Boys and Body Image

While it is unsurprising that a 2023 study revealed that 80 percent of American women reported having a negative body image, we shouldn't assume that body dissatisfaction is solely an issue for girls and women. Recent research from The Lancet claimed that three-quarters of adolescent boys have a negative body image, while an Australian study noted that almost half of 14 to 16 year-old boys interviewed were using protein powders in an effort to get more muscular. And recent findings suggest that today, about one-third of Americans with eating disorders are male.  

While these figures are discomfiting, what is perhaps more troubling is that boys’ body dissatisfaction and disordered eating often remain unidentified or unaddressed until they are extreme. In a culture that may associate abnormal eating behaviors almost solely with girls and women, it can be easy to miss the symptoms of eating disorders and related psychological distress in boys and men. What initially appears to be a natural or even commendable interest in “getting in shape” may actually hide an unhealthy obsession with exercise, with an effort to eliminate or max out on certain foods, or with boys equating self-worth with the strength, definition, or size of their bodies. Just as girls and women have for decades been told by society that their bodies were substandard and insufficient, so boys and men are increasingly subject to a cartoonish ideal of masculine physicality that cannot reasonably be met. Too many of these boys have not been educated to understand the dangers of these messages, or how to ask for help when they feel incapable of resisting them. Bodily dissatisfaction can cause real pain, and far too many boys bear this pain silently and solitarily.

Those of us who love and care for our boys cannot stop a media discourse that equates successful manhood exclusively with physical prowess and attractiveness—but we can give young men the tools to recognize, resist, and reframe this discourse in a way that promotes authentic health for themselves and their peers. At Browning, we provide these tools in an array of programs, activities, and curricula. Our physical education, health, and media literacy classes teach boys about the importance of regular physical activity and good nutrition,  the ways in which narrow ideals of attractiveness and masculinity are often marketed to boys, and how the internalization of these ideals can distort one’s self-image and self-understanding. Last February, our Today’s Boys, Tomorrow’s Men speaker series brought Harvard University’s Roberto Olivardia to our community, where he shared research on how advertising, movies, and even kids’ toys are bombarding boys and men with unreasonable dreams of swollen biceps, bulging shoulders, narrow waists, and hardened jawlines. And, most importantly, Browning’s classroom commitments to relational learning, tutelage in deep listening, and trusting conversation offer boys not only the space but also the security to be more open, vulnerable, and curious than restrictive approaches to either education or manhood might permit. A culture where a boy feels known and loved is more apt to normalize difficult conversations about matters of real personal consequence.   

To be clear: Getting exercise and eating healthily are excellent things, and there is certainly nothing wrong with seeking physical self-improvement or social connection!  But such growth best emerges from boys who understand the pressures being placed upon their gender identity, who appreciate the importance of making their own informed choices about who they want to be in the world, and who know that they have the support of community adults who will offer them honesty, guidance, and care as the boys explore the many ways they can find flourishing lives as men.