The Marquette Journal

The perfect body has graced the covers of magazines for decades. It’s the body that girls and guys could only dream of having. The one that teenagers and college students post up on their walls to stare at once they enter their bedroom door.

Farrah Fawcett donned a red swimsuit in 1976 that sold more than 12 million posters in the past 33 years, according to a report by CNN. The perfect body has been one to pine over, an ideal aspiration. This obsession has traditionally only applied to women, but that’s beginning to change.

The hard, muscular body has bulked up in the past few years, increasing largely since Generations X and Y’s childhoods.

Stan Weston created the original G.I. Joe action figure (not a doll beause a doll applied to girls) in 1963 to teach boys power, respect and the importance of deeds that a man must live up to and accomplish. The action figure has recently undergone a makeover that leaves young boys striving to be something they can never obtain.

According to Bradley University’s “The Body Project,” the character is completely unrealistic due to his enlarged proportions. The biceps of most of the G.I. Joes are larger than the figure’s head. “The Body Project” also believes that potentially harmful messages will arise from this size increase.

From G.I. Joe to everyday life, men have trouble believing their bodies are making the grade.

“Men see these idealized, muscular men in the media and feel their own bodies don’t measure up,” said Tracy Tylka, assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State University, in a 2006 interview with “Live Science.”

Television, film and advertisements become our beliefs — whether it be a Calvin Klein ad featuring a model with a flat stomach, defined arms and perfect face or an episode of “90210” where every character manages to be muscular and fit. If the character doesn’t look like we want him to, we don’t see much more than his face. The epidemic of our nation is vanity.

“The Body Project’s” initial goal is to increase awareness by providing resources and research to educate students on the many forces that influence body image issues, one large force being the media.

“Instead of seeing a decrease in objectification of women in society, there has just been an increase in the objectification of men. And you can see that in the media today,” Tylka said.

Dove launched its Campaign for Real Beauty in order to free women and future generations of women from beauty stereotypes. The campaigns, while incredibly positive, have chosen to focus on the female population.

Unilever, the company that owns Dove, also owns Axe body spray and deodorant. How can a company be so positive to one gender but stereotype another so heavily as needing to promote the “axe effect”? Where does this stereotype leave the objectified men?

From the media to heath risks, men are at as much threat from body image issues as women are. The only question is, can a society built on “man code” and patriarchy finally realize that the boys and men are in trouble?

Building up the perfect body

Get bigger. Run faster. Flash your guns. Lift more weights. Sculpt your six-pack. Release some stress. Binge on food. Forget to eat. Vomit it all up. Struggle with image, but don’t let anyone see. Why? Because you’re a man.

America is home to almost 8 million people with eating disorders, according to the South Carolina Department of Mental Health. More than 2 million more people suffer from anorexia or bulimia than the population of the state of Wisconsin. Of the 8 million, 1 million are men. More men suffer from eating disorders than there are people in the state of Montana. Imagine how many more suffer from poor body image issues.

“I believe (body image issues among) males are definitely not noticed as much as females,” said John Krazter, general manager for the Rec Plex. “That is not to say there are problems, and I am sure there are some at Marquette, but I have not had an issue in our facilities.”

Kratzer said he has seen an increase in the use of cardio equipment at the Rec Plex. The weight room used to be the primary source of exercise. Barbara Troy, clinical assistant professor of dietetics and nutritional consultant to Student Health Service, said signs are constantly popping up when it comes to identifying body image issues and eating disorders.

“The muscularity issue can also come up where a male spends hours in the gym in an effort to achieve the desired look,” Troy said. “Dramatic changes in food intake/types of food can also dovetail this increased exercise pattern.”

Kratzer said he has seen similar instances in the Rec Plex.

“A staff member or I have noticed that an individual may be spending too many hours working out,” he said. “Some obvious signs would be the physical appearance, which may be signs for bulimic or anorexic behavior.”

When circumstances surface, Kratzer said there are resources on campus such as the Counseling Center and Student Health Service that he refers to for support.

The present culture has seen trends like “heroin chic” in females (developed from the ultra thin, anorexic-like body types of models in the 1990s who were thought to obtain their size from the use of heroin or other drugs) come and never leave. Now a new trend has risen in the ranks, one that hits men hard.

“As women have had to deal with the unhealthy thin culture portrayed in the media, men have also been bombarded with unrealistic images of the male body,” Troy said. “Most specifically, the typical male body in the media is tremendously muscular and ‘cut,’ having a physique that is unattainable by most males.”

