Body Image Isn't a Female Issue Only
- Deema Jony
- Sep 9, 2024
- 5 min read
Have you ever looked at a skinny boy and thought, "oh, he definitely has an eating disorder?" Probably not. When we see underweight boys, most tend to assume "he has a fast metabolism", or "he isn't done with pubery yet, he'll look broader in a few years". The same does not apply for female girls: many assume that an underweight 17-year-old girl most likely has body image issues or some sort of disordered eating. However, boys are not immune to body image struggles, and their experiences are often overlooked or dismissed. Society tends to downplay the pressure boys face to meet certain physical standards, assuming that concerns about appearance primarily affect girls. This assumption creates a harmful space, ignoring the fact that boys can also struggle with body dysmorphia and the desire to conform to an idealized body type.
To do some real research on this issue, I made an account on looksmax.org, a
website dedicated for only men looking to improve their attractiveness in the most radical ways possible. Although I did get banned after only a few hours (they somehow realized I'm a female from the way I typed and my language), I learned a lot within those few hours. I found young fourteen year-old boys resorting to insane methods to improve the way they look, including "bonesmashing", a technique in which you hammer the bones in your face until they break, which leads to the bones growing and looking more
prominent and therefore, somehow, more attractive. Many of the users on the website refer to famous model Jordan Barrett as inspiration for facial and body physique. The most flabbergasting part of it all was that most of the comments under these posts were encouraging these drastic techniques rather than admitting the obvious insanity of them. Thirty year old men left comments advising young boys to starve themselves, get height-maxxening surgery (yes, this is a real procedure you can do in Turkey), or to consistently squint while walking around to achieve the "hunter-eye" look that men highly praise. This website left me in complete shock; as far as I know, there isn't any female equivalent to this website. This made me question: are we underestimating the body image issues that young boys experience? The answer is quite obviously a big, fat YES.
Let's look at the actual science behind male adolescent body issues. According to research article "Body Dissatisfaction in Adolescent Boys", up to 80% of boys report feeling dissatisfied with their body. The National Eating Disorders Collaboration states that one-third of people who report having eating disorder behaviors are male, with the highest associations being binge-eating (43% of total reported, including both genders) and restrictive food intake disorder (67%). To add a little cherry on top, these numbers are likely severely underrepresenting the actual amount of eating disorder behavior in male adolescents. This is due to the stigma that eating disorders are a "female" issue, leading to males refusing to confide any unhealthy behaviors or thoughts they're experiencing. A Huffpost article written by Dr. Charlotte H. Markey claimed that "boys' parents, peers, coaches, and sometimes even medical providers believed boys were 'getting healthy,' when in fact they were sinking into a serious disorder". This reveals that even when young boys are showing obsession over their bodies, the trusted adults around them assume that they're working to improve their health when it can quite literally be the exact opposite. The stereotype we've built in which it's okay for a man to obsess over his body is so ingrained that even medical professionals are struggling to draw the line between an eating disorder or simply being healthy. While a young teen boy may not understand how problematic his obsession is with his body, it's vital that doctors themselves are able to identify if medical assistance is needed. The reason this is an issue is because young teenage boys are most likely not going to visit a psychologist if they aren't fully aware of their situation. Instead, they'll visit their general practitioner, who is GENERAL in terms of understanding health holistically. When I checked for articles to see if general practitioners are successful in identifying eating disorders, I discovered that most of them fail to identify an ED while diagnosing a patient. This article revealed that a male showing symptoms of bulimia nervosa is more likely to be diagnosed with depression rather than actual bulimia by their GP (general practitioner). This evidence is also quite shocking as bulimia is one of the EDs that show the most obvious symptoms and are easier to spot compared to anorexia or binge-eating. The medical article also claimed that a female showing the exact same symptoms as a male is more likely to be correctly diagnosed by their GP than the male. This research really reveals a lot about the lack of attention towards EDs in medical practice; In my opinion, GPs with adolescent patients should all have some sort of specialization in identifying any symptoms that could lead to disordered eating and body image issues in the future. In hopes of learning even more about male body image, I'm looking forward to interviewing Dr. Charlotte Markey who has published multiple books about body image from the lens of adults, children, females and men.
Focusing on media's portrayal of eating disorders, I decided to see what would show up if I looked for movies/shows that are centered around eating disorders and if any of them had a male main character. The top three movies that appeared were To the Bone, Sharing the Secret, and Perfect Body. As I continued to search, I realized that there are literally zero movies that depict a male with an eating disorder or body image issues. At best, an irrelevant male side character would appear in movies starring female adolescents. This tells us that there is literally no media representation of male adolescents with EDs, which makes sense given the fact that there is so much stigma surrounding the topic. This is pretty ironic given the fact that the first thing that popped up when I searched "movies about male eating disorders" were famous male celebrities who have openly discussed their EDs, including Christopher Eccleston, Jacob Elordi, and Robert Pattison. Many male stars who play main roles in top movies have come forward about their EDs/body image issues, yet we don't have a single movie with a male main character to address this issue. Although most of my articles talk about the presence of problematic media, it seems like this topic is more problematic in the way that media doesn't even have any content related to male body image issues.
There are multiple things that must be done to make adolescent boys more comfortable opening up about their negative body image. Changes can literally come in all shapes and forms, from a medical standpoint to a theatrical/media perspective. It's evident that someone needs to step up and make a few changes so boys can get the help that a teenage girl would get in the same scenario.
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