I'm not going to talk about the ideal body.
Relax. It's not about that.
I'm going to talk about the real body.
Yours. Mine. The one that wakes up with you every morning, before coffee and after all the misguided decisions of the previous day.
That body.
The one that doesn't pose.
The one that doesn't ask for likes.
The one that isn't thinking about whether someone will look at it favorably or unfavorably.
The one that is simply there, carrying you.
Because let's be honest—and this is where the uncomfortable part begins—:
we all say that we don't care about the body... until we do care. A lot.
We say we are free, that we are beyond that, that we've already worked on it. Uh-huh. Sure.
And then we pass in front of the mirror and make that automatic micro-adjustment: straight back, stomach in, "I'm fine" face.
Everyday hypocrisy. Nothing serious. Human.
The problem is not the body.
The problem is everything we ask of it.
To be desirable.
To be strong.
To be young.
To be proper.
To not be uncomfortable.
To not say too much.
In the gay world, moreover, the body often comes with an instruction manual included. It is looked at, evaluated, consumed. Sometimes admired. Sometimes discarded. Quickly. Without attachment. As if it were just another shop window.
But there is another body.
One that is not made for display.
One that doesn't need to explain itself.
It's the body you inhabit when no one is looking at you.
The one that takes off its clothes without a show.
The one that sits on the bed at the end of the day and, for five seconds, stops performing.
That body almost never enters the conversation.
And yet, it's the only one that matters.
Over time, we learn to live inside the body like someone renting an apartment: without hammering anything into the walls, without moving the furniture too much, being careful not to leave a trace. As if it weren't entirely ours. As if someone else might come to inspect it.
And that's tiring.
It's tiring to maintain an image.
It's tiring to always be "ready."
It's tiring to feel that even when alone, there's something to correct.
That's why, at some point—and not always dramatically—a silent question arises:
When did I stop inhabiting myself?
It's not an intellectual question. It's not answered by reading theory or watching self-help videos. It appears while you brush your teeth. While you change clothes. While you walk naked through your house and, for a second, you're not thinking about anyone else.
To inhabit the body is not to love it all the time. Nor is it to celebrate it. It's not a discourse. It's something much simpler and much more difficult: to be present. To stop demanding that it be something else.
When the body stops being a display window, something also changes in the space you inhabit.
Here comes another uncomfortable truth:
your personal space is yours. No one else's.
Not your mother's. Not your friends'. Not what people will say.
Yours.
And yet, many times we dress it thinking of others. As if the house also had to behave well. As if the space had to be neutral, proper, harmless.
But space, just like the body, is also inhabited.
What you place in your home is not neutral decoration. They are presences. They are images that look back at you. Objects that accompany. Things you see every day, even when you don't consciously look at them.
That's why there are images that are not made to excite.
Nor to impress.
Nor to provoke an immediate reaction.
There are images that do something much more interesting: they stay. They accompany. They coexist with you. They remind you, without saying it, that you don't have to perform all the time.
It's not about overthinking. In fact, it's the opposite. It's about allowing yourself to inhabit your body and space with the same naturalness with which you take off your clothes when you get home. Without explanation. Without apology.
Inhabiting the body is an everyday gesture.
Not a goal.
Not an improved version of yourself.
It happens in tiny details:
in how you glance at yourself in the mirror,
in how you choose what enters your home,
in what you decide to see every day.
There are bodies that don't ask for applause.
They don't seek validation.
They don't want to be corrected.
They only ask for the same thing we all ask for, though sometimes we don't say it out loud:
To be inhabited.