How Modern Media Makes Men Miserable With Their Bodies - Scott Griffiths

Representations of male bodies in a variety of media have become more disproportionate relative to the average male. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo from the original Star Wars, the action figurines look like normal regular guys, but then for the re-release, they look jacked. Magazines, TV, you see a similar pattern. Being a young guy growing up and thinking, "Oh, how am I supposed to look? Am I attractive? Am I hot?" And you look for a frame of reference. Let's say you see 100 male bodies in your media diet per week, the 100 that you see today in 2023, you come out on the negative end of those comparisons much more than you did 20, 30 years ago. What is muscle dysmorphia? You can think of it like reverse anorexia. Sometimes it's been called bigorexia or musclerexia. If anorexia is a preoccupation with wanting to be thin and typically being successful at achieving that, then muscle dysmorphia is the opposite direction. The preoccupation is wanting to be as muscular, as leanly muscular, as possible. And it obviously extends beyond just being a hobby or a pleasurable pastime. It It causes real misery and impairment for the folks who have it. What are the risk factors for this? Risk factors include things like low self-esteem. Guys who have muscle dysmorphia, they almost always have pretty low self-regard, and training, dieting, looking their best is one way to feel better about themselves. Often it's one of the few, if not the only ways for them to achieve that. There is often history of of bullying. They may have been skinny when they were younger. Maybe they were fat and were teased and wanted to do something about it. They may have experienced some trauma, whether physical, sexual, or similar. Often they're perfectionists, so they want to do a job to their absolute best and they want it done right, which means that if they're going to train, they want the best training regimen. If they're going to diet, they want their diet to be on lock, and they pore over research. They really can't stop. And often some obsessive-compulsiveness as well. So, folks who have muscle dysmorphia will tell us, you know, when I when I do something, I really do it. I go for it. You can get a little obsessive about it. What does that tell us about why muscle dysmorphia comes about? That it's born out of Is it feelings of weakness weakness and and maybe some learned helplessness perhaps in some regards and a few other bit What what does it tell us all of those different risk factors you've just explained there about why muscle dysmorphia comes about? Well, when your training is on lock and your diet's on point, it gives you a sense of control. It gives you a sense of control and it gives you a sense of achievement. And having, you know, having a feeling of control and achieving and having success in any pursuit is generally and broadly great, but in muscle dysmorphia, it becomes the singular focus. And generally speaking, when anything becomes a singular focus where it's the the the salve to a a wound like low self-esteem, it doesn't often work out very favorably for the person affected. Does it co-occur with anything else? So, you mentioned there that people tend to be slightly obsessive. Does that mean that there is more obsessive-compulsive disorder? Is there autism spectrum disorder? Is there anything else? Yeah, all of that's slightly elevated. I think depression is what you see quite a lot. It's not clear that the depression is there first. I'd say it often comes about afterward. So, if you have been training and dieting that hard for so long, maybe it's cost you a relationship or two. Maybe you don't socialize with your friends as much as you used to, then I mean, depression's a a fairly understandable outcome of going through that for some time. Guys with muscle dysmorphia, you know, have a higher background rate of having anxiety in general, often some social anxiety, particularly with when they were young. So, if you're used to thinking that others are are are laughing behind your back or judging you or that you don't belong in social situations, those kinds of thought patterns are going to set you up for that critical self-analysis on how you appear to others, which is, your muscles, your height, any of the things that men are often concerned about. I suppose that also creates a base of ruminative thoughts, too, considering yourself, how other people see you. If you're not spending that much time in social situations, then the few social situations that you do spend time in are going to be judged greater extent because there's fewer incidents between you and other people for you to think about, which means you'll ruminate about them more, which means that you'll think more about your body image and how you can control this. And because you're not that socially adept, you think, "Well, the way that I should become more socially adept is by getting bigger in the gym because that's the only thing that I've got control over in my life, and it means I need to diet harder, and if I get bigger, then the girls will like me." Yeah, I mean, you you're Yeah, exactly right. You may be able to tell a little bit of personal uh story coming through here, but, you know, as someone who really didn't understand um social dynamics very much, especially throughout school, and then getting into university, I really was just like thrust into this hyper-social world, and I didn't understand how to navigate it that much. And this is, you know, 2006, 2007. So, like miscbodybuilding.com forums and and yeah, like the I know I know exactly what you're talking about. Like like this was before Zyzz. So, in the pre-Zyzz era, before if it fits your macros was revolutionary and not old hat. Um and that for me very quickly, I attached a lot of my sense of self-worth to this. You know, I Yeah. throughout second year and third year of uni, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, I would be hosting in a nightclub with my top off uh with a bunch of my mates pouring drinks down everyone's throats and having a good time at like this brand new premiere, the number one nightclub in the city, and that very quickly attached my sense of self-worth to the way that I looked because I was the guy, one of the few guys that was walking about with his top off, and I mean, if I was bigger, if I was leaner, then people would respect me more. And yeah, you can very quickly wrap your sense of identity and self up in your condition. Yeah, exactly. And that often is true, especially when you're younger. Like there's there's not that many arenas where young people can compete in in a social kind of way and and achieve success and be respected. People Like young people are not so different from one another at that point. You're all in high school together. The way you look is such an easy thing to attach your self-esteem and self-worth to, and it's so clearly digested by your peers as a marker of social status and success. So, it's no wonder that so many young people end up getting into the kinds of mindset that you found yourself in. I found myself attaching importance to my appearance when I was a teen as almost all teenagers do. And ultimately, well, ideally, as people get older, you know, they they find a job that is their passion. interests, hobbies. They find their tribe. Suddenly, there's lots of different social arenas that you can put effort into and achieve prestige in and feel good about yourself from there that aren't your appearance, but that takes