It is widely accepted that girls face intense pressure in American society to look super skinny. But what about boys? Do they face similar pressures to build up their muscles and attain six-pack abs?
In ?Muscular Body Image Lures Boys Into Gym, and Obsession,? Douglas Quenqua explores this question:
It is not just girls these days who are consumed by an unattainable body image.
Take David Abusheikh. At age 15, he started lifting weights for two hours a day, six days a week. Now that he is a senior at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, he has been adding protein bars and shakes to his diet to put on muscle without gaining fat.
?I didn?t used to be into supplements,? said Mr. Abusheikh, 18, who plans on a career in engineering, ?but I wanted something that would help me get bigger a little faster.?
Pediatricians are starting to sound alarm bells about boys who take unhealthy measures to try to achieve Charles Atlas bodies that only genetics can truly confer. Whether it is long hours in the gym, allowances blown on expensive supplements or even risky experiments with illegal steroids, the price American boys are willing to pay for the perfect body appears to be on the rise.
In a study to be published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics, more than 40 percent of boys in middle school and high school said they regularly exercised with the goal of increasing muscle mass. Thirty-eight percent said they used protein supplements, and nearly 6 percent said they had experimented with steroids.
Over all, 90 percent of the boys in the survey ? who lived in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, but typify what doctors say is a national phenomenon ? said they exercised at least occasionally to add muscle.
Students: Tell us ?
- Do you think boys face pressure to have the perfect chiseled body? How does the pressure on boys compare with the pressure that girls face to look skinny?
- Are you interested in bodybuilding? How important is building up muscles to you? To your friends?
- Do you ever take body supplements or steroids to build muscles faster? Do you have any friends who do?
- Is trying to bulk up a bad thing? When does it cross the line from being healthy exercise to something to worry about?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.
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