The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, August 22, 1999

The Bully in the Mirror
'I don't know,'
said one
13-year-old. 'I
can't even tell
what stage of
puberty I'm in.
Some parts, I'm
sure about, but
other parts, I'm
not so sure.'
Some parts, I'm sure about, but" -- he added with an
impish smile -- "other parts, I'm not so sure."
We went around the table. Dwayne, mentioning that
he appeared younger than his 13 years, looked
forward to the effect this would have later in life.
Bernie, lean and a little more satisfied than the
others, said he didn't want muscles and would never
use steroids. James saw a chubby 13-year-old in his
mirror. ("I just want to be skinnier," he said
plaintively.) Adel, who shot up six inches and
gained 24 pounds in the last 14 months, monitored
acne outbreaks with the avidity of a D.E.A. agent.
Willie, a powerfully built 15-year-old with
impressive biceps, derived no solace from his solid
athletic build. "When I look in the mirror, I wish my
ears were bigger and my feet were smaller. I wear size 11 1/2 shoes. My behind
is big, too. But," he added, "girls like it." In retrospect, the most interesting thing
about the conversation was how the older, bigger boys dominated the discussion
while the younger, smaller boys deferred: size cued the communication.
Take any half-dozen boys and you'll probably get close to hitting the same cross
section: the fat one, the skinny one, the one who's self-conscious about being tall
and the one who's self-conscious about being short, the jock and the kid who
plays in the band. No one here looked like Mark Wahlberg. They slouched in the
body language of feigned boredom, although that may just have been another
way of expressing wary curiosity, as if body image is something they think about
all the time and talk about almost never.
Mickey, the eighth grader, captured the problem well. "When you're at this
stage," he observed, "it's all about fitting in to something, cliques and stuff. And
when you're not at the same stage of life as other kids, it's harder to fit in." He
was using "fit," of course, in its metaphorical sense, but it was exceptionally apt:
the essence of the word is physical, of shapes and interactions and congruence.
For boys in the midst of the exotic and uncontrollable incongruence of puberty,
growing up in an internal world flooded with hormones and an external world
flooded with idealized male images, the fit may be tighter than ever before.
In seventh and eighth grades, Alexander Bregstein didn't fit in at all. "I was
picked on in every single class," he recalled, "every single day, walking the
hallways. It was beyond belief. They would do things like hide your bag, turn
your bag inside out, tie your shoelaces together. Some of the stuff I just can't
repeat, it was so awful." They called him Fat Boy. They thought he was lazy,
that something was wrong with him. He knew it wasn't true, but he also realized
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