time. That That's getting older. What is the age of onset for body dysmorphia amongst males? I'm going to guess that 9-year-olds don't have body dysmorphia. No. No, they rarely do. We know that like young kids are aware that there are ideal ways for men and women to look, so they pick up cues from society, but in terms of when muscle dysmorphia onset, it's really after adolescence where you start to see big differences due to puberty in the rate at which boys are developing. Suddenly, you are short, and there are tall kids. Kids are getting broader. They're getting more muscles, but you've still got those skinny lanky arms, and a lot of adolescents are suddenly aware that their body can be different to their peers, and then they're kind of thrust into this environment where you throw sex and attraction and dating on top of that where it feels if you don't pay attention to this, then you're just not going to make it. Like you you're not going to have the respect to get the girls. Uh so, it's it's no wonder that young men are susceptible to this kind of thinking. Well, that suggests that there's maybe two things going on. One being that almost all children are basically made out of the same rubber and magic and a broadly just like a a blob with a a face on it, but then you hit puberty at differing rates, and puberty kicks in, and the androgens set this guy off a little bit more and this guy off a little bit less. Yeah. But, the other thing being that sexual selection and and and being chosen and the desire to be chosen and realizing that you yourself are a a sexual being is very intimately linked with men's views of and presumably females as well. I'm going to guess that you don't see anorexia in like six six seven eight-year-old girls either. No. No, typically not. Right. What How many men are there compared with women who have body image issues that would cross whatever the threshold is of pathological? That's a great question. I don't think the data out there are convincing enough yet for me to put a firm you know prevalence estimate on that. It's not as common as for women. So, women by and large experience more eating disorders. They're more likely to say they don't like the way their body looks at all levels of severity from just not really liking it all the way up to the kinds of severe body dissatisfaction that might characterize eating disorders. But it's certainly there for men. To get to give you a sense of how the prevalence estimates fall out, around 1/3 to 1/4 of the eating disorders that are thinness-oriented, about which we know quite a bit in regards to prevalence, they affect men. But of course, the type of body that that is thin and skinny is typically one that that women will say they're after and men will not. When you look at muscle dysmorphia, the kind of more muscularity-oriented eating disorders that my team have specialized in in recent years, those prevalence estimates switch. Suddenly, it's like 80-90% of sufferers are men, which is what you might expect. We just don't have the big population level data to to slap a a percentage on. Are eating disorders and body image disorders the same thing? Look, I think you can make a really good case for that. The the DSM, which you use in the states and we use here in Australia to classify all manner of psychological disorders, it's it's not a very old text. Like psychology, psychiatry in general compared to physiological medicine, physical medicine, it's young. So, you have this category of disorder called eating disorders. You have a category of disorder called body dysmorphic disorder, which is around body image, and you think, "Ah, these these two seem to have a lot of similarities." And you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. And the way we would go about treating it is pretty much exactly the same. It's just, you know, a quirk of a diagnostic system that's constantly evolving in response to evidence. Have you worked out what the mechanism is that's causing this to occur inside of somebody's mind? Like, so they see themselves in the mirror, they're able to what they objectively see and what they subjectively see begin to diverge more and more. That causes them to ruminate about their image. It causes them to use self-referential thought. It causes them to be obsessive about their training, to eat more or to dial the calories in and do all of these things. Why? Like, what what what's going on inside of these people's heads? What are they what are they hoping to achieve? Like, what are the behaviors that these people display? What characterizes them? Yeah, look, I I I don't I don't have a an excellent answer for you here because the the number of reasons, the central reasons why muscle dysmorphia can can come about are really diverse. We could have someone to take the example you were providing who, when they look in the mirror, there is some perceptual distortion that goes on in their head so that what they see reflected back at them is completely divergent from how they actually are and how others see them. This is the person with muscle dysmorphia who is constantly seeking reassurance. They could be the biggest guy in their friend group, but they're still terrified to take off their shirt in case someone thinks that, you know, they don't train. Like, do you even lift, bro, kind of mentality. And they exist, but there are some guys who have muscle dysmorphia. They know exactly how they look. Like, they know they know that they're the biggest guy in their friend group, one of the biggest guys in the gym, but it's it's just never enough. The goalposts are always moving. They get to one point, get to one success, but then it's on to the next because perceptual distortions are not the motivating factor there. Could have been, as in the words of one of the guys we were interviewing with muscle dysmorphia earlier this year, that when he was younger, he got bullied for being scrawny and this kid would come up and put his fingers around this guy's wrist just to show how skinny his wrist was. And from there came a whole bunch of very critical commentary on his own body, and he's just never really been able to outrun that and hasn't dealt with it. Right. So, the underlying belief or worldview is that if I continue to train, something will happen that will fix the problem that I've got inside. Yeah, it's that control, right? Like, if I if I just you know, I get my training on lock, if my dieting is on lock, and if I keep just doing this, things will be better. Like, the underlying problem, insecurity, the distortion, it will go away. But it it's not going to. It for the same reason that someone who has body dysmorphic disorder, they think their nose is grotesquely misshapen even though no one else can see it. They go to a cosmetic surgeon. He says, "Yeah, I'll fix your nose right up. Here's a nose job." They get it done, and then they look in the mirror and they go, "Still doesn't look right. I think they botched it. I'm going to have to have another one." Because it's not the problem. It's just not the underlying problem. I saw an article that I've had saved for the last couple of months since I knew that you were coming on, which you may be familiar with. Poor relationship with one's father associated with heightened muscle dysmorphia symptoms via vulnerable narcissism. You familiar with this? Uh I'm familiar with the title. I So, something that's been happening in research on muscle dysmorphia that I think is worth mentioning is folks who do research and have been doing it for some time in the area wanting more focus on studies