Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada.
Department of Applied Human Nutrition, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
Arch Sex Behav. 2021 Jan;50(1):69-82. doi: 10.1007/s10508-020-01876-8. Epub 2021 Jan 4.
Gay, bisexual, and queer (GBQ) men are at higher risk of negative body image. As having a negative body image is related to negative mood, sexual, and health outcomes, identifying and providing community-friendly tools for GBQ men is important. This paper describes the creation and evaluation of Rainbow Reflections, a comic anthology developed to promote awareness of and communication about body image. Rainbow Reflections includes comics from 38 trans- and cis-GBQ artists who drew inspiration from personal narratives based on pre-determined themes in the empirical literature and interactive inserts based on evidence-based practice. To evaluate Rainbow Reflections, 167 trans- and cis-GBQ men completed pre-post measures before/after viewing a selection of comics and responded to an open-ended question about their experience. Overall, participants rated the comic book positively, with a majority (61.1%) indicating that they would recommend the book to a friend. After viewing the comics, participants reported greater comfort with initiating conversations about body image, greater satisfaction with their bodies, and reported higher estimates of how common body image concerns are for queer men. Themes that emerged from open-ended responses included participants reflecting on personal struggles (~ 30%), relating with the stories of others (~ 22%), reflecting on the standards of queer men (~ 18%), recognizing cis-privilege (~ 11%), reflecting on others' struggles (~ 9%), negative feedback about the comics (~ 7%), and balancing masculine and feminine (~ 3%). Results of the study provide preliminary evidence for Rainbow Reflections as an effective community-friendly tool to promote awareness of and communication about body image for GBQ men.
男同性恋、双性恋和酷儿（GBQ）群体面临着更高的负面身体意象风险。由于负面身体意象与负面情绪、性行为和健康结果有关，因此识别并为 GBQ 男性提供社区友好型工具非常重要。本文描述了 Rainbow Reflections 的创作和评估，这是一本漫画选集，旨在提高对身体意象的认识和促进相关交流。Rainbow Reflections 收录了来自 38 位跨性别和 cis-GBQ 艺术家的漫画作品，这些艺术家从基于经验文献的预先确定主题的个人叙述中汲取灵感，并采用基于循证实践的互动插页。为了评估 Rainbow Reflections，167 名跨性别和 cis-GBQ 男性在观看一系列漫画前后完成了预-后测，并对他们的体验回答了一个开放式问题。总体而言，参与者对漫画书的评价很高，大多数（61.1%）表示会向朋友推荐这本书。在观看漫画后，参与者表示更愿意主动谈论身体意象，对自己的身体更满意，并报告说对酷儿男性普遍存在身体意象问题的估计更高。开放式回答中出现的主题包括参与者反思个人挣扎（30%）、与他人的故事产生共鸣（22%）、反思酷儿男性的标准（18%）、认识到顺性别特权（11%）、反思他人的挣扎（9%）、对漫画的负面反馈（7%）以及平衡男性气质和女性气质（~3%）。研究结果初步证明，Rainbow Reflections 是一种有效的社区友好型工具，可以提高 GBQ 男性对身体意象的认识和促进相关交流。
