"Mr. Runner Up" is a series of images and short essays about male body image and male pageantry.
Image by Alejandro Betancourt
Words edited by Alejandro Betancourt from menstuff.org:
Excerpts from: Body Image Problems Not Just in Women
"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]."
Those at particular risk: men who constantly seek instant results from workouts and frequently check their progress in mirrors or on scales.
- Katherine A. Beals, PhD, Ball State University, RD; from March/April issue of ACSM's Health & Fitness Journal, published by the American College of Sports Medicine.
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.
-British Medical Journal
"As far as we know, all men are prone to these types of issues…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."
"Perhaps this is the one domain left where men can feel like men, since women can do everything that men can do, except they can't bench-press hundreds of pounds," Phillips tells WebMD.
"What has happened over the years is there's an increasing emphasis on men's appearance, and in particular on looking muscular, and it coincides very nicely with the increasing equality women have attained in society."
- 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.
Even boys and teens -- especially those who are overweight -- are suffering emotional trauma in their quest for bigger muscles, and setting themselves for possible future medical problems. "They may try to eat lot of protein but limit fat, and they often develop a fear of foods and an anxiety that results from restrictive eating," Loomis tells WebMD.
- Catherine Loomis, PhD, psychologist at the Eating Disorders Center at Rogers Memorial Hospital in Oconomowoc, Wis., one of the nation's few treatment centers that specifically treats men with eating disorder and body image problems.
Sources: By Sid Kirchheimer. ACSM's Health & Fitness Journal, March/April 2003. British Medical Journal, Nov. 3, 2001. Anorexia Nervosa and Related Eating Disorders, Inc. Katharine Phillips, MD, director, Body Image Program, Butler Hospital; associate professor of psychiatry, Brown University, Providence, R.I. Catherine Loomis, PhD, psychologist, Eating Disorders Center, Rogers Memorial Hospital, Oconomowoc, Wis. Roberto Olivardia, PhD, clinical instructor of psychology, McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston. aolsvc.health.webmd.aol.com/content/article/62/71549.html
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