with clinically diagnosed individuals with muscle dysmorphia. The study in question you've just mentioned no doubt has some value, but it's using self-report questionnaires of muscle dysmorphia symptoms. And what tends to happen, right, is you might get 300 college students recruited into a study like that one, and you give them a symptom a symptom questionnaire of muscle dysmorphia. And like, the average level of muscle dysmorphia symptoms when you look at it is just a bunch of guys who go to the gym and train. It's not it's not the same. It's just not the same. Yeah. Uh and you you can say, "Okay, but if they score above 20, we're going to say that, you know, it's a it's our clinical cutoff and they've probably got it." Again, it's just not the same. We don't know enough about muscle dysmorphia. You you've really got to sit down with someone for 45 minutes to work out if them hitting the gym twice a day, six days a week is just something that they do for fun because they're a bit of a gym gym rat, or if it's an actual problem. So, what's the what's the what's the difference? And I think this is important because what we spoke about earlier on, this very high number of men who are dissatisfied with their body in one form or another, but the difference between it being, you know, a clinical diagnosis or something that's pathological and it being what almost any guy who goes to the gym feels like, which is, "Ah, [ __ ] I wish I, you know, I've got this insertion thing on my bicep and I really wish I could get that to be a little bit more." And "Oh, you know, I it's the lats cuz if I could get a little bit more width on the lats, I'd feel a little bit more sort of fuller from the back." That self-critical eye that everybody has, which can sometimes, you know, uh list across into malicious and even malignant, but not necessarily pathological or clinical. What what's the line between them? Ah, I feel you. Look, if if if we were diagnosing muscle dysmorphia on the basis of anyone who wants to go to the gym and is a little bit critical of their appearance and wants to look better, we'd all have the disorder. We'd all be in therapy right now. But it's not the case that the disorder is, characterized, to simplify things, by two things. The first is preoccupation. Now, preoccupation in like clinical psychology is a very specific term. It's not just, this is a thing I'm I'm super into, a hobby. Uh it's preoccupying. You think about it every single day. It's something that even when you want to stay focused on a conversation with a friend, your mind keeps coming back to it. It might be that your training, your dieting, it's something that you just cannot stop thinking about, focusing on, planning around to the point where you start to stress if you aren't going to be able to eat the food that you need as part of your diet plan, if you won't have control over the food, if you think there's a chance that your training might be a bit compromised the next day if you go and do this social plan. You start to make compromises like this. And one of the good red flags that we look out for is, well, in the context of me interviewing, we'd ask this, but your listeners could do it as a self-reflection, is to think about how you would feel if you couldn't train for 1 week. Now, if you don't have muscle dysmorphia, you might just find that irritating or disappointing. Now, you've got goals. People want to meet their goals. Folks with muscle dysmorphia are good at doing it. So, totally fine. But when you have a problem, that one week, that's anxiety, a lot of it. Might be guilt. Guys might say, you know, I would feel like [ __ ] if I if I don't have it. If I miss my training, then like the whole day is pretty much wasted. Forget about it. Um there's shame, there's guilt, there's a lot of very mean body commentary. They might feel like their muscles are shrinking, like they're going backwards, and then suddenly, you know, the the the mean voice in their head is all they can think about until it goes away when they step back in in the gym and they're back on lock and things feel okay again. So, if that sounds like you, then you're potentially flirting with muscle dysmorphia territory. That was the first one. What's the second one? Oh, yeah. Thank you for Thank you for keeping me in check. So, the second one is impairment, right? So, generally speaking, in clin psych, if you don't have impairment, if you aren't suffering, and your relationships aren't suffering, your work, your study, if your day-to-day functioning is fine, then you don't have a problem. I don't care if you're in the gym uh 6 days a week, uh 3 hours a day, if you've got a really tightly controlled diet, if the fridge is full of Tupperware containers, and that's all that's there, and you bring like little little packets of fat-free salad dressing out to hang with your friends. If you're loving your life, and you're you're you've got relationships you're happy with, friends, with family, if if you can take your shirt off during sex or at the beach, then you don't have muscle dysmorphia. You just You're just super into the gym. You're more into the gym than I am. But, like you just You're super into the gym, man. It's It's fine. But, if you're the sort of person for whom life outside of the gym is controlled by the gym, and controlled by training, and controlled by diet calorie restriction and and diet and macros, That's it. Yeah, then it then it's not. And what's what's really tricky in eating disorders and muscle dysmorphia is this thing in clinical psychology called ego syntonicity, where it feels like it's working for you. The disorder feels like it's a good thing. If you have depression, no one wakes up with depression and goes, "Ah, this is so great. I love feeling miserable every day and doing nothing." But, when you're in the throes of anorexia, you could be in the hospital with a feeding tube down your nose, but because you're so wrapped up in the need to be thin and to not eat, you can convince yourself and try convince the others around you that actually everything's fine. Like it's going It's going great. Similar thing can happen in muscle dysmorphia. Guys' lives can be slowly falling apart. They can have partners saying, "Look, this This is It's It's really intense now. Like you're getting really intense." Maybe they're starting to lose friendships, but hey, it's better than being fat. Or it's better than do like drinking and doing drugs on the weekend like everyone else. You can rationalize it as something good for you. And it's only when you look back that you go, "Ah, damn, I was in deep. I did not see it for as bad as it was." This is one of the most interesting elements, I think, of your work, which is muscle dysmorphia is one of the very few mental disorders which has positive reinforcement. And not only positive reinforcement individually, but positive reinforcement socially, as well. There are very very few things. If you If your schizophrenia is getting worse, and you're strolling down the street with your friends talking to yourself or pointing out all of the animals that aren't there, Yeah, there's very few pats on the back. Precisely. Whereas if you rock up after having spent the last 3 months monk mode-ing it in your house, you've lost your girlfriend, your testosterone's through the floor, you hate yourself, you can't bear to look in the mirror, but you've managed to gain, you know, 5 lb of muscle, and you've lost a couple of percent of body fat, your friends will go, "Yo, dude, you're looking You're [ __ ] Yeah. You've been training? You