Welcome to Getting Curious, I'm Jonathan Van Ness, and every Wednesday I sit down for a gorgeous conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious.

Today is not a Wednesday and yet here I am on your podcast feed. That's because my new book Love That Story, Observations from a Gorgeous Leak Rear Life, is out on April 12th.

And I want to share a very special preview with my getting curious listeners.

Here is chapter 4, all about overcoming body issues and learning to love my gorgeous self.

Chapter 4. Overcoming body issues and learning to love my gorgeous self.

Or stop calling me brave, I'm hot.

I never knew I was body positive. I was positively aware I had a body, but when I found I'm barely undesirable to myself and from what I've been told,

definitely to other people. For much of my life, I couldn't find one thing about the way I looked that I enjoyed.

It took me decades to accept my body and eventually celebrate it.

As someone who is known for practicing self love, I'm often unintentionally reminded of the double edge sword of being associated with body positivity.

People are constantly saying things to me like, you're so inspiring for wearing those crop tops and taking your shirt off. I could never do that. Or I have an average body too.

I struggle with confidence, but then I see you and it gives me hope.

Um, ill. Why does it have to be an act of bravery to where what makes me feel good?

Why would someone see this miraculous body that allows me to live my wonderfully best life and call it average? None of our bodies are average and our desirability shouldn't be related to how the world at large views and labels them.

Sadly, it took me a long time to realize this.

The foundation of my eventual body dysmorphia was established early.

Those both flex commercials left an imprint on me. If you're not familiar with the machine and it's marketing evils, do yourself a favor and watch their circa early 90s ads on YouTube.

The both flex itself is basically just a tricked out weight bench, but damn, I hope whatever ad agency landed that account got paid up about load of money because here we are more than 25 years later.

And I'm still talking about that fucking thing.

The first time I saw one of their commercials, it stopped me dead in my tracks. What were these strange heart palpitations? Why did I suddenly feel faint?

I was just looking at some oiled epidonis working himself into a hypertrophic ball of testosterone. No big deal.

There was a female fitness actress too. Maybe she could be my fun imaginary babysitter. I liked her tithes. But she didn't give my stomach the same butterfly feels that the oiled up to oblivion man did.

...