In high school, he took diuretics and tried to throw up after eating to get his weight down. Experts agree that girls are more likely than boys to be concerned about their body and what they look like. But boys also agonize over body image, worrying if they are too short, too fat, too scrawny, too clumsy. Girls have long been influenced by magazines and societal messages about looks, but more and more boys are being influenced by the media, he explains. We are just coming to understand the degree to which boys have been affected.
Boys are aware of the messages being sent in films, on TV and by rock stars.
There are more contradictory messages being sent. One source of stereotypical messages about boys' body image may be video games in which the hero or main characters are mostly big and powerful, according to Jody A. Brylinsky, associate professor of health, physical education and recreation at Western Michigan University. Another is sports. We value men who are involved in athletics or physical activity. In every culture, Ehrenreich says, adolescents struggle in some way to define adulthood, and in a culture dominated by media and marketing images, both boys and girls have a hard time figuring out who they are supposed to be.