Every BODY Needs Some BODY – With “This is Me”, the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus Tackles Body Shaming Head-On

The half-quaint term “Gay Pride,” coined in the 1970s (possibly) by Minnesotan activist Thomas Higgins, is a response to the very old assumption that non-heterosexual attractions are intrinsically shameful, a notion lugged like firewater and dirty blankets to the New World by the uptight white folk who settled this nation when it was merely a notion.  

While America has come a long way in divesting itself of this unreasoning Puritanical bias, she currently wallows within the throes of another one, a bias all too often projected onto the physical body that houses those once-shameful attractions.  That bias will be met head-on during the annual Pride concerts put on by the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus.  As their website proudly proclaims, “Our season’s grand finale is a unique fusion of choral music and dance designed to challenge the stigma surrounding body image.”

This challenge is described by Doctor Gerald Gurss, the TCGMC’s artistic director.  “Every day, we all look in the mirror and accept our truth that, ‘This is me,’” Gurss observes.  “We find the most beautiful parts of ourselves, and we hold on to those positive thoughts while trying to drown out the voices in our heads put there by social media, family, and cohorts.”

Well…that’s the ideal; often the reality is a little more—sometimes a lot more–complicated.  Diagnoses the Doctor:  “At some point we have all felt like our bodies do not live up to a false societal standard . . . My skin isn’t tan enough. My hair is graying. I don’t have a thigh gap. I don’t look stereotypically ‘female’ enough. My teeth need to be more white. Do these shorts make my booty ‘pop’?”

But this examination didn’t occur solely in the mind of the Chorus’s artistic director—far from it.  “In the spring of 2019, I held a roundtable discussion regarding future TCGMC programming with any singer who wanted to attend,” Gurss recalls.  “I asked prompt questions such as, ‘What issues are important to you,’ ‘What hasn’t the chorus tackled before,’ and ‘What would you like to see the Chorus sing about again?’”

Like all the best musicians, Gurss listened before composing something to listen to.  “I kept a tally going of answers that repeated,” he remembers.  “One of the prominent topics to surface was body image/body-shaming.”  This led to the commission which is the central pillar of This is Me.  “Every BODY” is described on the website as “a groundbreaking commission led by TCGMC featuring over 200 singers on stage and professional dancers that explores the complexities of body image, identity, and self-acceptance.”  

Art’s inspiration is often rooted in imagination…but ignoring the hard knocks reality of nuts-and-bolts logistics will make said art forever theoretical.  “Creating a large work of art of any medium is costly,” Gurss acknowledges.  “A new mural, a new, four-movement symphony, a new sculpture in a public park, or a new seven-movement choral work about body image; they’re all expensive endeavors.”

That’s especially true of art that makes one’s ear drums wiggle.   “In an effort to defray these costs, TCGMC collaborated with four other queer choruses to help underwrite this new creation,” Gurss says.  These choruses added tweaks and twangs that bounced from Texas to Tennessee to Georgia to North Carolina to Washington, DC.  Prohibitive geography was conquered by enabling technology.  Reports Gurss:  “The directors of these choruses gathered together over Zoom to decide on which composers we would ask to write the anthological work.”

Where body shaming was concerned, there was plenty of raw material to go around.  “The composers gathered with the underwriting directors and talked about their own issues with body image,” Gurss recounts.  “One composer noted, ‘I always felt unattractive because I was too skinny.’ Another noted, ‘My mother told me I was unattractive, because my nose wasn’t Asian enough.’ Another memory of note was a composer talking about people commenting on her hair texture as a black woman.  Because the nature of the work is about body image, finding composers who represented a wide demographic was important to us in telling the stories of many body types.”  

The final presentation will include the redoubtable talents of special guests James Sewell Ballet, The Minnesota Valley Women’s Chorale, and See Change Treble Choir.  Adds Gerald Gurss, “One of the movements, ‘Tom and Dean,’ tells the story of a local gay couple: Tom DeGree and Dean Schlaak.”

Gurss insists that examining body shaming isn’t just a cynical attempt to ride the crest of trendy topics—rather, it’s a reflection of the hearts and minds of the Twin Cities community that the Chorus serves.  “We exist because of our members, and if we sing about the issues important to them in bettering our communities, then I think we are more honestly relevant,” Gurss points out.  

The cure for shame is, naturally and inevitably, pride, so it only makes sense that this presentation will take place during the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus Pride concert, held on June 21 and 22 at Saint Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, Minnesota.  It’s a safe bet that all audience members will find at least a little of themselves in This is Me.  Or as TCGMC’s website puts it, “Join us as we embark on a journey of self-discovery and empowerment, celebrating the beauty of diversity and the boundless potential within each of us. Together, we will create a space of acceptance, love, and understanding.”

Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus This is Me
June 21 & 22, 7:30pm
St. Andrew’s Lutheran, Church, 900 Stillwater Rd., Mahtomedi, MN
$40.00 (Students $20.00)
www.tcgmc.org/