Troy believes that athletes are most susceptible to body image stigmas.

“Males can also fall prey to the thinness craze, especially when involved in distance running or wrestling sports. Fatigue and dissatisfaction with race times related to under-eating/over-exercising is a common complaint,” she said.

Faking it for show

It doesn’t take much for someone to develop body image issues. Zachary D’Arienzo, a sophomore in the College of Health Sciences, went through a traumatic event that led him to shut down emotionally. D’Arienzo said he was overweight most his life, and his weight loss made him feel better about himself.

“My problem arose after the bulk of my weight was off, and I was frightened to gain any of it back. I found myself eating better for fear of weight gain, not because I felt better,” he said. “If I ate bad one day, I would compensate the next day by severely restricting myself. My emotions were completely tied into what I ate because I was so scared to gain any of that weight back.”

D’Arienzo said he monitored himself closely to insure that he lost weight. He became scared of the weight he might gain.

“I was never diagnosed with an eating disorder, but as I look back it’s obvious how scared I was of weight gain, and how that fear ran most of my actions,” D’Arienzo said. “That could have led to some very bad patterns had I not broken out of it.”

The male stereotype is a major reason for hiding body image issues, according to D’Arienzo. He believes that it is a struggle because the man is traditionally seen as “the rock in the relationship.”

“A man can still be the strong emotional presence, fulfill the ‘man code,’ and act as society depicts a man, but still be struggling with an eating disorder,” he said.

When plastic breaks

Eating disorders are constant struggles, struggles that never go away. John Preston* is a Marquette student who suffered from bulimia.

“In seventh grade I began to have problems with how I looked,” he said. “The funniest part about it all was that I wasn’t that big of a kid.”

Preston began to binge eat and would later force himself to throw up.

“I’m not proud of what happened to me, and I definitely am not proud of what I did,” he said. “The most difficult part about it all was that I couldn’t stop myself. It was the worst feeling of my life.”

He kept his bulimia hidden from his family and his friends until his freshman year of high school.

“I had this routine that I followed everyday. I would eat as though everything was normal and then I would go home and let it all out,” Preston said. “One day I decided I ate too much at breakfast and too much at lunch. I left my sixth hour class to go puke in the bathroom. That’s when my friend caught me.”

After pleading, Preston convinced his friend not to tell his parents. It was that moment that Preston realized there was something that needed to change.

“People don’t necessarily understand how serious eating disorders can get. Mine dragged me all the way to hurting myself and my friend,” Preston said. “I vowed after that day to change, but it wasn’t easy.”

Slowly but surely, he began to become more comfortable in his own shoes, but he admits that his “disease” will never go away.

“I have marks from my loss of weight. I look at my fingers and remember what I have done,” he said. “While I may not find myself over a toilet barfing my brains out anymore, I will always live with scars that got me to where I am today.”

While in Preston’s case his self-image was so low it brought him to suffering from bulimia, it brings realization that body image issues do exist among men.

Building the perfect doll

From the image to the attitude, society ingrains in our heads an image of what a man is expected to be.

“Just as men are given a societal image of emotional and physical strength, they can continue to portray this image as they struggle with an eating disorder,” D’Arienzo said. “The fact that one with an eating disorder is in denial of it sounds cliché, but it is severely true, and I could never have admitted that what I was doing unhealthy — just normal actions toward keeping weight off.”

Marquette has made many efforts to assist students with body image and eating disorder issues, one of them being “Love Your Body Week” put on by the Center of Health Education and Promotion’s Peer Health Educators.

Guillermo Contreras, a junior in the College of Health Sciences who suffered from body image issues since he was 13 years old, believes that this week can be very beneficial in educating the Marquette community about men’s body issues.

“‘Love Your Body Week’ would be a great place to start advocating for this cause,” Contreras said. “Last year, I attended a speaker who spoke entirely on female body image and did not place any importance on men. It felt almost as though the speaker only saw women as having these types of problems in society and men not having anywhere near the same type of issues.”

The goal is to make pro-social efforts to change this mindset of what it means to have body issues. It starts at the source.

“Any step toward accepting yourself, who you are and even how you look helps to make you a stronger, more confident individual,” Contreras said. “Never disregard the small steps, and if someone is dealing with body image, get help and support from those you hold dear and near to your heart.

*Name changed for privacy.

Tags: body image, Bradley University The Body Project, Campaign for Real Beauty, Eating Disorders, exercise, Farrah Fawcett, G.I. Joe, Health Education and Promotion, Males, marquette university

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