look jacked. You look good. Yeah. And look, it's deeply frustrating for for us, too, because, you know, you could have a young woman with anorexia who we're trying to say, "Don't do this. Don't get this thin. I know that you've got beliefs about what people are attracted to or desire, what gets you respect as a young woman, but it's not the be-all and end-all." And when she says to us, "But, people treat me better as I get smaller," she's not wrong. Right? That's a difficult spot to be in. It's a difficult thing to resolve. These guys with muscle dysmorphia are just the same. You know, they've they've put in all this work to get to a certain size, and in some respects, their life may have been improved. Right? If for them what is important, and it often is, is, you know, I'm more desirable, I get more respect. Uh I that it it it isn't sufficient to offset all of the energy that's gone in and the crumbling that's happening around. Just makes it really hard to do therapy. a nuanced point to try and get across that the net benefit from this is in the negative overall. That when you cross into the I can't bear to go away on holiday. Dude, I remember I remember as a a young 20-something guy, I would be I I would go on holiday to places that were within a close radius of the gyms because I knew that I had to train. Yeah. And if I was going away to Ibiza with with the boys, we'd go away to Ibiza maybe twice a year or something each summer, and I'd do a cut. I'd do a hard cut for, you know, 8 or 10 weeks to get that one photo or to to look good at at at the beach club. Uh when I traveled around Thailand when I was 27, 28, this was a little bit more well-balanced. I was coming out the sort of the back of uh the aesthetic side, but I basically did my entire trip around Thailand moving from uh Muay Thai gym to Muay Thai gym. That That was the foundation of my day. That felt a little bit more holistic cuz it was the people I was going to hang with, and I knew that we had similar similar goals, but I can see this, you know, move from more pathological to less pathological. Uh I can see that arc in my own life. I can observe it happening to myself. So, yeah, thinking about the fact that and it's such an easy trope on the internet, right, to say, "Well, look at all of these fat [ __ ] 60% of America's overweight. 40% of America's obese. What do you want me to do? You just want me want me to be one of those low-testosterone cucks just like the rest of the world." You're like, "No. Yeah. No. No. Absolutely not. It It's not denying the fact that you can take tons and tons of value, both yourself and in terms of how you're respected, your prestige, your ability to show dominance and feel confident and comfortable in the world. Yeah. And that the world is going to reinforce it, and they're going to make you feel better about yourself. Yeah. But, there's a limit, bro. But, there's a limit. Yeah. Uh uh I agree. Yeah. You know, I I call it boring solutions to exciting problems because the problem is exciting, right? And in your head, that the solution, you know, to find balance and everything in moderation is It's It's not very TikTok-able. You know what I mean? And it it it's hard to grasp, especially when you're young. And stories like the one you're talking about are super super common. I think lots of guys, lots of girls have experiences like that, and didn't necessarily mean that they had muscle dysmorphia or an eating disorder in the same way that you can be an 18- or 19-year-old and be getting uh blind drunk at some parties. It doesn't mean you're an alcoholic, but you certainly put yourself in a situation where it was, you know, uh a chance that higher chance than it is perhaps now, when, you know, like myself, you have a two pale ales on a Friday, and then you're you're home. So, so so yeah. Yeah, I I I do feel for young people trying to navigate this, and I don't think that things like social media are very uh assistive to young people looking for frames of reference. Um It's pretty tough. If you want a realistic depiction of what other people's bodies look like, Instagram is not the place to go. Right? I was looking today I I I um went back through some photos of me from Must have been 2018, I think 2017, 2018. And I remember at the time, this was after a big injury that I'd had, and I'd dropped tons of condition, and I'd got smaller and lighter, and it was after this year that I'd been in really great condition. I remember thinking at the time, "God, I look so [ __ ] compared with how I was now." And then I looked Dude, I looked at these photos, and I [ __ ] you not, I'm like, "That is That condition is outrageous. Like absolutely outrageous. Striations across my chest, vascularity running up from my delts across onto my chest." And looking back now, I think, "Fuck, I wish I could be in that condition. Jesus. I'm like a a fat, slow, slovenly mess in comparison with that now." And I'm sure that in 20 years' time, I'm going to look back at the condition I'm in now and think, "What the [ __ ] were you doing?" So, there is a There's a degree of I guess uh disbelief that we have on varying scales about how we look. And it's persistent. Yeah. And And folks are very self-critical in this regard. The Like you you see your body in the mirror every single day. You are so much more familiar with it than anyone else, even a long-time partner, right? And your ability to to criticize different parts of you and to see imperfections that other people don't see. And then to disbelieve those other people, and they tell you that they don't see that you don't have anything to worry about, is is pretty impressive that we we do it. We do it all the time. And it's not surprising, I think, that in studies of what men and women find ideally attractive in the opposite sex with respect to muscularity and body fat, men think that women want bodies that are far more muscular than what they actually want. And women think men want bodies that are far skinnier. And when they're asked to select, you know, proportions of men who they think have a type that is oh, they want skinny women with big boobs. And then for men, tall men with broad shoulders, it's they're they're wildly divergent on that, too. All of the nuance that comes in your 20s and 30s when you finally encounter people who can say, "Oh, you know, I actually I actually kind of like men who are a bit more wayfish and and a feminine. I don't like the big jacked bros." 20-year-olds are kind of loath to believe that. They're they're But and then you realize, "Oh, it actually is the case. There's a lot more diversity in terms of what people are attracted to." Sure, there's a a general trend, but man, you cannot base world views on general trends. It's too black and white. Correct. Yeah, there there is an average. I think, you know, on average, taller guys will be more successful in the dating market. On average, guys that have a broader shoulder-to-waist ratio will be more successful. On average, guys with a lower voice. On average, guys with a full head of hair. But Jason Statham [ __ ] Like, he's seeing is it Rosie Rosie Huntington, whatever her face is? That like [ __ ] hypermodel from the UK that was in Transformers? You know, the my point being that there are particular markets for pretty much every single niche. And um you know, I I don't think I'm not the guy that's going to advise anybody not to go to the gym. I think that for every guy, the you know, it's protective. I learned this from Ed Hagen the other week, that it's protective against depression. That depression, when you