This is prompted by your tags on the post about BL actors dieting and it's something I've kept to myself cos I know it will be super unpopular, but I was always a little uncomfortable with the fandom reaction to First bulking up to play Kant, because it felt very much framed as a glow-up, when we KNOW he was insecure about his build before then - Jojo explicitly said as much during OF (and I always wondered if part of the reason he always opted for such baggy clothes was to try and disguise his slenderness) - so that always rubbed me the wrong way. It was like the fandom was inadvertantly confirming those insecurities. If he did it healthily and if he genuinely enjoys working out and feels good about himself, thats great, but there was nothing wrong with the way he looked before! Personally, I actually preferred his pre-Kant look, but that's neither here nor there - the point is that some men are naturally beanpoles and they shouldn't be made to feel less 'manly' cos of it (and not gonna lie, I am a little hmm bout the fact his weight/muscle gain seems to have coincided with him playing more traditionally masculine (e.g. strong and stoic) characters...or maybe that's just me missing Akk in all his messed-up nuance and vulnerability!).
Hello anon! I've typed several replies to this ask (not that you really asked for one, and I get the need to get things off your chest lol, but you touched on things I've been circling around for a while). I tried to explain where I agree with you, where I don't, where I'm unsure. Last draft was *checks count* more than 500 words and only covered a third, if that, of what I wanted to talk about. I kept going back and correcting it and adding disclaimers and caveats and then deleting them because they made things confusing. Wondering how I could express my frustration with what I perceive as a standardization of faces and bodies on TV -thai or otherwise- without sounding like I was denying First his agency, or blaming him for making a very personal choice for reasons I am not privy too. How I could examine my discomfort and worries about the relationship I have developped with his public persona, and the direction(s) I don't want to let it take, without sounding like I was shaming you for sharing concerns and opinions that I -let's be real- mostly share. How I could say "I wish people would just stop commenting on other people's body" while I was doing exactly that (and have done before, and will probably do again if only just to remark on how good I think a celebrity looks).
And the conclusion that I've reached is, I can't! Not on tumblr, where people don't know me and so don't know to assume I don't hold certain beliefs, or that some things are so self-evident to me I won't even think of mentioning them. Not when I can't develop, explain or nuance my reasoning in real time as you react to what I say. Not where it could be read by someone who relates to First's experience, and could feel by proxy that it's their choices I'm dissecting, their body I'm putting under the microscope. Not on a topic that is such an emotional minefield, for so many people (myself included). I'm taking the coward's way out!
That leaves me with one thing I want to respond to, which is that I genuinely wonder if First's bulking up truly coincide with him playing more masculine roles, or if we perceive his roles as more masculine because he bulked up. Tiger, in the CfC mock trailer, has to psych himself up to be able to threaten a middle-aged lady, and lets out the cutest, high pitched "kitties♥♥♥", when he sees cats. Kant's fairly butch, but... how should i put it... some of his maneurisms also had my mom waxing rhapsodics about "those soft gestures gay men make." Strong and stoic are not the first words that come to my mind to describe him, especially not stoic (he's doing something else). Sand, with his cool bike and leather jackets and dad rock and fistfights, certainly wasn't any less stereotypically masculine (in fact I would argue he's more masculine, but it's honestly splitting hair. their characters lean toward slightly different masculine ideals, is all). He was certainly closer to the strong and stoic type imo! Yok (beloved!) was a devil-may-care brawler who partially resolved his interpersonal conflicts via punches. As for Akk, it's complicated by the fact that he's still very young - a boy, not a man - but his interests and ways of dealing with conflict read as fairly sterorypically masculine to me. He even tried very hard to be stoic! (and Aye sure liked that he was strong ^^). So really I think a lot depends on which angle we choose to look at these characters. I feel like there's some watchers who try to make First's post-eclipse characters into the strong and stoic type, and respectfully, I will not cede them ground! They can't have those little guys! They're a lot more emotionally complex and varied than "tall man in charge who doesn't show his feelings," and I'm putting my grubby hands all over them.
