TIME EUROPE
APRIL 24, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 16
VIEWPOINT
Never Too Buff
A new book reveals a troubling obsession: how male self-worth is increasingly tied to body image
By JOHN CLOUD Boston
Pop quiz. who are more
likely to be dissatisfied
with the appearance of
their chests, men or
women? Who is more
likely to be concerned
about acne, your
teenage son or his
sister? And who is more
likely to binge eat, your
nephew or your niece?
If you chose the women
and girls in your life, you
are right only for the last
question — and even then, not by the margin you might
expect. About 40% of Americans who go on
compulsive-eating sprees are men. Thirty-eight percent of
men want bigger pecs, while only 34% of women want
bigger breasts. And more boys have fretted about zits
than girls, going all the way back to a 1972 study.
A groundbreaking new book declares that these numbers,
along with hundreds of other statistics and interviews the
authors have compiled, mean something awful has
happened to American men over the past few decades.
They have become obsessed with their bodies. Authors
Harrison Pope and Katharine Phillips, professors of
psychiatry at Harvard and Brown, respectively, and
Roberto Olivardia, a clinical psychologist at McLean
Hospital in Belmont, Mass., have a catchy name to
describe this obsession — a term that will soon be doing
many reps on chat shows: the Adonis Complex.
The name, which refers to the gorgeous half man, half god
of mythology, may be a little too ready for Oprah, but the
theory behind it will start a wonderful debate. Based on
original research involving more than 1,000 men over the
past 15 years, the book argues that many men desperately
want to look like Adonis because they constantly see the
"ideal," steroid-boosted bodies of actors and models and
because their muscles are all they have over women
today. In an age when women fly combat missions, the
authors ask, "What can a modern boy or man do to
distinguish himself as being 'masculine'?"
For years, of course, some men — ice skaters, body
builders, George Hamilton — have fretted over aspects of
their appearance. But the numbers suggest that
body-image concerns have gone mainstream: nearly half
of men don't like their overall appearance, in contrast to
just 1 in 6 in 1972. True, men typically are fatter now, but
another study found that 46% of men of normal weight
think about their appearance "all the time" or "frequently."
And some men — probably hundreds of thousands, if you
extrapolate from small surveys — say they have passed up
job and even romantic opportunities because they refuse
to disrupt workouts or dine on restaurant food. In other
words, an increasing number of men would rather look
brawny for their girlfriends than have sex with them.
Consider what they're spending. Last year American men
forked over $2 billion for gym memberships — and another
$2 billion for home exercise equipment. Men's Health
("Rock-hard abs in six weeks!" it screams every other
issue) had 250,000 subscribers in 1990; now it has 1.6
million. In 1996 alone, men underwent some 700,000
cosmetic procedures.
At least those profits are legal. Anabolic steroids — the
common name for synthetic testosterone — have led to the
most dramatic changes in the male form in modern history,
and more and more average men want those changes for
themselves. Since steroids became widely available on the
black market in the 1960s, perhaps 3 million American men
have swallowed or injected them — mostly in the past 15
years. A 1993 survey found that 1 Georgia high school
boy in every 15 admitted having used steroids without a
prescription. And the Drug Enforcement Administration
reports that the percentage of all high school students
who have used steroids has increased 50% in the past
four years, from 1.8% to 2.8%. The abuse of steroids has
so alarmed the National Institute on Drug Abuse that on
Friday it launched a campaign in gyms, malls, bookstores,
clubs and on the Internet to warn teenagers about the
dangers. Meanwhile, teenagers in even larger numbers
are buying legal but lightly regulated food supplements,
some with dangerous side effects, that purport to make
you bigger or leaner or stronger.
As they infiltrated the body-building world in the '70s and
Hollywood a decade later, steroids created bodies for
mass consumption that the world had literally never seen
before. Pope likes to chart the changes by looking at Mr.
America winners, which he called up on the Internet in his
office last week. "Look at this guy," Pope exclaims when
he clicks on the 1943 winner, Jules Bacon. "He couldn't
even win a county body-building contest today." Indeed,
there are 16-year-olds working out at your gym who are
as big as Bacon. Does that necessarily mean that today's
body builders — including those 16-year-olds — are 'roided?
Pope is careful. "The possibility exists that rare or
exceptional people, those with an unusual genetic makeup
or a hormonal imbalance," could achieve the muscularity
and leanness of today's big body builders, he says.
But it's not likely. And Pope isn't lobbing dumbbells from an
ivory tower: the professor lifts weights six days a week,
from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. (He can even mark historical
occasions by his workouts: "I remember when the
Challenger went down; I was doing a set of squats.") "We
are being assaulted by images virtually impossible to attain
without the use of drugs," says Pope. "So what happens
when you change a million-year-old equilibrium of nature?"
MORE>>
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April 24, 2000
COVER STORY
The Incredible Bulk
Testosterone, which can increase libido and help build muscles, will be available soon in easy-to-use gel form. But it can cause liver damage and prostate cancer. Why are people willing to risk their health for it?
Never Too Buff
A new book reveals a troubling obsession: how male self-worth is increasingly tied to body image
Viewpoint
Joel Stein worries about his testosterone
EUROPE
Blowing the Whistle on the Past
A former Czech political dissident hunts down communist-era secret police collaborators
Neither Here Nor There
Serbs who deserted the war in Kosovo are finding no welcome in the West
History Wins, Irving Loses
Controversial historian David Irving loses his libel suit and is branded a pro-Nazi falsifier of history
Viewpoint
Rich Westerners make poor advocates for their friends in the Third World
Viewpoint
Law enforcers must learn to move faster to snare global lawbreakers
MIDDLE EAST
Withdrawal Symptoms
Syria vacillates as Israel seeks world support for a plan to pull its troops out of southern Lebanon
Jews on Trial
An Iranian spy case undermines an ancient minority and a modern President
THE ARTS
The Rem Movement
Architecture is changing. The proof? Its biggest prize, the Pritzker, goes to a thinker rather than a pure designer
Performed with True Passion
The English National Opera brings Bach to vivid dramatic life
The End of Innocence
Ishiguro's new novel, When We Were Orphans, probes the wounds of vanished childhood
DEPARTMENTS
Techwatch
World Watch
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