The Dangers of Obsessed Muscle Men
Although James, in his late 20s, had a high-paying job with a bright future in an accounting firm, his company’s cash flow was the last thing on his mind. Consumed by his exercise routine, James would leave work early and take lengthy lunch breaks to exercise. He eventually was fired and took a job as a personal fitness trainer, making only a third of his former salary. That’s fine with James; he says he’d rather be perfecting his physique.
James is just one of the men who emerge from hiding in “The Adonis Complex,” a book sure to pave the way toward greater recognition that men, like women, can become dangerously obsessive about their bodies.
Although everyone knows men who can’t pass by a mirror without a very long pause, the authors of “The Adonis Complex” reveal that the problem of male body obsession is a growing one.
Women, the authors point out, have learned to openly discuss the insecurities generated by societal ideals of beauty. It’s common knowledge, for example, that some magazine cover models have their breasts taped into bulging form and their zits airbrushed away in a photo lab.
Men, the authors say, have been equally bombarded in recent years with media images featuring ever-more-muscular models and advertisements touting products that will make them more buff. But males “almost never talk openly about this problem, because in our society, men have been taught that they aren’t supposed to be hung up about how they look,” say authors Harrison G. Pope, a Harvard psychiatrist; Katharine A. Phillips, a Brown University psychiatrist; and Roberto Olivardia, a Harvard clinical psychologist.
Thus men tend to internalize their obsession, leading to a persistent or worsening problem, such as an eating disorder or a psychiatric condition called body dysmorphic disorder. The authors even identify a disorder called muscle dysmorphia, in which males do not believe they are muscular enough.
Pope and his colleagues provide ample evidence to back up their claim that American men are gaining on women in the how-do-I-look mind-set. For instance, they cite a 1997 Psychology Today survey that found 43% of men were dissatisfied with their overall appearance. Moreover, American men spend an estimated $2 billion a year on commercial gym memberships and $2 billion on home exercise equipment. In 1996, they underwent more than 690,000 cosmetic procedures.
They encourage men with a body obsession to seek professional counseling and to rebel against stereotypes. To that end, they make an interesting argument that men have a maximum amount of muscle that can be attained, per body size, and that anything additional is artificial and, therefore, must be the result of steroids. They base their formula on height, weight and body fat.
“If all American men and boys understood this simple fact, they might breathe a huge sigh of relief,” the authors write.
What is perhaps the book’s most useful part focuses on what adults can do to prevent their sons from male body obsession.
Start by examining your young sons’ toys, the authors suggest. For example, the plastic “Star Wars” action figures evolved so much from 1978 to the re-release of the film and the toys in the mid-1990s that when Mark Hamill, the slightly built actor who played Luke in 1978, saw the 1995 figure, he gasped: “Good God, they’ve put me on steroids!”
