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

The Bully in the Mirror
only incorporated into the larger person you try to become. I think that's what
Garry Trudeau, the formerly small cartoonist, had in mind when he described life
as a tall adult as that of a "recovering short person."
t was during his sophomore year, getting "the daylights pounded out of him"
in wrestling and gaining even more weight, that Alexander began what he
calls, with justification, his "drastic transformation." He started by losing 30
pounds in one month. For a time, he consumed only 900 calories a day, and
ultimately got down to 152 pounds. He began to lift weights seriously, every day
for three months straight. He started to read magazines like Flex and Men's
Fitness. He briefly dabbled with muscle-building supplements like creatine. He
got buff, and then beyond buff.
By the time his sophomore year in high school began, Alexander had packaged
his old self in a phenomenally new body, and it has had the desired effect. "My
quality of social life changed dramatically when I changed my image," he said.
He still maintained friendships with the guys in the computer lab, still
programmed, still played Quake with dozens of others. But he worked out at the
gym at least five times a week. He shifted his diet to heavy protein. He pushed
himself to lift ever-heavier weights. Until an injury curtailed his season, he
brought new strength to his wrestling. Still, he wasn't satisfied. When I asked
him if he ever felt tempted to try steroids during his effort to remake his physical
image, he denied using them, and I believe him. But he wasn't coy about the
temptation. "When someone offers you a shortcut," he replied, "and it's a
shortcut you want so bad, you're willing to ignore what it might be doing to your
insides. I wanted to look better. Who cares if it's going to clog up my kidneys?
Who cares if it'll destroy my liver? There was so much peer pressure that I didn't
care."
Alexander was especially pleased by the good shape he was in -- although he
didn't care for aerobics, his resting heart rate was low, he ran a mile under six
minutes and seemed to have boundless energy. But fitness was only part of what
he was after. As he put it: "No one's looking for a natural look, of being thin and
in shape. It's more of looking toward a level beyond that." He added that "guys
who work out, especially guys who have six-packs and are really cut up, are the
ones girls go after."
To be honest, I was a little dubious about this until I spoke with an admittedly
unscientific sampling of teen-age girls. It turned out that they not only agreed
with the sentiment, but also spoke the same lingo. "If you're going swimming or
something like that, girls like the stomach best," said Elizabeth, a 14-year old.
"Girls like it if they have a six-pack, or if they're really ripped, as they say. That's
the most important thing. And arms too."
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