It's 7.30am, the sun is already up and the air is frothy with
the scent of flowers. In Wembley, an X Factor queue is quietly
forming and few miles down the road in front of a mirror I'm facing
my own private Waterloo: The tank top.
Before I came out as a lesbian I would throw on a tank top with
gay abandon. Then I read somewhere that lesbians like big arms. The
bigger the better apparently. I feel inadequate, like an amateur
arm-porn star. What if I let the side down?
I'm muscularly challenged in the bicep department like Popeye
pre-spinach. While others bang out the big guns mine have fallen
victim to government cuts and been reduced to small arms.
Will this slightness of arm drag down my overall Sapphic score?
Now I'm an out lesbian, will people expect to see a more impressive
display of fire power?
'There she goes' they'll say as I shuffle past them in my 'L'
plated Tank, 'she claims she's a lesbian but those are the arms of
a 'straight' person.' (The head says lez but the arms say lez
not).
Assuming my best Bruce Forsyth pose, I squeeze my arms so hard
that I'm doing an impromptu pelvic floor workout. Nothing there,
not so much as a twitch.
Do I need to take action? My triceps are toned but they're not
ripped. I've seen more muscle definition on a Ribeye steak. Maybe I
should bulk up, pursue taut perfection? I might turn biceptual and
become the lesbian answer to teen heart-throb Taylor Lautner.
On second thoughts that would require a whole new approach to the
gym. My usual routine of ten minutes of MTV, followed by 20 minutes
steam and home in time for The One Show isn't going to cut
it.
Worse than that, it might mean I'd have to enter the toning
torture chamber; a place whose very name is guaranteed to strike
fear right into the heart of lightweights like me:
The. Weight. Room.
Talk about gym-timidation; I have a pathological fear of what goes
on in there amidst all that sweat, grunting and throbbing
testosterone.
No. I won't do it. Please don't make me.
Even if the only dip I'll be doing this Summer is hummus surely I
still have the right to bare arms?
