Usually, James Kohlberg eats “an orange for breakfast, soup for a snack, a salad for lunch, an apple and banana for an afternoon snack and a sandwich for dinner.” At, 5’6″, the Communication junior weighs 125 pounds. As a Northwestern varsity wrestler, he practices one and a half to two hours per day during the season and wrestles for about an hour a day when it’s off-season. Kohlberg estimates that he loses “about five pounds of water weight” at each practice. For Kohlberg, cutting 10 to 15 pounds in a week is just part of the job.
Weight loss is part of the communal wrestling experience. “Sometimes I wish I’d chosen a different sport; this has got to be one of the worst things ever for your body,” Kohlberg says. Choosing to lose the weight in a (relatively) healthy manner before an upcoming competition is at the discretion of each wrestler. “Everyone has certain techniques,” Kohlberg says. “Some guys eat one large meal per day, while others wait until the last day of the week and lose it all.” Kohlberg prefers to take a moderation-based approach to prepping for the constant weigh-ins. His motto is, “Always eat, but eat smaller meals.”
Preoccupation with food and weight in the name of the game is inevitable for Kohlberg and his teammates. “I prefer to lose it day by day than (to) take it all off at the end, because I’d rather feel somewhat bad throughout the week than feel absolutely horrible the last day, ” he says. But there are some days and weeks where Kohlberg’s method just gets derailed by the college lifestyle, forcing him to lose it all right before a competition. “Sure, I’ve dropped 10 pounds in a day before,” Kohlberg says. “It sucks, but it can be done … you just throw layers of sweats on, work out three to four times in that one day until you lose all of your water weight.”
Kohlberg is far from developing a diagnosable eating disorder. Still, the behaviors necessary to stay within his weight bracket (wrestlers usually compete in lower weight categories in order to be as muscular and compactly strong as possible) may seem extreme. Whether it’s a bulky steroidal appearance or the slim silhouette for which skinny jeans and American Apparel tees were made, body image pressure is clearly affecting men more than some would like to admit.
It goes without question that a lean physique is the female ideal when it comes to body image. But from the haute aesthetic norms of the gay community to the weekly weigh-ins of wrestlers, a number of Northwestern men are striving to attain the new ideal male physique. It’s a look that is “lean but not too lanky or muscular – more of a swimmer’s build … like David Beckham,” according to Communication sophomore Gabriel Cooper.
Some say the pressure to look good is heightened for men dating men. “There’s lots of pressure to look good in the gay community, as fashion, health and physical appearance really get emphasized,” Cooper says. Stereotypes may create a self-fulfilling prophecy. “A gay guy goes out with a very sexualized emphasis on showing off what’s underneath his tight clothes. The gay community then gets viewed as a rippling mass of muscles and nothing else,” says Will Pearse, a gay Weinberg sophomore. “I mean, the joke is that the gym is the gay church,” Pearse says. “And I do indeed know a lot of guys who prove that stereotype correct … the gym is their thing.”
Logging hours at the gym is necessary to attain the optimal physique. But some experts say more than an hour a day is a sign of a disorder. “Exercising for one hour every day is extensive, while everything over one and a half hours is just too much for most people,” says Greg Piper, general manager of L.A. Fitness’ training department. Cooper estimates that most of his friends watch what they eat and exercise “a ton,” but have just gotten in the habit of staying in shape. “I have a lot of friends here who really limit what they eat,” Cooper says. “They’ll go to the gym six days a week and do the elliptical for three hours each time, or only eat 1,000 calories a day.”
For Weinberg junior Jordan Simkovic, it’s less about calories and more about portion control. His typical breakfast might consist of two slices of toast, one egg and a cup of tea, and he tends to have salads at Norris for lunch. “You just can’t possibly feel good about yourself after a gross, fattening meal,” he says. Simkovic also tries to avoid synthetic foods “within reason” and believes that dieting is counterintuitive. “People get dieting all wrong,” he says. “Once you cut something out completely, you’ll start wanting it all the time once you have one bite of it … it’s all about balancing it out and achieving moderation.”
