Yes, it's true - we all know there's nothing more satisfying than a good session of beefing out your cake. I'm talking of course about working out, the opportunity us men get to go to a gym packed with steroid filled monkeys, and check each other in shorts. It's a good, totally non-homoerotic activity. However, word is, some men take this to dangerous levels, obsessing over there body shape, and crying themselves to sleep because they have low self-esteem. I think I've actually read some of their online journals..
Anyhow, as I just finished saying, there are some guys out there that are upset with the way they look. This article is for you losers! Here's the initial link for you, but if you're all hopped up on 'roids and can't muster the patience to wait for the link above to load, just read on!
Obsession, for Men
Copyright infringement, Calvin Klein. Busted.
Most women who know Josh describe him as a walking poster child for the tall, dark and handsome. He has a gym membership, but with his demanding work schedule and active social life he doesn't get to work out as much as he thinks he should, so he's no doubt fat. But after a recent trip to the flea market on an especially hot, sticky day, the 31-year-old says he realized just how badly he needs to get in shape.
"There were all of these guys walking around without their shirts on, and wearing those short jogging shorts with the slit up the side; they were all buff and exuding sexuality. I think I got some on my clothes," Josh says. "I was so hot, but there was no way I was gonna take my shirt off. No way Jose. Adios muchachos."
Okay, Josh sounds like the typical pansy that me and my humongous steroid using friends all hang out and make fun of. Often times, the Chuckinator will bench press 600 lbs or so, then we'll sit around in our little shorts and make fun of people like Buckwheat, or whatever this jerk's name is, and comment on how he's obviously a big pudgy loser because we don't see him in the gym 7 days a week. Hahahaha! Oops, time to go shave my forehead.
Josh can rattle off his list of his perceived body imperfections: thinning hair on his head, growing woes with unruly back, crack and nose hair, man-boobs, love handles and lack of a six-pack set of abdominal muscles. When asked if he thinks about his body every day, Josh rolls his eyes and nods.
"I think about it as soon as I look at myself in the mirror in the morning; getting in and out of the shower; when I eat, when I'm on the bus, sometimes when I'm in an airplane, and once when I was watching a movie about Gladiators. And when I'm out and see guys that are more attractive than I am," he says "I imagine myself being the guy wearing no shirt and those little shorts with the slit up the sides".
Love those shorts. There's gotta be one factory outlet that is churning those relics from 70s out on a regular basis. I don't see them for sale anywhere, so there must be some secret location where vile men go to purchase these shorts.
Josh went through an especially hard time lately, but he seems relieved that his lack of an appetite has helped him lose weight fast. He hopes to drop another 10 pounds and says he is positive that getting rid of his love handles will help him have better self-esteem.
That's right kids, going through a hard time and not eating at all is the key to losing weight and hapiness!
Josh refuses to let me use his real name for the story, but I'm more muscular than him, so what the hell is the pansy, Mark McGillamy, going to do? Nothing. After I tell him I'm going to use his real name, I prove my point by bench pressing him a few times and eating part of the phone book for fiber. Josh whines that people finding out about his body image worries is "the last thing he needs.", but I reassure him by saying "Grow a penis and be a man, you baby".
According to Adonis co-author Phillips, professor of psychiatry at Brown, or some other equally prestigious sounding University, Josh represents only one of the milder cases amid millions of men struggling with body dysmorphic disorder, a disorder where people spontaneously break out into the Lindy Hop.
The Lindy Hop was named after Charles Lindbergh, for those of you keeping track for the trivia contest.
She says that the numbers for guys struggling specifically with extreme shame and embarrassment about their muscle tone or lack thereof, totals more than 100,000 in the United States alone. In Adonis, the authors describe one man who was fired after refusing to stop blending protein shakes at his cubicle at work, despite co-workers' complaints about the disruptive noise, and another who refuses to kiss his girlfriend because he fears that her calorie-laden saliva will lead to unwanted pounds.
What a bunch of dorks. I saw this one guy working out yesterday who was a little slighter of frame than myself (not that that really matters), and we left the gym at the same time. It was funny though, because he went straight to his locker, took off his headphones (which had some hardcore music playing), and immediately tore out his little protein shake thing, shook it up there, and then guzzled it in one gulp. I got the impression he was almost trying to be extra manly or something. In any case, the image of a guy, who's even smaller than me, listening to hardcore music, and slamming back a protein shake, made me feel very dysmorphic, and want to do the Lindy Hop.
Since Phillips began her residency 15 years ago, she has made it her life's work to build model airplanes, and was thus fired quite quickly from her first job. In order to keep the income flowing, she decided to write some self-help books for men with body-image woes. She and her co-authors named guys' unhealthy obsessions after Adonis, a half-god, half-man from Greek mythology who was the peak of masculine beauty, gorgeous enough to win the love of the goddess Aphrodite and so irresistible he started an ugly cat fight among the women of the Pantheon. "I have a poster of Adonis above my bed. My husband doesn't like it, but I don't care. When he starts to look like Adonis, then we'll talk".
