As my fingers trailed along the beautiful silky green fabric, eyes hungrily taking in the unusual, modern neckline, I contemplated whipping the jumper to the till and throwing all of that month’s spending money at it.
But despite my lust for the jumper being borderline perverse, I knew I couldn’t buy it – for the same reason I didn’t ever buy fabrics that clung to the top half of my body.
I have Pectus Carinatum, or ‘pigeon chest’, an affliction that sees part of the breastbone pressed outwards or raised.
It typically occurs during a swift growth spurt in young people aged 10 or over. It’s very rare, affecting up to 2 in 1,000 people – but it’s more common in boys.
My breastbone juts out on one side, as though it is sitting diagonally in my chest.
Because I’m naturally very slim, it is very apparent – especially when I wear t-shirts and even more so when I opt for vests, making summer a nightmare.
I can’t remember a time when my chest was ‘normal’.
P.E. was a nightmarish occurrence for me, as being around other boys left me open to taunts.
Before I even knew what being gay was, I had other people labelling me that way, especially boys at school.
They laughed at the fact I played with girls and mocked me for being effeminate and very shy.
But aged 15, after one lesson playing football, one classmate pointed at my chest and, incredulous, asked what it was.
My face burnt bright red – I had never felt such deep shame as I walked numbly back to the changing rooms.
I’d noticed that my chest wasn’t flat like everybody else’s but I’d never felt weird or ‘wrong’ – now I felt like a freak.
Already knowing I was different from most of the boys, having another part of me labelled as ‘other’ just added to these existing feelings of inadequacy.
It’s a feeling that dogged me throughout my childhood, but even coming out as gay aged 16 and living openly with my sexuality didn’t help my confidence, not least because my body didn’t look like I thought it should.
There’s pressure on gay men to look like beautiful sculpted Adonises – like something Michaelangelo would have slaved over 500 years ago.
The gym has long been presented as a hangout for gay men in popular culture – and that bleeds into self-perception too.
I’d go home with men after meeting at a club and once our clothes were off, be distracted by their chest in relation to mine, or leave my top half covered.
No-one ever said anything, but so much of my life is informed by that trauma from my experience at school.
Shopping was always difficult because I love fashion. Sometimes I’d feel confident with a purchase, having tried it on in the shop – but then, under a different light at home, I’d see that it made me look bony and weird.
Even though no-one ever commented openly, I still felt disgusting.
I never saw a doctor about it as I felt too embarrassed. I joined a gym instead, using equipment like a chest press that would bulk me up.
I did see some results but to build enough muscle, I would have had to spend every waking minute there, and I didn’t have time to do that.
As I look young for my age and have always been slim, I don’t feel like people have ever taken me as seriously as I wanted or deserved.
It can seem like to be acceptable as a man you have to look a certain way – tall, broad, masculine and I’ve never been any of those things.
The feelings I had about the way my body looked certainly led to low self-esteem, which then led me to be quieter than I already was.
I had to put up with a lot of crap from people who saw the way I looked combined with the fact I didn’t speak up for myself as an opportunity to treat me badly.
But over the past decade – after a landlord treated me poorly – I’ve been working on not caring as much about what people think of me.
I realised I’d internalised some of that schoolboy trauma and that other people could be the problem.
It wasn’t always about me and that revelation was freeing.
I’ve come to recognise that there are also wider societal issues at play with my self esteem.
The pressures put on all of us to look and act a certain way are wrong, and accepting this has had a huge effect on the way I feel about my chest.
Everywhere we look are images of ‘the perfect body’. Instagram especially is a big offender with hashtags like hotgayman, containing almost exclusively images of humongous pecs and six packs.
I care far less now about looking different because what makes me – anyone – unique should be seen as a superpower, not a flaw. Changing my mindset has massively impacted the way I feel about my body, for the better.
Do I love my chest? No. I wish I could completely separate myself from caring that it doesn’t look like everybody else’s but that’s impossible.
The promotion of different body types is definitely getting better, but there should be more people who have conditions like mine, to show that we too, are ‘normal’.
I’ve never seen representations of chests like mine, at least outside of a medical textbook.
If there were such images on the cover of Men’s Health, LGBT+ magazines or given prominence on social media, for instance, it would be a game-changer.
Despite not feeling 100% comfortable with the way I look, I feel significantly more so than I once did.
It’s taken a change of mindset, a lot of self-love and a good support network (my husband especially), but it feels like overcoming those sneers in the changing room is finally possible.
If you’re reading this, and you have a similarly prominent condition, just know that if you’re struggling with self-esteem issues, you’re not alone.
As Mark Darcy once so eloquently said, ‘I like you very much, just as you are’.
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