He notices that a lot of his guy friends wait until they’re starving to eat and then consume as much as they can. “If you can’t move after finishing a meal, you should be eating smaller portions,” he says, adding that he has to contend with questions about his masculinity as a result of his eating habits. “If you go out to dinner and don’t eat as much as everyone else, people think that’s girly and feminine,” Simkovic says. “Please, I’m just trying to look good and feel good. If that says anything about my sexual orientation, that’s just crazy.” And although Simkovic, who is straight, gets teased by friends for his exceptionally healthy eating regimen, he remains confident in his healthful lifestyle choices: “I guess I’ll have the last laugh.”
But for many NU athletes, it’s more than a personal choice; arduous conditioning and restriction are part of their daily lives. “Male athletes such as wrestlers or gymnasts are especially at risk for developing eating disorders because these risky behaviors are normalized within their peer groups,” says Nancy L. Brown, health education project manager at the Palo Alto clinic, which is affiliated with Stanford University. “Plus, their coaches often overlook players’ eating disorders because it benefits them and their team’s performance.”
There has been a shift in the media portrayal of men, observes Dr. Sarah Levi, CAPS counselor and coordinator of the center’s Eating Concerns intake program. “It’s a slimmer, less bulked up look – the ‘upside down triangle’ – that’s made its way from Europe to the runways of New York” to gyms across America, she says.
According to Levi, it’s a misconception that vanity often motivates women to develop eating disorders. It’s also an assumption that can deter men from identifying exercise or eating problems they have – and getting the counseling or services they need. “Males often don’t admit to having an eating disorder because they feel embarrassed,” says Gary Grahl, 40, an anorexia survivor and author of the memoir Skinny Boy, published last year. “I definitely felt ashamed when I had one.” Grahl, who played on the varsity baseball team in college, says it is easy to hide an eating disorder with aggressive athleticism. “Plus, you can conceal (eating) problems as the sport gets harder and more rigorous,” he says. Even if an eating issue doesn’t stem from appearance aspirations, Grahl believes that men have a more muscle-driven rationale behind the development of a disorder. “Males want a ‘cut muscle look,’ with veins popping out of the skin,” he says. “There’s more of a desire to achieve a defined physique, not necessarily [to] be as thin as possible.”
The latest research shows that men comprise an increasingly large proportion of eating disorder cases. A national study published last February in the journal, Biological Psychiatry, found that up to 25 percent of anorexia and bulimia sufferers are male, compared to the traditionally accepted statistic of 10 percent. Additionally, 40 percent of binge eaters are male, according to the 3,000-person study, which was the first of its kind and scope. “It’s an intriguing finding,” says Dr. James I. Hudson, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at the affiliated McLean Hospital, who was the lead author of the study.
Though Hudson ackno
wledges that the results are “statistically fragile,” the findings still indicate that men suffer significantly from these typically feminized issues. “The Hulk-inspired, ‘roided’ out, Rambo-type of look is just as pathologically disturbing for men as is the influence of an extremely thin model on a woman,” Hudson says. Ultrathin models aren’t necessarily considered the most attractive, but they represent the extreme possibility of thinness for women; therein the problem lies, according to Hudson. “Even when you back out from ideal, most people end up feeling inadequate and dissatisfied with themselves,” he says. All indications point to a new picture of the perfect man. “The image of the ideal male is becoming leaner, and a more muscular look is being aggressively peddled nowadays,” Hudson says. “It’s the pressure of the Playgirl centerfold type, washboard abs and all.”
And lately Hollywood exposure has been as harsh a critic of the male physique as it has always been to women. Drastic weight losses of stars like Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thornton have made headlines. Quaid struggled with anorexia in the process of shedding 40 pounds for a role in 1994; Thornton lost 59 pounds in response to body image pressures on-and off-screen. Even Elton John has admitted to grappling with bulimia throughout his career.
But the desire to lose weight isn’t necessarily driven by women. “I’m more into the athlete’s side of the male body spectrum,” says SESP sophomore Katie Coombs. As Gabriel Cooper notes, the standards may be different for gay men. “It’s important that he be bigger … the thought of me being able to beat a guy physically at something is sort of weird,” Coombs says. “At the same time, it’s unattractive when guys put too much thought into their looks.”
