Body Image Problems Not Just in Women

Obsession With Muscles May Indicate Body Image Problems in Men

March 11, 2003 -- Men may still hesitate to ask for directions or give up the TV remote, but they're apparently crossing the gender line into another area once firmly dominated by women: Obsessing about their body image and developing eating disorders.

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In the past two decades, reports the British Medical Journal, the number of men who openly report dissatisfaction with their physical appearance has tripled -- and today, nearly as many men as women say they are unhappy with how they look. Meanwhile, therapists report seeing 50% more men for evaluation and treatment for eating disorders than they did in the 1990s.

And the root of this trend may be a new type of disorder -- an obsession for six-pack abs and bulging biceps that seems especially common in athletes and other fitness enthusiasts.

Though statistics show that about 10% of men suffer from the two best-known eating disorders -- anorexia and bulimia -- a growing body of evidence suggests that men may be especially vulnerable to muscle dysmorphia, a condition in which one obsesses about lacking muscle definition and mass, even with a muscular body. This condition is not unlike that satirized in Saturday Night Live sketches featuring the Schwarzenegger-like, sweatsuit-wearing Hans and Franz, whose mission was to "pump you up."

Laughs aside, the problem is so real that in the March/April issue of ACSM's Health & Fitness Journal, published by the American College of Sports Medicine, Ball State University nutritionist Katherine A. Beals, PhD, RD, highlights the growing trend among fitness buffs and offers advice to athletic trainers on spotting the problem in weight lifters and other fitness center regulars. "Millions of boys and men today harbor a secret obsession about their looks and are endangering their health by engaging in excessive exercise, bingeing and purging rituals, steroid abuse, and overuse of nutritional and dietary [products]," she writes.

Although a relatively new area of medical research, many experts believe this disorder is grossly underreported. But those at particular risk, says Beals: men who constantly seek instant results from workouts and frequently check their progress in mirrors or on scales. Though her findings are geared to athletes -- or those who want to be -- others say that less-athletic men are not immune to muscle dysmorphia and related body image problems.

"As far as we know, all men are prone to these types of issues," says Katharine Phillips, MD, director of the Body Image Program at Brown University's Butler Hospital and author of several books on men's body image problems, including The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession. "The reasons why haven't been well studied, but one factor may be the availability of anabolic steroids, which are potentially dangerous but can make men become much more muscular than Mother Nature ever intended."

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