AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The last few years, we've seen a spike in scrutiny over the way famous people look - more specifically, whether they can credit weight loss to drugs like Ozempic or Zepbound. But, you know, another class of drugs is also fueling discussions about body image online, too, and it's a drug that's been around for a lot longer. We're talking about men who want to gain muscle mass by using steroids. NPR's Brittany Luse is the host of the It's Been A Minute podcast, and each month, she brings us some insight into overlooked parts of culture. Hey, Brittany, it's good to be with you again.
BRITTANY LUSE, BYLINE: It's great to be back, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, so like we said, steroids had been around for so long. So what made you want to look into the current conversation around steroids? Like, has that conversation changed?
LUSE: Yeah. I mean, you mentioned Ozempic and drugs like that. And on social media, you can often see people analyzing whether or not a celebrity is taking the medication because of a sudden supposed weight loss.
CHANG: Right.
LUSE: Well, the same is true in the inverse. There's more and more content analyzing whether or not a famous man has started using steroids because he's suddenly a lot more muscly.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: In the last 24 days, look at the change in physique. He's small, then big. And what you're going to see is he's going to get small, then big yet again. What that often means is they're going on and off cycles.
LUSE: And on top of that, there's a lot more content being fed to young men about how to achieve these muscly body types, and this could be having an impact on young men's self-image. I spoke to Dr. Roberto Olivardia about this, and he's a clinical psychologist and a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and he pioneered research on a specific kind of negative body image he calls muscle dysmorphia. Here's how he described it to me.
ROBERTO OLIVARDIA: These are the guys who, despite being in good shape - they might wear long-sleeve shirts on a 90-degree day...
LUSE: Oh.
OLIVARDIA: ...Because they think their arms look too puny or too scrawny. And when I'm talking boys, I mean, I'm seeing this in boys as young as 12, you know, 11, who...
LUSE: Wow, like middle school age.
OLIVARDIA: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've worked with boys as young as 13, 14, who have done anabolic steroids.
CHANG: Wow, this makes me so sad, that 12-year-old boys might be wrestling with this, because, you know, we think a lot about young women when we're talking about body image issues, and I feel like we're all pretty aware at this point of the pressure put on young women to look a certain way. And I feel like we don't talk as much about how that same pressure is imposed on boys or men. What kind of ways have we seen that pressure play out? And have standards evolved for the ideal male physique over the years?
LUSE: I mean, yeah, totally. Male body ideals, just like women's body ideals - they're always shifting. Like, for example, in the 1980s and into the '90s, it was all about being jacked. Think of, like, a WWE wrestler, right?
CHANG: Yeah.
LUSE: Yeah. And Dr. Olivardia actually studied how these shifting ideals show up in subtle ways, like in the action figures for popular movies.
OLIVARDIA: We got a 1970s action figure of Luke Skywalker and the 1998 action figure, and, like, it's totally different. I mean, the new Luke Skywalker action figure had his robe open, his very defined pectoral muscles, smaller waist, more defined legs. And now, we're talking about an action figure that's based on the same character that somehow was, you know, manipulated to sort of be a lot more muscular.
CHANG: Wow. I mean, that does make me wonder, what is the ideal male body of today? What do you think, Brittany?
LUSE: Yeah, when I asked Dr. Olivardia about this, he basically said young men have much more uncertain futures today than they have had in the past, both educationally and economically. For example, being the breadwinner in the family isn't a guaranteed position for them anymore.
CHANG: Right.
LUSE: Young men could be feeling threatened and want to achieve a body that makes them threatening to the world around them.
OLIVARDIA: 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. You know, I just met with a man yesterday in his mid-20s, and he said, yeah, if I just build, like, the perfect body, then I'll be immune to any kind of rejection. And I said, unfortunately, that's not the case.
LUSE: Yeah, Dr. Olivardia basically summed it up to me like this. Ultimately, the body is not a shield for rejection.
CHANG: No, it is not. Brittany, thank you so much for sharing this with all of us.
LUSE: Thanks, Ailsa. It's always a pleasure.
CHANG: That was Brittany Luse. She is the host of NPR's It's Been A Minute, a show all about exploring what's going on in culture. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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