September 2019 • happiful.com • 61I think that we
need to fight
for our brothers
and sisters, so
all voices can
be heard
He takes a moment before
responding. “It’s a really difficult
question to answer, because I
am nowhere near 100% happy
with my body – no way – but I
have other things in my life that
I feel so grateful for, and that I
feel so proud of. My work, my
relationships, and all of that gives
me confidence, and actually has
taken over how I felt about my
body all those years ago.”
This autumn, he’ll be taking
these skills on the road with
his One Size Fits All Tour (afterfilming the hotly-anticipated
returning series of How to Look
Good Naked), and Gok is keen to
point out that he is rewarded by
continuing to spread the body
confidence message up close and
in person: “It’s not a selfless act
doing One Size Fits All, I get a
huge amount out of it.
“Even just talking about how I felt
in the past about my body, how I
feel about it now, the dangers of
negative body image, and what
that can do to you – I get a huge
amount of confidence from that
because I get to help people, to
share their stories, and it confirms
my beliefs and politics when it
comes to the body confidence
movement.”
Gok is driven to work on
projects where he can make a
difference. I’m reminded of the
Gay Times Global Pride campaign
he supported last year, helping
to shed light on the appalling
mistreatment of the LGBT+
community in countries across the
world. Gok tells me sadly, this isn’t
an issue that is going away.
He’s just returned from a press
trip in Warsaw, Poland, where
civil rights activist Elzbieta
Podleśna, was arrested, and
her laptop, phone, and private
communications were seized. Her‘crime’ was sharing an image of
the Virgin Mary with a rainbow
halo, to protest against the
Church’s exclusion of the LGBT+
community from religion. “She’s
now had her entire work and
her entire life, personally and
professionally, investigated over
this one image,” Gok says, with
deep frustration in his voice.
And this isn’t an isolated
incident. “We’re in such terrible
shape at the moment. Look at the
Sultan of Brunei and the death
penalty for LGBT+ people,” he
continues. “Now, they’re not going
to enforce that as a law, but we
kind of forget that actually you can
still be arrested or beaten in that
country for your sexuality.
“Just the fact that people are not
being killed, it makes it kind of
a positive, or a step in the right
direction. Tha’s a problem that
we’ve got with LGBT+ treatment- almost a reverse of the body
confidence issue. We can’t just
focus on the stuff that’s ‘kind of
alright’, like the fact that it’s OK to
get married in this country.
“We’ve got to focus on the fact
that our brothers and our sisters
in the community, some of them
are dying, some of them are being
beaten or living in persecution
in their own homes – unless
they decide that they want to
take asylum in a country where
they can live freely as an LGBT+
person,” Gok says emphatically.
“But then, not everybody wants to
leave their country, their friends
and their families.
“For those of us who are slightly
more privileged, I think that we
need to fight for our brothers and
sisters, so that all voices can be
heard.”
We’re with you all the way, Gok.
Photography (teal background) | Chris WR Cox Photography, (bottom right) | Sue Lacey Photography