Dear Chris and Erik,
I’m sorry we’ve given short shrift to the male body image books, and not only because it’s your turn in the personal experience hot seat. So let me cut to the chase: Did these books leave you fretting about men fretting about their bodies? Sure, the individual pathologies we read about are indubitable, and indubitably sad. But–to put things unkindly–do we have a national, nearly universal ailment on our hands or a select group of obsessive-compulsives?
The Adonis Complex insists that our country is being plagued by “a secret crisis of male body obsession.” Its authors aren’t only concerned with the starvers and the steroid junkies; they’re also worried about “millions in our society” who stress over their reflections in the mirror. Some of their evidence seemed less than alarming. Consider their diagnostic test asking men to circle which of several line and ink drawings represented their ideal body. Much to the authors’ concern, the winning images were unrealistically Ah-nold-like. But ideals are ideals, and it’s an insult to the subjects’ intelligence to imply that they don’t know the difference between fantasy and achievable goals. Hey, if someone asked me to describe my ideal apartment, it might have a few more bedrooms then my current one, not to mention a private roof deck and a sub-zero fridge. Still, that doesn’t mean I’m anything less than content and grateful to live where I do.
The authors fuss over a study of undergraduate men that finds 52 percent of them think about their weight or appearance “all the time” or “frequently.” Can you imagine: college students concerned with image! On the same note, they estimate that a third of the male members of a gym outside Boston “are involved in dietary rituals that affect their day to day lives.” I should hope so. All of us, save perhaps the most metabolically lucky, have to think about what we eat, calculating our hunger, exercise and nutritional needs, dinner plans, and so on every time we sit down for lunch.
Which is how it should be. Neither of these books gives more than glancing recognition to the vast rewards of caring about your appearance. Obesity is a more common health risk than anorexia, “muscle dysmorphia,” or any of their variants. Last year, Greg Critser published a terrific piece in Harper’s pointing out the benefits of a certain measure of body preoccupation. With one-fifth of Americans suffering from obesity, fear of social stigma is “a principal, if sometimes unpleasant, psychological incentive to lose weight.” (Critser is particularly tough on the p.c. educators who care more about positive body images than actual healthy bodies). To put it even more plainly: If a little neuroticism will keep my male loved ones healthy, then I’m all for a light dose of The Adonis Complex.
Even Luciano, a more levelheaded observer than the Adonis authors, barely acknowledges the benefits of the various self-improvement schemes she describes in otherwise generous detail. There’s little recognition of the heart attacks avoided because of jogging regimens, the crushes consummated thanks to Viagra. In fact, she’s unaccountably focused on the futility of trying to look and feel your best. Despite all your exercising, she warns, you’ll always have a couple of stubbornly chubby spots, and if you do manage to lose a lot of weight, you’ll be left with sagging skin, which you’ll then want to have tightened by a cosmetic surgeon. As if the treadmill is a slippery slope to a never-ending quest for physical perfection.
I’m off to eat a carefully (but not obsessively) chosen lunch. It’s been a pleasure joining you for this unusually contentious “Book Club.” As the editor of this feature, I assure you that I will be reading and re-reading this exchange, so I can figure out how to produce these sorts of fireworks again.
Yours,
Jodi
