The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, August 22 - Unauthorized ...
The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, August 22 - Unauthorized ...
The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, August 22 - Unauthorized ...
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<strong>The</strong> Bully in the Mirror<br />
that his physical appearance made him a social outcast and a target -- neither of<br />
which is a good thing to be in early adolescence.<br />
hen you visit the office of Harrison (Skip) Pope, in a grim institutional<br />
building on the rolling grounds of McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.,<br />
the first thing you notice are the calipers hanging on the wall -- partly as<br />
objets d'art, but partly as a reminder that what we subjectively consider attractive<br />
can sometimes yield to objective measurement. Pope, after all, was one of the<br />
scientists who devised what might be called the Buff Equation, or: FFMI = W x<br />
(1-BF/100) x h-2 + 6.1 x (1.8-H).<br />
<strong>The</strong> formula is ostensibly used to calculate a person's Fat-free Mass Index; it has<br />
sniffed out presumed steroid use by Mr. America winners, professional<br />
bodybuilders and men whose unhealthy preoccupation with looking muscular<br />
has induced them to use drugs.<br />
Pope is a wiry, compact psychiatrist who can squat 400 pounds in his spare time.<br />
("You can reach me pretty much all day except from 11 A.M. to 2 P.M.," he told<br />
me, "when I'm at the gym.") I had gone to see him and his colleague Roberto<br />
Olivardia not only because they were the lead authors on the G.I. Joe study, but<br />
also because their studies of body-image disorders in slightly older<br />
postadolescent men may be the best indicator yet of where male body-image<br />
issues are headed.<br />
Shortly after I arrived, Olivardia emptied a shopping bag full of male action dolls<br />
onto a coffee table in the office. <strong>The</strong> loot lay in a heap, a plastic orgy of<br />
superhero beefcake -- three versions of G.I. Joe (Hasbro's original 1964 version<br />
plus two others) and one G.I. Joe Extreme, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo in<br />
their 1978 and mid-90's versions, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Batman,<br />
Superman, Iron Man and Wolverine. <strong>The</strong> inspiration for the whole study came<br />
from . . . an adolescent girl. Pope's 13-year-old daughter, Courtney, was surfing<br />
the Web one night, working on a school project on how Barbie's body had<br />
radically changed over the years, and Pope thought to himself, <strong>The</strong>re's got to be<br />
the male equivalent of that.<br />
Once Pope and Olivardia gathered new and "vintage" action figures, they<br />
measured their waist, chest and biceps dimensions and projected them onto a<br />
5-foot-10 male. Where the original G.I. Joe projected to a man of average height<br />
with a 32-inch waist, 44-inch chest and 12-inch biceps, the more recent figures<br />
have not only bulked up, but also show much more definition. Batman has the<br />
equivalent of a 30-inch waist, 57-inch chest and 27-inch biceps. "If he was your<br />
height," Pope told me, holding up Wolverine, "he would have 32-inch biceps."<br />
Larger, that is, than any bodybuilder in history.<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/199908<strong>22</strong>mag-boys-self-image.html (9 of 18) [8/<strong>22</strong>/1999 9:17:<strong>22</strong> PM]