It's not-so-secret anymore: Men have body image issues and eating disorders, too

NEW YORK – It always starts with gay culture.
That's what one interviewee told writer and solo performance artist Michael Feldman while he was conducting research for his multimedia presentation Nov. 16 at the University of Michigan about men, eating disorders and male body image, "MuscleBound!"
"It's an unwritten rule," Feldman told BTL from his residence in Manhattan. "You don't talk about it. It's all hush-hush."
Flip through the pages of any gay publication – or stare at the television for any length of time – and it quickly becomes apparent what today's ideal body type is for the American male – gay, straight or otherwise. Madison Avenue has brainwashed men to believe that only those with washboard abs, chiseled pecs, bubbled butts and sinewy arms succeed in life – or, at the very least, have the most and hottest sex.
Those lofty physiques, however, oftentimes are the result of dangerous conditions once thought to be more prevalent among women than men: anorexia, bulimia and body dysmorphic disorder. It's a battle that Feldman himself has fought over the years.
"It started in my sophomore year of high school," Feldman, now 23 and bisexual, explained. "I decided I really wanted six-pack abs. So at first I restricted calories, and it sort of became anorexia. After that, I would binge eat, but never purge. It was sort of 'failed bulimia,' as I call it. It was more like over-eating and over-exercising, which is called 'exercise bulimia,' which is basically just extreme amounts of exercising to work off what you've eaten."
Feldman continued on this path throughout high school. "Everybody knew I had these issues, but they didn't think of it as an eating disorder because I was a guy. And I never thought of it as an eating disorder, either."
It wasn't until Feldman began researching a show about the gym culture that everything made sense. That's when he discovered a term with which he was not familiar, but instantly recognized: muscle dysmorphia. "I was terrified. Not just because I now recognized the problem and fit the symptoms, but because I could not believe it had a name."
Men with muscle dysmorphia, Feldman learned, are fixated on the idea that their body is not perfectly lean and muscular. They spend long hours working out, they develop detailed eating habits and oftentimes they skip important functions to maintain their gym schedule. Some add the use of steroids to their regimen.
"How many more men have this and don't know about it? How many more can't come forward because in America men are not meant to be hung up on their appearance? If you say you have an eating disorder and you're a guy, well then, you must be gay."
It's that stigma – being thought of as feminine or gay – that keeps most men from publicly discussing the issue, Feldman believes. "So that's why I decided to focus on it."
"MuscleBound!" – which took two years to develop and is Feldman's second full-length, one-man show – uses both live performance art and filmed interviews to follow the lives of three men caught in a downward spiral: a high school student, a documentary film maker and a gym bunny who wants to audition for the reality show, "America's Next Top Stud Muffin."
Getting men to talk with him about male body image and eating disorders – especially on camera – was not easy, Feldman said. But what particularly surprised him were the differences behind the motivations of gay and straight men. "For the gay guys, they did it because that's what it comes down to: The body is how they're going to attract other guys. Whereas while some of the straight guys talked about getting girls, for them it was more about athletic purposes, or it was a competition with themselves to get that perfect body."
Although the Brooklyn native calls "MuscleBound!" a racy show – "I don't hold back" – he recommends it for teenagers and adults alike, as well as for both men and women. "The point of this is to start the dialogue on male body issues, so it's important for [everyone] to see what the trends are in our generation," he concluded. "I say the honest truth of what I see out there."