Polly Vernon
I wasn’t surprised to learn that, over the last three years, the number of boys and men receiving outpatient treatment for eating disorders grew twice as quickly as the number of girls and women. According to fifigures released by the BBC last week, male patients increased by 27% over that time, female patients by 13%. While most people suffering from eating disorders are still female – 92% of those treated in 2016 – the gender split is shifting.
Like I say, I wasn’t surprised. Saddened, in a complicated way. Bulimia and anorexia have been a ladies-only problem for so long, why not share the burden, eh? Maybe it’ll be a kick up the arse for more effective treatments. A reason to stop thinking of EDS as the ultimate incarnation of the fundamentally suspicious, hysteriainclined condition of being born without a dick. But, nope: I was not surprised.
I might be the only person in the UK who didn’t get Love Island. It fused my mind and fried my retina. I kept trying and, during my bi-weekly attempts to see what all the fuss was about – in the milliseconds before my eyeballs refused the screen like skittish racehorses, my brain recoiled and my hands grabbed wildly for the remote of their own volition – I was invariably struck by the male bodies showcased. So bronzed, so hairless, so damned buff! So lean, so mean, so ripped! Sure, the girls had miraculous bodies too, but we’re used to girls having miraculous bods. But boys? Boys who aren’t models, or movie stars, but rather: normal, everyday, reality TV boys? Boys with bods is new!
Love Island 2017 represented a TV industry miracle. It drew a big audience of 16 to 24-year-olds, a demographic everyone assumed lost, forever, to Youtube clips of cats being punked. That lot responded to something in Love Island, and I reckon a major part of it was that elevated ideal of the male physique. Love Island was the ultimate iteration of those gym selfies men post online. The end point on all the protein bars they eat, the HIIT classes they endure, the Joe Wicks recipes they recreate. Love Island was what they could be, what they should be, if they Just. Keep. Trying/bench Pressing. As men aspire to body perfection, inevitably, they’re spiralling off into related anxieties and extreme behaviour patterns. I can’t work out if I’m miserable for them, for ending up in the same damn body-mess in which women fester… Or hopeful we might find a way out, together.