Lets Hear It For The Boys

Young girls and women are not the only ones who are obsessed with their body image.  In todays’ society, admiring and continuously trying to reach unattainable body goals is on the rise with boys, girls, men, and women.  In the video you just viewed, is a young teenage boy who is a bodybuilder trying to get more muscular.  He describes this as muscular dysmorphia, (bigorexia) which is disorder where people feel they are too skinny and want to get bigger by gaining more muscle.  This epidemic is on the rise in young boys starting as early as middle school.  Young boys are trying to portray that “fat-free and chiseled body” (Quenqua, 2012).  Many young boys are going to the gym for several hours, every day of the week to achieve that stereotypical ‘bodybuilder look’.



Can we really blame young boys for trying to be super muscular?  If this bodybuilding epidemic is starting with boys who are in middle school, they are in the beginning of finding themselves, puberty, and in a very influential time of their lives.  But how do boys even know they want to be that muscular?  Television is crawling with examples of men with big muscles.  For instance, Jersey Shore and Jerseylicious portray “juice head gorillas” that get all the girls and can get what they want simply for the way they look.  Jersey shore and cast member Mike “The Situation” is a dead on example of a gym junkie.  Although it has been said that he takes supplements to help put on muscle mass, he has been dedicated to the gym to look how he does.  Let’s not forget commercials promoting supplements, commercials for getting that ‘ripped’ body such as P90X, and movies and documents with actors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger.  What’s this all teaching young influential minds?

Quenqua (2012) states that many boys are starting to go to the gym hard; several hours a day, six or seven days a week.  They see their bodies changing, but not quick enough.  So what do they do? You got it, they start using legal supplements such as protein bars and shakes.  Many times, boys who get into bodybuilding do tamper with illegal supplements as well, such as steroids, after they stop seeing results from their protein supplements.  This is happening more often than not, that there has been a significant decrease in natural teenage body building competitions.  Many of the teenage bodybuilders cannot compete in these competitions because they are too “juiced” up.  Why can’t these young boys be happy with little muscle definition?  Why does our society make it so hard to be happy doing what we do?  If we say we are bodybuilders, society doesn’t believe it unless we live up to the stereotypes we created for that particular group.  Why can’t society just accept people for who they say they are? Why do we not feel comfortable if their appearance doesn’t match our perceived stereotype?   

Quenqua, D. (2012, November 19). Muscular body image lures boys into gym, and obsession. The New York Times, pp. A1.