makes so much sense, as gender dysphoria unfortunately doesn’t exist without at least some degree of body dysmorphia, even if not directly related to food (which sadly it often is, just by-proxy, but not always, so i don’t want to generalise), but i will say that i do always feel slightly reluctant to say too much about this standpoint for a number of reasons. for one, i am not trans myself, and therefore would never want to speak incorrectly on something this serious that i haven’t personally experienced, or make any kind of ill-informed blanket statements one way or another, and while i recognise that the two are definitely linked, i also don’t want to imply that i think the trans experience is the same as having an eating disorder, or equate a person fundamentally not aligning with the sex they were assigned at birth to mental instability. they can go hand-in-hand because of the automatic link between bodies and gender in general - i’m not for one second trying to ignore that - but they’re also very different experiences for different reasons that require different fixes, so i never want to assume anything, or come off ignorantly, or reduce the trans experience to a mental illness, does that make sense? a person with an eating disorder is sick, a trans person is not, so i don’t want to speak out of turn and accidentally conflate the two, especially when i lack the knowledge to unpack the subject at all. also, it is very true that eating disorders and gender dysphoria often exist together - meaning that i cannot (and also don’t want to) ignore the connections just because i am not trans, as i have a responsibility with this account to cover all bases - but because this is a blog about disordered eating alone, i don’t want to spend too much time on possible interpretations, or stray too much from the fundamental facts, unless i am extremely well researched in what i’m commenting on, as the whole point in this page is to combat medical misinformation, so i would hate to preach for better understanding in one area while accidentally fuelling the reverse in another that i am not as knowledgeable in. however, if anyone would like me to explore this specific interpretation further, and use my understanding of disordered eating to analyse the potential gender connections, then i would be more than happy to do so and dedicate a proper post to it, because at the end of the day, it is all fiction, and i want this page to be inclusive, so all ideas are welcome as long as the reality of the topics outside of the show are handled correctly. i just also would never want to insert myself into the conversation when i don’t have experience or the knowledge yet to do so, if that makes sense? like, i would never shun a possible idea from being discussed just because it isn’t 1000% canon, i would just want my understanding of the subject to be extensive first, as while the characters may not be real, the trans experience is, and i would want to approach the topic with respect. ultimately, though, there is nothing stopping people from viewing it in such a way, especially as - given some of the subtext - it’s not even unlikely, and i adore seeing the connections all my trans/nb mutuals make in relation to it, because its such a wonderful way of viewing the intricacies of his character!
having said that, there is also the other side of dennis’ femininity, and how its viewed by the audience - which, in my personal opinion sometimes feels a little distasteful - where he is often hyper-feminized, while at the same time still portrayed as a cismale, and this (to me, at least) often feels a little stereotypical - especially when in connection to his relationship with food - because it doesn’t feel like its done with the purpose of exploring authentic trans representation, but more to fit both him and mac into one-dimensional, easily-digestible gay male archetypes. i don’t think its done with deliberate malice, but to deny the knock-on effect this has on the topic of eating disorders would be silly, as so much of mac and dennis’ canon dynamic together revolves around food and their bodies, so these false, watered-down, out-of-character fanon portrayals where dennis is the Teeny Tiny Twink of Temperance and mac is the Big Buff Body-Building Bear don’t really do anything besides negate the complexities of their canon disordered behaviors and strip them of what actually makes them interesting to analyze. unless its being looked at with care through the lens of gender identity, dennis’ femininity doesn’t actually have anything to do with his sexuality or his eating habits, so i don’t understand the incessant need to warp his physicality or neglect his traits. i also think this is why so many people blindly diagnose him with anorexia nervosa, as the illness in the media is (unfortunately) associated femininity and so because 1. understanding of eating disorders is limited - meaning people are more likely to view a couple of failed attempted fasts as disordered than they are the copious amount of times he overeats, and therefore immediately assume restriction - and 2. dennis is the more feminine of the two, people automatically think that he must suffer from anorexia nervosa when he categorically doesn’t. there’s also an air of misogyny to it too, because more often than not i’ll see dennis get painted with traits that canonically already belong to dee - essentially hyper-feminizing the man at the expense of sidelining the woman - and this is particularly evident in the way people talk about his eating disorder. the way that people continue to plaster dennis - a male character - with restrictive habits he canonically doesn’t have, when dee - a female character who is canonically very restrictive - is already right there cannot be ignored, but that’s a topic for another time.
with those areas covered, i think that the point your are making amazing, because its true, and it so perfectly demonstrates how massively misunderstood both their eating disorders are. like, you are completely right - dennis’ entire thing is looking good. i’ve said it before, but he doesn’t actually care about being “thin”, which i think a lot of people seem to misunderstand, and this is what leads to a lot of the collective misconceptions. sure, he doesn’t want to be fat, and obviously tries albeit, not very hard lol to avoid gaining weight, but that’s not actually his inherent issue. his deep-rooted insecurities aside (which, again, stem less from concerns regarding his weight and more from concerns regarding his beauty), he is of the genuine belief that his body is in peak condition, and if you look at most of the episodes often cited to suggest he’s anorexic - the gang exploits a miracle, dennis looks like a registered sex offender, america’s next top paddy’s billboard model contest, etc - the prospect of gaining weight only ever actually becomes an issue for him when its pointed out by someone else. he grew up with an incredibly diet-oriented mother and a chronically bulimic sister, and therefore wrongly associates “fatness” with “ugliness” - because this is how he’s been raised to think, but he doesn’t inherently want to be thin, he just wants to be attractive, and this simply isn’t how restrictive eating disorders like anorexia nervosa work.
