As a professor of psychology and Director of the Health Sciences Centre at Rutgers University in the US, Charlotte Markey has become one of the world’s foremost experts on body image and health. As part of her pioneering research in the field, Markey has been talking to teenagers for over 25 years about how they feel about their bodies.
nd yet, she began to realise that when it comes to body image, the conversation has effectively passed by young men for generations.
What she was hearing from her young interviewees in more recent times gave her genuine pause for thought.
“One boy I interviewed — he’s now in college — told me that when he was in sixth or seventh grade (around 11 or 12), he started to develop a little bit of breast tissue as he started going through puberty,” Markey recalls. “It doesn’t necessarily always stay there and, you know, some kids just gain weight during puberty. He’d seen an advertisement in the back of a magazine about a tape that could help accentuate women’s breasts. So he bought it to flatten himself. He went to school one day, all taped up, and he just started sweating, It was a total mess. This young kid didn’t realise that this is likely a very temporary thing, and it’s nothing to be worried about.”
Another research study that Markey encountered highlighted some arresting facts. “It was a study in Australia [focusing on the attitudes of] six-year-old boys, and about 50pc of these kids were saying that ‘yes, muscle make boys look better’. The fact that they could identify that, or could point to it as an aspiration, was crazy to me. My heart aches for boys thinking they have all these worries and concerns, and don’t know how to turn them off.”
Other current studies surrounding young boys and body image reinforce the idea that boys are hugely vulnerable to cultural pressures and to media-fuelled versions of the male bodily ideal. According to Stateside research, 75pc of adolescent boys say they are dissatisfied with their bodies, while a third of teen boys are trying to gain weight or “bulk up”. Almost 40pc of teen boys have used (clinically untested) supplements like protein powders.
According to academic research published on the website of the Irish body image charity Bodywhys, one in seven men will develop an eating disorder by the age of 40. According to a report in the Irish Medical Journal, 40pc of hospital admissions for eating disorders from March to September 2020 were men — a figure higher than any previous year. Even more disconcertingly, there are no medical guidelines specifically for men experiencing eating disorders at present.
Using no-nonsense language and real-life case studies, Markey offers a hugely informative guide, designed to speak to even the most cynical of teen.
Because it’s been widely believed for so long that worrying about body image is a ‘female’ preoccupation, the concerns and issues that men face have flown largely under-radar. And with no generational precedent to refer to, most parents are at a loss on how to sensitively, authoritatively approach the issue.
“There are definitely some sceptics when I talk to other moms about this,” Markey admits. “It’s just not on their radar. What’s interesting is that I when I started talking to boys, they just don’t talk about it. But it doesn’t mean that they’re not feeling these concerns. I had interviewed a boy who said something like, ‘I’m going to the gym every day and I’m trying to cut out sweets’. When I’d ask them why they were doing that, it’s almost like they don’t know. I don’t think they’ve been given the emotional toolbox for this.”
Where the female bodily ideal often centres on thinness and deprivation, the male bodily ideal — muscular, broad, sculpted — requires discipline and exercise. On the face of it, these are usually things that adults often see as positive behaviours for young boys. Yet the drive for a muscular physique can result in what some experts call muscle dysphoria and muscle-related eating issues.
“What we need to watch for with boys can sound a little counterintuitive actually, because a lot of the times what boys start to do is eat healthier and exercise more,” explains Markey.
“Even a physician would be like, ‘That’s great you’re exercising’. We don’t initially point to that and think that there’s a problem there. I’ve heard parents say, ‘Well, my son just always likes to play baseball’.
“I think that if you’re a kid who is saying they want to cut out all sugar because they saw something on TikTok and it might pass in a day or two, I wouldn’t make a big deal of it as a parent,” Markey adds. “All of a sudden, if they’re really rigid about what they eat, or they seem kind of obsessive, or they don’t want to do social things because of food being there, that is potentially concerning.”
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Being You by Dr Charlotte Markey
Being You by Dr Charlotte Markey
For parents, working against the might of social media, celebrity culture and advertising is a huge task.
“Young boys gravitate towards the idea that the [social media] images where people look more muscular or lean get more attention and ‘likes’ on social media,” says Markey. “Kids are really in touch with the world these days. When I talk to young people I realise how important social media is to them, but they don’t always get real, accurate information.
“Fortunately, even the celebrities that have these bodies will come out now and say something like, ‘This is all I did for six months’. I think [actor] Chris Pratt was one of the people who publicly said that he had a personal trainer and chef and getting in shape for a movie was his whole life for six months. What we need for boys is the same support structures that are in place [for girls], and to be able to say to them, ‘This is really fake. No one really looks like this. Even Chris Pratt doesn’t look like Chris Pratt’.”
Dr Markey’s advice for parents
1 Talk with your boys It’s important that we normalise boys’ body image concerns and aim to have adaptive conversations about their health and development. Have positive but candid conversations with your boys, focusing more on what their bodies do than on how they look.
2 Help boys develop media literacy Boys’ body image concerns stem, in part, from the media they’re exposed to that portray men as muscular, lean, powerful, and athletic. Limiting media messages can be challenging, but teaching boys how to appreciate deception in the media and the importance of not internalising media messages are important life skills.
3 Support boys’ development of a healthy relationship with food We want our boys to not only enjoy food but to nourish their mental and physical growth by engaging in healthy eating. Unfortunately, many adults have fraught relationships with food and pass their negative thoughts onto their children. The goal is for boys to view eating well as a form of self-care.
4 Keep an eye on physical activity habits Kids who are physically active tend to be more fit and have stronger bones and muscles. Being physically active regularly is also typically associated with better mental health. But boys can take physical activity to the extreme in an effort to bulk up or improve their athletic performance. Keep an eye out for extreme activity patterns that may be the manifestation of disturbances in body image or disordered eating.
5 Don’t reinforce outdated views of masculinity We want to be careful not to reinforce damaging views of what it means to be a man by emphasising strength, stoicism, dominance and self-sufficiency over compassion, kindness, open communication, and social connectedness in our socialisation of our boys. It is these outdated views of masculinity that contribute to boys’ and men’s reluctance to seek care when they suffer from physical or mental health problems.
Being You: The Body Image Book for Boys by Dr Charlotte Markey with Daniel Hart and Douglas N. Zacher, is released April 7, 2022 via Cambridge University Press. See thebodyimagebookforboys.com
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