Body modifiers like Ozempic and other weight loss drugs have gotten attention for how skinny they can make you. But what if you're a boy who wants to get BIGGER? For young men, there's another drug getting more and more popular: steroids.Fit and muscular bodies get celebrated on social media, and many men turn to steroids to match what they see. But with that comes the rise of "muscle dysmorphia," a kind of body dysmorphia where a person feels that their muscles aren't big enough.Brittany sits down with Roberto Olivardia, a alinical psychologist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, to talk about how a drug, once primarily associated with professional athletes pursuing performance enhancement, is now the drug of choice for boys and men struggling with negative body image.For more, check out Roberto's book, The Adonis Complex.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is muscle dysmorphia and why does it matter?
I see. I see. And how does social media play into all of this? I mean, you know, just to come clean myself, I'm always looking at it. And I feel like one of the great pillars that holds it up is people sharing their quote unquote fitness journeys, right? That is like some of the lifeblood of social media.
And I wonder, where is the line between wanting to maybe be jacked or whatever or having goals for your appearance versus muscle dysmorphia? Where is that?
That's a great question. So the research actually shows a high correlation of social media usage and body dissatisfaction because of sort of all the different influencers and whatnot. And there are some that are just outright harmful in terms of encouraging steroid use and things that are very unhelpful. But the reality is, is that a lot of us can't do some of those sort of exercises and whatnot.
Like when Mark Wahlberg posts his workout plan.
And he's like getting up at 315 and like working out like three times a day. Exactly.
All right. 420 in the morning. Workout starts in 10 minutes. You know what I got? I got this portable cold life right here. Oh.
That's good for you. You're being paid 20 million bucks or whatever a movie. I would do that if I was being paid 20 million bucks for a movie. But the average person is not going to wake up at four in the morning, do that, and then do it again at like 2 p.m.
And I guess the part that interests me is when people internalize that is, oh, because this person's doing this and they're getting all these likes and attention, I should be doing that. Coming up. I'm seeing this in boys as young as 12, you know, 11.
Middle school age.
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Chapter 2: How are steroids used among young men?
Am I like all the roles that were sort of attached to being quote unquote masculine started to be shared, you know, more. And that was inherently more threatening in some ways. Whereas for, you The idea of feminism is I could be the stay-at-home mom, I could be the CEO, and all of that could be fine and no one should be threatened by that.
It's like an expansiveness as opposed to a contraction, which it sounds like many men perhaps experienced the expansion of women's rights and roles as a diminishment of their own. Exactly.
Even if that was not the actual case, that's the experience. Yeah. We called it sort of like the threatened masculinity theory. And I think that's what we're seeing now. But I have patients who might struggle, let's say, with social anxiety and they feel so desperate because they're like, I want people to see me as a threat.
I want people to see me as dangerous because internally I feel so inferior. Well, there's power in that. There's power in other people being afraid of you. A hundred percent. And so there's a sense of asserting dominance too. There's a sense of physically taking up space.
And I see that a lot just with a lot of young men that I work with who really struggle with that ideology around like, oh, I don't want someone sort of taking away my manhood.
You have said so much with all of this. And I feel like we can't talk about male body ideals without talking about Marvel superheroes. I feel like the kinds of almost like physique unveilings that Marvel films as like a brand does for their stars.
I think about the transformation of the actor Kamil Nanjiani when he was acting in the Eternals Marvel film, like the before and after that he shared on Instagram. I remember it broke social media. I remember that.
You guys, Kumail Nanjiani, y'all. Breaking the internet with this body transformation right here. I mean, first reaction. Your jaw's already on the floor, Dani.
I think more people probably have familiarity with his like physical transformation than even the film itself. No disrespect. I love the director.
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