an example i like to use is the comparison of mac bangs dennis’ mom vs frank falls out a window. mac bangs dennis’ mom is the same season as the gang exploits a miracle (which is important to remember) and while yes, he very obviously spirals after dee’s comments about his face, he almost reacts worse when told he was unattractive by bonnie and mrs mac (which is ironic, as he doesn’t find either of them attractive either lmao like okay, mr. can-dish-it-but-can’t-take-it), breaking down into tears and even following it up with his pathetic little whiskey-bread-and-canned-chilli kitchen binge. i deliberately compare it to frank falls out a window because the entire point of that episode is that its a direct homage to season 2 ten years later, and deliberately references the gang exploits a miracle in particular. dee calls him fat again, which she does in both episodes, but his reaction ten years later is very different - he doesn’t actually care. if anything, he actually kind of owns it, and this is interesting to me, because its further evidence that his weight has never actually been his primary concern. if it was, then he simply would do more about it. like….he would work out more, he would eat less, he would have taken the ephedra himself, etc, but he doesn’t, because that isn’t his disorder.
it’s not that he’s not self conscious of it; he has a compulsive eating disorder and - having already grown up associating weight gain with ugliness - naturally doesn’t love the consequences of this, but he doesn’t have a restrictive eating disorder, and this is where so many people misunderstand him, because its precisely that that is his problem. his insecurities and appetite battle against each other; he’s insecure about his physicality when other people put it on the line - but never quite enough to “put the work in” - and he uses food as a coping mechanism while also attempting restriction and feigning abstinence, and this, added with his blatant delusions of grandeur, renders him stuck. he’s in this constant perpetual state of loving his appearance until someone else knocks him back, becoming insecure and trying to maintain discipline, quickly failing and becoming more insecure, remedying this with food and eating his feelings, becoming even more insecure as a result, and the cycle repeats. this is his eating disorder, this is how it operates, and its a shame that this does get so frequently overlooked for the sake of boring, overused, anorexic stereotypes, because all of this in itself is so much more interesting to unpack.
i got a bit off topic, my bad, but it’s just so refreshing to see someone else point out that it really isn’t about looking one way or another for him - his only goal is to look good - i think its also true in terms of what you are saying about femininity; removing the potential idea of gender identity, he doesn’t actually want to adhere to a specific body type - thin, fat, ripped, masculine, feminine - he just wants to be good looking. Sure, he’s going to have certain ideas of what is and isn’t attractive, but it’s never been as simple as He Wants To Be Thin. he also just happens to find many of his more feminine features particularly attractive (as he should hehehe), so thats what he spends time accentuating.
this has been particularly fascinating to me though, because he’s also quite literally the opposite of mac, whose entire issue with food and his body stems from a deep, desperate desire to look a certain way and fit a certain label - regardless of where he’s at in life at the time - and i just don’t think this is talked about enough.
so much of mac’s relationship with food and his body come from his issues with identity - his sexuality, his religion, his father, etc - and i don’t think this is touched on as much as it should be when the topic is brought up, because its so glaringly important. i also hate to say it, but he’s essentially part of the manosphere; toxic masculinity, undiagnosed orthorexia, obsessed with the male physique, far too much exercise, strict diet, unhealthy health addiction, complete abstinence from creature comforts, the grind never stops, never satisfied, the more “in-shape” he gets the weaker his confidence becomes, like its fucking tragic, and its all so integral to his character, but it so often gets sidelined because of season 7 (which is ridiculous because the entire reason he gained the weight in-universe is from a failed attempt at carbo-loading, but i digress) and this is annoying because 1. we really shouldn’t be analyzing the mental health of fictional characters based on the physicality of the actors anyway and 2. it completely negates sixteen seasons of incredibly complex character building.
the points you’ve made, about them both individually and together, are also interesting to me because of how different they are in this area. like, i already know it, but seeing it pointed out just blows my mind every time because like, wow, these fucking characters. it is difficult to compare, as dennis doesn’t have the added factors of religion or internalized homophobia, but the way they both express these traits is fascinating for a number of reasons almost too long to list. dennis being so much more secure in his personal identity than mac and this presenting in the way their opposing eds manifest, mac being surprisingly more self assured in his physicality than dennis in spite of how they outwardly present the opposite, the way they use them both against each other - dennis drugging mac behind his back and endlessly negging him vs mac’s backhanded compliments and cohersive feederism - like its all just so fucking weird and interesting that i don’t even know where to start.
i will say though that, while i did just bitch about season 7 - and how it does seem to have done irreparably damage to the general view of the subject of disordered eating when talking about the characters - i do actually love everything it represents for the two of them. mac subverting all stereotypes and actually being his happiest and most confident, dennis’ collapsing control of the situation and mirroring mac’s eating habits immediately, only becoming bothered by it when mac starts to lose the weight which is dennis’ fault anyway, basically as if he’s unsatisfied either way, the decline of mac’s self esteem from then onwards, like it’s just brilliant.
i don’t even know where i’m going with any of this, but you raise an incredibly interesting point, and i hope my incredibly disorganised response wasn’t too bad! i’d love to discuss the topic more, particularly the stuff in the self help book and other lesser-known extras that help shape the character’s development, so please feel free to send more! i just think this topic is way too broad to give a set answer, and if i start saying more i won’t be able to stop! big love, and thanks again for the question <3