control for pretty much everything else, depression seems to be just uh it seems to be very highly correlated with physical uh like fragility. The less physically fragile you are, the more robust you are defended mentally against depression through how you show up physically. So, I'm like, "Yo, go and train your hand grip, or whatever it is that it goes on." But yeah, I it's it's such a a it must be fascinating to try and pass all of this apart because you've got a world which will reward people for being in good condition. That taken to the extreme will get more reward, but will begin to cause costs to the individual. It's like a reverse tragedy of the commons. It's like a tragedy of the individual. Mhm. Um So, I I know that I think you've I've heard you say that 20s, the typical avatar for this would be a guy in his 20s or his 30s uh that is going to the gym and maybe using steroids and doing the blah blah. Why does it start to drop off in 40s? Well, some folks will go and get treatment, but I think another significant contributor, and you see this for a number of psychological conditions, including things like social anxiety, uh it's called spontaneous remission. And it's where the disorder kind of resolves on its own. And the process of that happening is not dissimilar to how you felt about training and dieting when you were, say, 20 compared to now. It's not that you're a fundamentally different person, you've just relaxed in certain areas. You've perhaps diversified your priorities. You probably have a more stable sense of self and self-esteem that's like internal to you, not external contingent on others. So, you would be less likely to have muscle dysmorphia. You would be less likely to be socially anxious. It might push you below the threshold for having the disorder anymore. Now, you can just be the guy in the gym who enjoys being there and gets all the physical benefits of exercise, which, as you mentioned, are are numerous and very real. And you want as many people in there enjoying those benefits for what they are as possible. Are people less satisfied with their bodies now than ever before? Yes. Uh yeah, it's How so? How do you How do you track that? Uh there are there are good general population estimates of body dissatisfaction for men in women men and women in several countries. And to take Australia for example, it's unfortunately the case that, you know, far from all of this uh awareness and advocacy diminishing body dissatisfaction among women, we've we've just watched the rate of body dissatisfaction for men climb up at a faster rate than women, such that at some point in the future, uh we could conceivably achieve parity. So, we're not making progress there, and it's not unsurprising cuz I have not felt for 1 cent that uh 1 second, sorry, that the importance society puts on appearance and the broad arbiter that it gets to be of social success and prestige has diminished. That That hasn't gone anywhere. So, it's no wonder that uh when people feel anxieties about, you know, being in this this social arena, that uh they succumb to it. And there's there's companies everywhere who will cater to your anxieties, influencers who will uh have those anxieties whether intentionally or not inflamed. That stuff's all still there. How have representations of men changed over the last few decades? They have become more muscular, and that's not just anecdote, that's from research. We can show that representations of male bodies in a variety of media have become more disproportionate relative to the average male. You can look at things like action figurines, where say, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo from the original Star Wars, the action figurines look like normal regular guys. But then for the re-release, they look jacked. You can see this for Superman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman, uh when you look at magazines, when you look at TV, you see a similar pattern as well. So, in terms of being a young guy growing up, and you're thinking, "Oh, how am I supposed to look? Am I attractive? Am I hot?" And you look for a frame of reference. Let's say you see 100 male bodies in your media diet per week, the 100 that you see today in 2023, you come out on the negative end of those comparisons much more than you did 20, 30 years ago. You're you're you're not measuring up as far as you're concerned in your own head a lot more than you used to. I heard you talk as well about the uh switch from thinspo to fitspo for girls. Yeah. Can you explain that? Yeah, and that that sucks. So, in the in the the late '90s, early 2000s, pro-ana thinspiration, huge thing on Tumblr and elsewhere, where the goal was to be as thin and skinny as possible, and you'd see lots of motivating images and memes being like, you know, "Nothing tastes good as skinny feels," etc. thigh gaps? Do you remember when thigh gaps were a trend? Oh, I remember, and they're they're still there. They they come up on TikTok uh reasonably regular, like a cycle of of body trends. And fitspiration emerged as this quasi healthy balance, right? Where it's like, "Don't just be a waif. Don't be thin and skinny. Get healthy and build some muscle." But the bodies that you see in images that are valorizing, right, uh this fit and healthy lifestyle, you'll have a woman who is very skinny and has a six-pack. And I'm sure you would be familiar, as many of your listeners probably are, that if you're a a a woman who wants to both be thin, strong, and have a six-pack, it's going to be even harder work than if you're a guy. It's it's it's even more impossible to get that body type. And the idea that we've, you know, made this gigantic improvement in representation for for women's bodies, that we've just given them another thing to chase. Very interesting, man. I see, you know, I've got a number of friends. Uh Lucy Davies is one of them. She's marrying my good friend Ben. And she had eating disorder, and she regularly posts photos of herself um you know, like uh from when she was at the depths of of anorexia, and she was super super thin. And now she's, you know, like she runs and does all this stuff, and she eats peanut butter sandwiches, and has a almond croissant, and doesn't really care so much. Um but there is a there is an element here where I think a lot of the girls downstream from that, or some of the girls downstream from that, now have two battles. They're waging a war on two fronts. That it's not just that they're trying to be thin. It's like, "Right, I need to be thin, but I also need to be able to deadlift 100 kilos." And you know, that's that's that's also tough. So, yeah, I Super tough. Well, I I guess because you're coming at this from a a clinical psychiatry perspective, I don't think that anybody would argue that a woman who is, you know, at probably a healthy BMI who is holding more muscle, whose bone density is improved, who's got a better VO2 max, who's got a better resting heart rate, heart rate variability, all of this stuff, uh physiologically, they are probably objectively significantly better than the size zero girl that had dieted themselves into the floor. But from a clinical psychiatry perspective, I imagine that there isn't actually all that much difference. They've still ruminating about their body image, still obsessing, trying to dial absolutely everything in, still probably got terrible ruminative thoughts about the way that they look and stuff like that. Uh and I guess this is a difficult line to pass as well. Again, objectively, the world is not only going to say, "Yeah, you look good