"This is a disorder that affects as many men as women, yet people assume this is just a woman's problem. Men die from these various forms of Adonis," Phillips says. She cites steroid abuse, poor taste in fashion and turtles as relevant information, most of which we think she just pulled out of nowhere. "This is not to minimize the suffering that women experience, but to say that men suffer way more, and that the suffering that woman experience is minimal."
Ahhh, good old doublespeak!
During their research the authors found that 45 percent of American men surveyed say they are dissatisfied with the new white meat chicken mcnuggets at McDonalds. After answering this question, the authors followed up by saying "Aha, trick question. You obviously eat a lot at McDonalds, so why don't you do yourself a favor, eat less junk at McDs, and work out more, fatty?" "We're making people more aware of the fact that they might be hideously obese." They also found that straight and gay men seem equally afflicted, despite popular stereotypes that gay men are more concerned with appearance. Even more surprising, there are more gym monkeys that own shorts with the slits up the sides, than gay men that own the same kind of shorts.
I want to get a tuxedo with those slits up the sides. How cool would that be?
To penetrate verbal taboos and make it easier for guys to talk, the authors posed as easy woman at local nightclubs, and got the men really drunk. Once that was done, they created a series of computerized body image tests involving rows of male bodies of increasing muscle size. In these tests, men picked models averaging about 28 pounds more muscle than they have as their ideal mates. Authors call this syndrome "bigorexia glandopedia", a disorder where sufferers believe that steroids aren't so bad, once you get past having to shave your shoulders and ears twice daily.
"Now we've come to realize that the rise of 'bigorexia glandopedia' is a warning signal," Pope says. "It's a bellwether of what our society is doing to contemporary men's views about their bodies."
You're all wondering what exactly bellwether means aren't you? Doesn't matter, I'm not going to bother looking up a definition. I could make one up though I guess.
Word: Bellwether
Word type: Compound Normative Verb-puncture
Definition: A large utensil used in the making of custard and oysters.
Use it in a sentence: Hey, there's my bellwether. Horray!
Good enough. I'm tired today. I'm just about to get started writing a presentation for what I saw while I was in Phoenix, so that should be exciting to the core.
Tonight is also my old staff Christmas party, so it'll be interesting to see how that works out. Christmas parties, as I think I already expressed in a previous entry, are fairly boring for me, so I don't know how long that'll last for.
Oh, and in other fabulous news, my stupid computer at home has been screwing up again. I bought the thing from UVic computer store, and it's like they gave me the shoddiest parts possible. It's pretty ridiculous - the hardware on a computer shouldn't be having drastic issues within a year of purchasing it. Grr.
I was thinking today about blogs - I had actually been reading this one blog in particular and finding myself getting nauseous reading through the posts. Each one of them is filled with self-pity, and complaints about the things that the blogger did the previous night, and how next time, she should not do them, etc. Pretty standard run of the mill stuff, although I have a very difficult time understanding why someone would make that public - seems like something better suited to a journal, or a private diary. That's neither here nor there though, I covered that in a previous entry. In any case, I posted an anonymous comment on the blog, because I found myself fed up with the "woe is me" style entries, and recommended she take her own advice. The response back was pretty typical - "Don't judge me, these are my own thoughts and provide no context!".
My thoughts on that response are mostly:
- First of all, I don't think I really made any real judgement, or at least, I don't think I expressed one in my initial comment - I merely said that it was easier to complain about your problems and say what you should do, rather than to actually take the steps necessary to solve your problems. Next time you're offered a choice where you know the right course of action to take (based on the number of times I've seen mention of "I know I shouldn't have done [arbitrary drug], but I did anyway. Why? WHY???????", I think it's safe to assume that the right course of action is known beforehand), make the right choice, rather than just thinking "Oh, I'll regret this later, but it's easier to do make the bad decision now. Next time, I'll really behave though". Is giving advice judging someone? I guess it is, but would that advice have been regarded the same way if I had put a positive spin on it? I doubt it.
- If you put your thoughts into an online journal, that you've made public, you're gonna get judged. Just like I expect to be judged by some people for the words that I write in this blog, so should everyone else understand that whenever you make comments in a public medium, be it a blog, an internet forum, a book club, or even a class at school, you're opening yourself up to be judged. That's part of what sharing an opinion is about.
- Would it be any different if it was Hitler's blog I was reading, and it said things like "I hate all jews", etc.? I don't think so. He could still argue that there was no context for his thoughts, but that's irrelevant. I still believe that if you're expressing words in a public medium/forum, you better understand that other people are going to be reading them, and that if you want to provide a suitable context, that's up to you to do.
- Someone else ended up posting a reply saying "Yah, that's what I hate about live journals". Might I suggest keeping a personal journal then? Or setting up a password to prevent people other than your friends from accessing the journal? This is taken right from the livejournal feature sheet:
Privacy
* You control:
o Who can see each individual entry.
Anyhow, that's about all I have to say on that I think. Feel free to post comments judging me and my jaded view of the world - it's your right!
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