Daniel Franzese speaks out: ‘It’s liberating being a bigger gay dude on screen’
By Nick Bond
In his second column for Attitude.co.uk (you can read his first here), US actor Daniel Franzese – Looking, Mean Girls – talks about what being a bigger gay guy has meant for his life and his career…
My adolescence was like one long, constant reminder that I was overweight. As an oversensitive child, someone innocently saying “Hey big guy!” to me could make me turn red in the face and hold back tears.
Comedy was a means of survival – only later did it grow into a passion. I have had a very ‘It Gets Better’ type experience: my childhood bullies still Facebook me for autographs for their kids at least once a year. God can be awesome like that.
Picture by Joshua Spencer.
Anyone reading this who never had the chubby boy nightmare of being called fat can probably still sympathise: we all have been called a fag or something equally horrible. It feels like that. I have been told that as a person in the public eye being called names is what I “signed up for.”
My weight wasn’t even mentioned in Mean Girls and the critiques ranged from calling me obese or overweight to just plain fat (honestly – Google them!). As a matter of fact, throughout my career I have been called just about every synonym for fat in the Thesaurus, from Zaftig to mountainous; chunky to gigantic.
But there’s been a positive side to all this: I receive letters from fans who feel liberated by seeing a bigger gay dude on screen. A grown man once came up to me in tears telling me that I validated him by being on screen. He said he never saw someone like him before. To me, that meant more than any review could.
And you know what? As I look back on pictures of myself at the loneliest of times when I thought I was surely ‘unlovable,’ I’m surprised to find that I was actually kinda adorable! Perhaps it wasn’t my weight that was the problem and maybe more how I felt about it. I never saw a reflection of myself in the media.
The lack of diverse male body forms shown in the media might be the cause of all this need for perfection in the gay community. It takes a lot of time and discipline to maintain a healthy body – which is admirable. Healthy people aren’t the enemy, but enough is enough! So much of what is marketed to gay men comes packaged with a set of perfect abs:
‘Come to our Happy Hour! Here’s some perfect abs!’
‘Excited about our Christmas furniture sale? Here’s a shirtless Santa’s abs next to a kitchen table!’
‘Need your teeth whitened? Check out the teeth on this guy with no shirt and…you guessed it! ABS.’
Daniel in Mean Girls (2004): ‘My weight wasn’t even mentioned in the film and the critiques ranged from overweight to just plain fat.’
So, great, I’ve appeared naked on Looking and now I am king of the bears. But I could decide to lose weight and I will still be me. I’m not here to sell you that ‘Big is Beautiful’. I am here to tell you that YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. Take a look at those old pictures from your younger years when you felt unattractive. You weren’t that bad right? Hot shit even. Hear that? YOU. ARE. HOT. SHIT. Own who you are.
If you’re letting the guy with abs in the glossy ad make you feel like you must be unlovable, you need to remember: There are all kinds of beauty and all kinds of admirers. People feel your swag and your confidence. We have one body in this world and surely there is something you want to change about it, but in the meantime, LOVE it. Love every roll and every mole, every stretch mark and every hair. Then and only then will someone else be able to love it all too.
I wrap my meaty arms around my boyfriend and make him feel safer than anyone. I know he always wanted a life-size teddy bear and now he has a real one. The virtues I bring to the table are loyalty, trust, honesty, communication, love and adventure. I make him laugh his ass off. There is so much more value in that to him than having a partner with rock-hard abs.
Maybe I’ll get abs too someday… if I can download them or I manage to break up with pizza. And if I don’t? Well, I will still always love myself. It was a long journey, but I’m finally here.
– Daniel Franzese is an actor of stage and screen best known for his performances in films like Mean Girls and for ordering pizza at 11pm. Online, his viral videos Please Go Home and Sh*t Italian Moms Say have reached millions of viewers worldwide. Follow him @Whatsupdanny on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr and on YouTube.com/MyMyMyTube. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California where he stars as #EDDIEBEAR on HBO’s LOOKING.