and wow, that's healthy and, you know, it's so much better than when you were really, really thin." But where's the drive coming from? Mentally, how much of that has been fixed? Yeah, exactly. The underlying psychology is is still there. And that's part of the reason why we often see in guys with muscle dysmorphia, they've had a history of anorexia. Or guys with anorexia had a history of muscle dysmorphia because the underlying psychology is the same. Maybe the disorder got really rough and so they they they engaged with some medical professionals or talked to people in their life who said, "Okay, maybe just try and pull back on this." And instead, they've just they've shunted it in the other direction cuz there's still that same person. Uh and they they get caught up in it again. We call it Is it the tyranny of progress? Yeah, the the tyranny of the tyranny of progress cuz uh the progress comes up in the narrative of people with muscle dysmorphia constantly. They have to be progressing. They have to be getting better because they didn't used to be how they are now. They were deficient in some or many ways. And now they've finally got to this point where they can be okay with themselves, but they need to get more and you have to be on lock with your diet, your training to progress. But it's a tyranny because it's never enough. You know, a good sign that you don't have muscle dysmorphia is if you set yourself a goal and you get there and then you're just happy with yourself. Great. Like you you achieved a goal. That's that's awesome. That won't happen in muscle dysmorphia or it'll be fleeting. You'll feel good for the day and the next day it's like, "Ah, yeah, but I've still got that. I've still got quite a bit of fat around the midsection, don't I?" And then off you are again on a on another another little goal. What do you think about lifestyle dysmorphia or personal development dysmorphia or business success dysmorphia in the same regard, the tyranny of those different things? Yeah, I've got you. So, look, I think anytime you put all of your eggs in one basket and have your self-esteem and and sense of self-worth and what makes you feel like you're in control of your life coming from one source, you just make yourself super vulnerable. That's a fragile psychology, right? And it's no wonder that we have so many terms like uh workaholics, for example. Uh none of So, some of these uh have lent themselves more to uh clinical psychology and psychiatry in the way of diagnoses and Oh, you mean that you haven't you haven't managed to come up with some sort of diagnosis DSM statistical manual for monk mode grindset sigma males? Uh believe me, I'm trying. There's out there trying to diagnose as many as I can and and and bring that money in. Um but no, but no, but I I take your broader point, right? Because you are correct that the the way clinical psychology and diagnoses are set up, we more readily recognize the pathology that comes from the singular pursuit of some things, we are preoccupation, and less with others cuz workaholics can ruin their lives, but we we're not going to see that as a diagnosis anytime soon, I suspect. So interesting, man. It's like this uh cyclical dissatisfaction or this ambient dissatisfaction that happens. I have a goal, I work to the goal, I achieve the goal, I'm dissatisfied, I set another goal. I presume that this goal is the way it was because I didn't it wasn't big enough, it wasn't long enough, it wasn't whatever enough. Yeah. And um you know, I I'm really trying to square this circle as somebody who takes an awful lot of value in progress in life, in becoming better, in growing his impact, in um improving day by day, um and I wonder how much of I've said this for to myself for a very long time, how much of your personal development is papering over the cracks of fundamentally not being happy with the person that you are and feeling that you're not worthy of love and acceptance and praise unless you're making progress. And the reason that progress is able to paper over those cracks is because as long as you're continuing to make progress, it doesn't matter if you're dissatisfied with yourself right now because the version that you are tomorrow might be the one that you can finally be satisfied with. Yeah, and you'll find out how much of a problem it is once there is a setback or something that stops you from making progress because if it's a if it is a issue that's substantial lurking in the background, you won't find that enjoyable at all. And it's a matter of balance, you know, that boring solution to exciting problems again where you I think achieving and being driven is an important for people to feel good about themselves. And having a a core inalterable sense of your worth as a person is core as well. You need both. And both of that just makes for a healthy individual. That's a strong psychology that is resilient against the world and that can grow and evolve as a person strives and succeeds. That's a really good point and I think that again, it's a subtle one, but an important one to think that for all of the people who are part of the sigma male grindset mode thing, which I fall into as well. I [ __ ] David Goggins on the podcast a couple of months ago, right? Like he's the ultimate [ __ ] That man is grinding. He's the ultimate discipline bro. Go go go and be grinding. Yeah, correct. He needs to be always be grinding. Um but there is an element, I think, and I would say this to David, if if you require this complex framework of daily activities in order to buttress your sense of self, and I don't know whether this is true. I don't know whether if he did take time off, how bad he would feel about himself. But if that is the case, how can you say that that's a robust state of mind? The the whole goal here that the internet and a lot of the spaces that I inhabit valorize is this, you know, kind of like Spartan-esque, very sort of tough guy, I can deal with the discomfort, I can deal with the fragility. Okay, well, deal with an injury for 2 weeks. Or deal with not being not being able to go to the gym. You know, like how what what happens if you're not allowed to train or follow your diet for 2 weeks' time? How resilient are you then? When there's no enemy to fight, there's no weight to lift, there's no battle to wage, how resilient are you then? And I think that that's a really interesting and a very uncomfortable question cuz most people would say, "Oh, but that's you know, that's just like that's a that's a cooked mentality. You don't need to worry about that. Like you just you keep grinding, man. Like, you know, you just work through the difficulty." And you go, "Okay, well, why? Is it genuinely, and you need to ask yourself this question with a very sort of gentle and open heart, is it because you want to be better or is it because you have a fear of not being enough?" And how much is your drive How much is your drive coming from both of these? One of the other things that you did, you worked with Grindr. Not person Well, like professionally, you worked with Grindr. What about the gays? Tell me about the gays, Scott. What do we know about the gays? I've got you. Well, first and foremost, the gays are doing just fine. They do experience higher rates of eating disorders and muscle dysmorphia. And it is in significant part because you've got more appearance pressures in that community. And because of that, if you want to feel like you belong, if you want to feel like you've got the right credentials to be in gay spaces, whether it's nightclubs or the, you know, famous