'Muscular body image leads boys into gym, obsession'

NYT story today about teen-age boys' body image obsession. Not exactly a new phenomenon - GQ had a story a couple months ago about male anorexia - but interesting nonetheless:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/19/health/teenage-boys-worried-about-body-image-take-risks.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp

For some reason, I find the tension between the high obesity rate and the anorexia/"manorexia" concerns pretty interesting. My wife is a little woman, naturally*, and this weekend, someone offered her a late afternoon ham sandwich as a snack at a family gathering. She politely said, "No, thank you, I ate a pretty big lunch." And a friend of her mother's shot back, "What did you have? Three carrots this time instead of two?" She was like the second or third person to attempt to pressure her into eating when she attempted to turn down the offer, though by far the most derisive.

Obviously, there is a happy medium.

But when you're 16-22 years old, trying with great, great difficulty to find a mate, or to secure a college athletic scholarship, I can see how you end up being a body perfectionist.

* Meaning she is, naturally, a little woman. Not that I, naturally, would have a little woman as a wife. I wasn't opposed to occasionally shopping the big and tall section back when I was still a man about town.

 

Used to be that this would do it:

 

Also posted because I'm sure a lot of us deal with kids like this quite frequently in high school sports.

 

Article talks too much about the negatives of training and not enough about the benefits.
Any kid playing HS football better get in the weight room. It's not just about size. Proper training serves as an injury preventer in all sports.

 

The happy medium would be spending two hours a day in the gym while eating cheeseburgers between sets.

 

Or during, when you're doing curls.

 

The protagonist in the story, Mr. Abusheikh, is 5'-0" and weighs 125 in high school.

Its a good bet most boys who are 5'-0" in high school have compensation issues.

Another story about nothing, but since it was in the NY Times, some people think there is some national trend going in.

High school boys obsessively lifting weights? Who knew?

 

America is too fat!

America is too obsessed with being skinny!

America is confused!

 

No the happy medium is 2 hours of Wii Fit a day.

 

With Doritos, Pepsi and bong close by.

 

You're taller than I imagined.

 

There is truth to this. One day I'll see stories about how youth obesity rates are skyrocketing with today's fatass kids doing nothing but sitting on their ass, gobbling junk food and playing video games. Next day I'll see stories about how today's youth has alarmingly soaring levels of body image/skinnyness/weightlifting obsession.

So how are both things possible? Is nobody in the middle today?