MIND OVER MASSIVE
Steroid use on the rise as young men look for perfect bodies, Rowan Pelling writes.
If there’s one thing I’ve always envied about men, it’s their ability to look in a mirror and see George Clooney beaming back at them. No male friend of mine has ever spent hours scrutinizing his naked thighs and fretting that a faint dimple of cellulite means no human being will ever want to have his babies.
The relentless female quest after physical flaws — real or imagined — is by far the most tedious aspect of my gender. I had an eating disorder in my late teens and, dear lord, was I a bore. I weep when I think of the time and energy I wasted hating my tummy for not being washboard flat. I could take no pleasure in my youthful curves and — if we’re going to be frank — show-stopping breasts, for all the loathing of my midriff. When I got better, I made a vow to be more like a man and embrace the physique I was born with.
In view of this, I can only deplore the signs men are sliding down the same slippery self-castigating slope as women. New data released by the Home Office of the United Kingdom states that anabolic steroids are the only drugs to see a fourfold increase in usage in the U.K. in the past year, and it’s young men who account for the extra uptake.
Experts speculate — rightly, I feel — that younger males are influenced by the pin-up perfect images of actors and gym bunnies plastered all over the internet.
I always thought the blessing of having sons was that I wouldn’t have to worry about distorted body image, or the prospect of them starving themselves. But I reckoned without social media and the sudden elevation of ripped reality-TV dudes to top dogs.
My perfectly proportioned 13-year-old boy has taken to clutching a centimetre of stomach in his hand and talking of “belly fat.” He and his friends spend hours exercising when they should be sleeping until noon and insulting their parents.
Nor are things set to get better anytime soon. I chaired an event recently at The Curious Arts Festival in Lymington, England, with dating expert Nichi Hodgson. She said the key tip for men in terms of online dating profiles was to remove their shirts. “Women like toned chests,” she told an aghast audience. An author friend, famed for his love affairs, told me afterward he would never have had sex at all if he’d had to reveal his pot-belly beforehand.
We agreed it’s time for those classic male pin-ups — the intellectual, the geek and the wimp — to stage a revival and remind young men who really gets the girl. The stark truth is steroids may make you buff, but they can’t make you interesting.