Mardi Gras parade here in Sydney, feel like the way you look is a pretty significant part of that. So, guys are more susceptible to muscle dysmorphia and eating disorders because of that. Gay gay men. Men sometimes objectify the thing that they sexually desire. Is that news? Uh I believe I believe so. I believe so. I don't know I don't know if it'll go international, but uh it's definitely newsworthy. Well, uh there's been um for quite a while, I know I have a a number of gay friends, and it seems to me that gay men are a lot more open around their preferences for what they want, especially physically, from a partner. Um I know that sometimes they list things on their dating profiles about what they do and do not accept and stuff like that. I imagine that plays into this. Yeah, it does. And it's you can think of the like listing of a a laundry list of physical traits that gay men want as sexual partners or partners in general in other gay men as one manifestation of that you know, appearance-centric culture. It's something we would point to to say that, you know, it's it's physical appearance is more prized in these spaces. And yeah, I think that it makes it very very tough. And certainly when we interview gay men about this, they will very quickly tell us of uh a universally implicit, but often made explicit, hierarchy of physical traits in the gay male community where some are very prized, like being tall, being muscular, being white, whereas others push you further down that hierarchy. And a lot of gay men feel comfortable just saying, you know, "No no fats, no fems." Um that kind of energy. Uh I'm sorry. I can't help but love. No no, it's Just gay people are so they don't give a [ __ ] man. Like they don't like there's a a large a large cohort of them who simply don't And I suppose as well this kind of plays out of the male um trend of of banter and of sort of digging and of being able to take a jab that a guy on Tinder or Hinge "But uh no fats, no like masks" or something um is is probably going to come up against some distaste. But in a an environment where it's other guys and, you know, no matter how uh gay and effeminate you have grown up in your childhood, you've been subject to more male banter. And male banter means that you can take the [ __ ] a little bit. And if the [ __ ] in includes no fats, no fems, well, you know, like you were you've been prepping for this your entire life, [ __ ] Like this is this is part of your culture. And like the reason the reason we advertise studies on Grindr is when when we advertise on Grindr, we advertisements go out nationwide cuz we don't just want to talk to people in our own circle. We want to know what people are actually thinking. And like uh we talked to so many gay men and the one thing that always happens, they all know that it's a problem. No one is thrilled about this very appearance-centric culture. within the gay male Like it it doesn't mean they don't participate in it, whether with some regret or not. But they can all point to it and they can all at the very least say, "I don't think it's very helpful." Like it can be a pretty uh mean and dispiriting place to be as a gay man in a in a gay male community because of those kinds of attitudes and expectations. But as for solutions, those are harder to come by. Well, the problem is that we're fighting with human desire here, right? Like we don't have a massive amount of control, if any at all, over the things that we desire. We can have control over the actions that we take around the things that we do or don't desire. Many people that are listening will have done things physically with people that they didn't desire that much or maybe didn't really desire at all. And vice versa, too. Uh So, I think that a challenge that we have here is and you know, we can roll this back into the hetero conversation by saying, "Well, I can say that because I've got this handlebar mustache at the moment. I'm allowed to bridge the bridge the gap across both." Um What's interesting there is look at the uh increase in objectification. Was Is object Am I using the right word there? Would it be objectification? Or like focus on physical appearances? Yeah, so I don't think it's necessarily objectification, but focus on physical appearances. Okay. Um that gay men uh find when they're on these sorts of apps. Now, the reason that straight men don't feel quite the same amount is that the other sex that they're being judged by has a different list of criteria. This is to say not to say that women don't have a high a big list of criteria, it's just other things, right? It's Yep. Money, status, etc. etc. A bunch of other traits that you can have. Um but I do think that, you know, and it's certainly giving me a little bit of pause to think, "Okay, if gay men are reporting this very overly emphasized um um focus on physical appearance, what's it like for women? Because women are in the market of men, right? Yeah. We are the supply to their demand problem. Yeah, women have been saying for a long time that it's extremely tough to be subject to male desire that so overwhelmingly privileges and positions physical appearance as the the central arbiter. Like it's a it's a it's a very tough spot to be and I think hard to reconcile, right? Like you can put all this effort, it seems to you, into uh diversifying the number of things that ought to make you, you think, a attractive potential partner to someone. Uh but and then to learn that physical appearance constitutes such a significant part of that. Uh I think I think it's pretty disempowering. And I I always try to get young men who uh criticizing what they believe to be the unfair physical appearance preferences of women uh to take stock of the very clear, robust research finding that actually women are much more chill on your physical appearance than you are on them, on average. Uh yeah, just so you're familiar with it. Yeah, I am, man. And again, the the trend on the internet at the moment, especially in a lot of the manosphere spaces, is that um women's hypergamous nature and the fact that any guy can fly them out to Dubai at the drop of a hat and they're going to be a shaikh's wife and no other guy can compete with them means that Yeah, that's the high probability scenario. Mean mean means that uh women's um selection criteria is out of the window and that all of these normal men are just unable to get a look in. I don't deny that there's a tall girl problem of hypergamy given that women are overachieving in education and employment comparative with men. I think that there has been a massive retreat of men from the mating market that isn't assisting them. And I also think that men are being accused of not only being the tyrant of everybody else's downfall, but of their own as well. There are very few groups where when they have a problem, we say pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Instead, we spend spend billions of taxpayer-funded money to try and create initiatives and charities and startups to, you know, Title IX was introduced in an effort to do that. Now, I I you know, [ __ ] I hopped on for as long as is possible trying to like sing the song of men being forgotten, right? To the point where I've been accused by Guardian readers of being a bigot. But because I don't believe that women have it just super easy and that no man is sexually um or that in terms of appearances overfocusing on that to the detriment of women's mental health a lot of the time, that also causes me to be a like a blue-pilled cuck. So, I I again, this mustache this mustache appropriately as it straddles my mouth, it straddles both sides of the of the conversation. Um I I really really think that this discussion, trying to work out or trying to teach people about what each side finds attractive, the differences that you can have, and and and how that's a challenge is really really [ __ ] important. One of the common tropes that we're seeing on the internet at the moment, which you must have become familiar with, is height anxiety amongst men. Yeah. We've we've we've we've put a fair bit of effort into studying this for a while. Tell me. Tell me all about it. Guys are getting [ __ ] femur extension surgery. They're wearing shoes that increase their height. There's stats coming out of OKCupid and Tinder about if you're below 5'9, don't even bother getting on there. What's what's the current state of mental health and men's height like? It Look, it it's it's it's definitely a prominent anxiety. It is less severe in all respects, no matter how you approach it, than you might think. So, the number of men who are anxious about their height is less than you think. The number of women who care about height is less than you think. Um the number of men going out and doing something as drastic as a leg-lengthening surgery is less than you think. It's just generally less of a like s- what's the issue on these? Like a population-exploding issue than it might otherwise seem. But it's definitely the case that for a bunch of men, it it it really sucks and it's it's understandable why. And there are certainly there's certainly a preference among women for taller men out there. Uh But that's that's about where it ends cuz there are preferences for women and men toward all sorts of physical attributes. And another thing worth noting is that it's very easy for people to say that they have a preference. Like people can say, "Oh, you know, this is I'm into this." And then you might see them dating someone who's completely different. They're almost surprised by who it is that they ended up being attracted to or with. And that that tends to happen quite a lot. Two, like you know, you can you can say you might be a a young woman who wants to date men they're like, "Oh, I want to date a tall guy." But then you're out maybe you meet a 5'9" guy who's really funny and you're like, "Huh." And then look, maybe maybe you don't. But someone's already taken what you tweeted saying I like tall guys and being like, "Look, they're all like this." And now it's a it's a big flame war on the internet. How do you parse apart stated and revealed preferences when it comes to this? Because it seems like that's the real challenge here. Yeah. That's that's tricky. This this starts to move away from my expertise admittedly cuz we're getting into social science as opposed to clinical psychology. I think you either have to follow people up in terms of how they've actually dated, which is tricky from a statistical power standpoint and a few other things, or you can corroborate it with data from things like OKCupid etc. I know OKCupid's data blog and dump often gets trotted out in support of various arguments in this space. Um And yeah, there there there can be a difference between people's stated intentions and their revealed. But again, it tends to be not as drastic as people think as far as I can tell as well. That's interesting. What about penis size sensitivity? Is this something you've looked at? Yeah, and this one like cuz we've we've outright looked at how many people are dissatisfied with their height as men men straight men and gay men, how dissatisfied they are with their height, their muscles, their body fat, and their penis. We we pitted all four against each other cuz we wanted an actual answer to this. Uh penis dissatisfaction was right down the bottom. Like very few men. This that we said like this this stereotype that you know, when guys get worried about how they look it's just because they they want their dick to be bigger. I think that's like a generations old trope. I just don't think as many men are worried about that as we might think. By and large, what men worry about is I wish I didn't have as much body fat on me and wish my biceps were bigger. Like that's What's the What was the percentages and the order stuff for those four statements? Can you remember? So, you'll have penis size dissatisfaction at the bottom. You'll have height dissatisfaction above that. And then you'll have muscularity and body fat sitting quite similarly. And it changes according to age. So, for young men, it will be muscle dissatisfaction that's worse than body fat dissatisfaction I think because a lot of young men they've they've possibly been skinnier growing up anyway. But then as people get older, the the battle quote unquote turns to body fat less muscularity. So, body fat starts to become the thing they're most worried about. And body fat dissatisfaction, muscularity dissatisfaction for for young men almost normative. So, in the field we call it normative in the sense that it's more normal to find someone who says, "Yeah, I'm not happy with the amount of body fat or muscularity on me." than to say that I'm happy. But when it comes to like penis size dissatisfaction, we're talking under one in 10. So, nine in 10 men will say, "Yeah, I'm fine with the way my penis looks." Uh and height probably around six seven in 10 happy with that. Height dissatisfaction drops off with age as well. What's the proportion of men who say weight or muscularity? Can you remember? Oh. For gay men, I think that will be up at 60. For straight men, for straight men, I can't recall it separable. It's probably around 40 35 to 40. That's still a a massive portion. We're speaking to a huge number. And again, I I don't know, man. I I There's not a single guy I know, I don't think, who if I asked them, "Would you like to lose a bit of body fat? Or would you like a bit more muscularity?" that wouldn't say yes. I don't know anybody that was There's no one listening to this. There's no one listening to this. But there's also no one listening to this that says, "Dude, if you just got Do you want an extra like, you know, inch in girth? It's not going to go, "Ah, why not?" You know, like there's room in the garage. Like we'll we'll fit we'll fit it in. Um No one's not going to say that. Yeah, exactly. But there's there's a distinction between like if it was offered to, "Would you take it?" and "I am unhappy with this thing." So, I agree with you. I think most men if offered something like, you know, "Would you want an extra inch of height or an inch of penis size?" It's almost like a yeah, well, I mean, why not? It's not going to hurt. Like that's I think that's the mentality. Whereas a lot of men offered say an inch more on their bicep or an inch off their waist, they're like, "Yeah, cuz like I think my arms are skinny." Or I I actually do wish Uh it's fixing fixing a deficiency. It's dissatisfaction as opposed to like well, yeah, if you're going to offer it, then yes. Scott Griffiths, ladies and gentlemen. Scott, I think this stuff is absolutely fascinating. I love the work that you're doing. I can't wait to see what you do next. Where should people go if they want to keep up to date with the work and the the publications and all the rest of it? Have you got somewhere on the internet that you can direct them? Yeah, you can follow me on Twitter at Scott 1 Griffiths. Um yeah, and thanks for having me. I really thoughtful questions. I've appreciated them. What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. 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