A friend of mine's whip smart daughter recently contacted me with some questions for a piece she was writing for her US High School magazine, 'Exploring Teen Masculinity at the Gym'. I didn't realise, for the usual self-absorbed reasons, that the article was going to be so brief - or feature quotes from *other people* - and so wittered on at great length, making her job more difficult. She did well though in parsing my wittering.
For you lucky Subbies, I've posted (her questions and) my full-length responses below. I don't mention the word ‘spornosexuality’, though that's obviously what I'm mostly talking about, because I got the impression that this might be 'problematic' in a High School publication.
Do you think teen boys in 2024 are susceptible to unhealthy body ideals relating to gym culture and social media?
Yes, but then everyone is. We live in a hyper visual culture, and no one is more hyper visual than young people. True, it used to be much more of a problem for girls than boys, but that’s progress for you.
Though of course, it depends on what is meant by 'unhealthy'. Sitting at home eating junk food playing computer games is probably much more unhealthy. Whilst there are of course issues to be addressed, I think that problematising or pathologizing today’s boys’ love affair with their own bodies is not the way to go. There was enough pathologizing of it in the past.
I should also say that I don't know very much about teen boys, except that I can't get to the mirror in my locker room because they are all posing and flexing for one another and taking selfies for their Insta page. Sometimes for at least as long as they worked out.
It's lucky then that I'm from a generation of men too self-conscious to use the mirror much - at least when other people are around. If I do check myself out when the locker room is empty, I quickly stop if someone walks in.
And if they're young, they will usually make straight for the mirror I've just shrank away from, either to examine their skin pores, hair, or pump. Completely oblivious to my presence. I've also noticed recently that young guys use their phones as mirrors in the gym itself - checking themselves out 'live' using the selfie camera. Something I had never even thought of. I'm SO old.
Is there a sort of objectification and body comparison happening between these young boys who work workout that's ironic due to the widespread rejection of being perceived as gay? (Example: Comparing muscles and personal records for lifting)
Whatever their attitude towards homosexuality, young guys today are way “gayer” than their dads. Not only because they are much more openly vain and interested in their image, and keen on objectifying themselves, but also because they are anything but shy about their keen appreciation of the beauty of the male body. Though of course the words they use are usually “jacked” or “hench” – or “aesthetic”, which is a category in body building contests now, catering to the younger generation’s interest in desirable, ‘cover model’ physiques rather than the huge mutant look.
But “aesthetic” is just Greek for “beautiful” – which is about as gay as you can get.
The packs of grinning young guys at my gym blocking the mirror may be annoying, but they look like they’re having a great deal of fun comparing muscles and shreds and have no inhibitions about grabbing each other’s biceps. They are also big into hugs. Which is sweet.
Of course, as the father of the metrosexual, I’m overindulgent. But because I’m the father of the metrosexual I’m old enough to remember a time when young men were so paranoid about being perceived gay that they had to put ‘No Homo’ on the end of every sentence, and didn’t dare to touch one another, except when fighting. And probably thought going to the gym was So Homo. Let alone group posings in the locker room in their undercrackers.
I think it’s good – and ‘healthy’ – that the love of the male body and male physical intimacy is no longer just something ‘for gays’. Pre-metrosexual masculinity depended on a great deal of male self-loathing. Which is really unhealthy.
Do you think that this online high-protein diet, cutting/bulking trend has become it's own teen-male version of an eating disorder?
I’m not familiar with this particular trend, but high protein diet, plus bulking and cutting has long been a part of gym culture. Though some guys nowadays eschew that and are ‘cover ready’ all year round. Which means keeping your bodyfat low, permanently. Not an easy task, hence the popularity of Keto etc.
There will always be a small minority that will become obsessive and take things to extremes – and there is definitely such a thing as too low bodyfat. And it’s true that things like eating disorders, which used to be seen as something only girls suffered from, can take surprising forms. Not so long ago ‘diets’ were regarded as an almost exclusively feminine pastime/affliction. Nowadays boys and young men research and talk a great about their eating ‘plans’ – or diets, to you and me.
Men’s bodies, like masculinity, are now self-conscious. The male body can no longer be taken for granted; it has to be constructed. In the gym. Most no longer do jobs that merit ‘man sized’ portions. And of course, the man-sized portions have got bigger, and more calorific – and are available, and advertised, 24-7. Male obesity used to be much lower than female obesity, but has overtaken it in the UK, and reached parity in the US. In a sense, the choice facing boys today is, do you want to be a ‘fittie’ or a ‘fattie’?
Why do teen boys idolize Patrick Bateman in terms of his fitness/beauty choices, despite the fact he's a villain?
Maybe they’ve been reading me. I cited American Psycho as a movie about metrosexuality in the essay ‘Meet the Metrosexual’ that introduced the term to the US in 2002:
https://www.marksimpson.com/meet-the-metrosexual/
'Metrosexuality has also converted Hollywood to its persuasion. Films like Fight Club and American Psycho and Spider-Man exploit and/or negotiate the anxiety created by metrosexuality’s impact on masculinity while of course employing all the advertising techniques that have been used to convert young men to metrosexuality in the first place. This can lead to an irony that loops back on itself: auto-fellatio with arched, plucked eyebrows. In Fight Club, a film that looks like a feature-length glossy men’s magazine fashion shoot, Brad “six-pack” Pitt, smooth Calvin Klein model turned Hollywood pretty boy, and one of America’s most famous metrosexual males, leads an all-boys-together rebellion against … Calvin Klein, or rather, emasculating consumerism.
'In American Psycho, the antihero serial killer’s problem is presented as his failure to recognize the woman that could civilize him: “Have you ever wanted to make someone happy?” she asks innocently. He doesn’t hear her: He’s too busy getting out his giant nail gun. Making someone else happy is of course an even more impossible quest than making yourself happy – our parents taught us that. But in this case, it is rather less likely to stain your white silk sofa.'
The Bateman character is ‘cool’, partly because it’s Christian Bale playing him, with such gusto, but mostly because he’s a comically sociopathic iteration of metrosexuality and its narcissism. But one man’s narcissism is another man’s self-care. The movie starts, if I remember rightly, with him showering, lovingly and going through his skin-care regime.
In a world where gender roles are no longer something that can be taken for granted, and women are no longer so dependent on men – and thus can leave, or just choose not to get hooked in the first place – many young men have realised that they are going to have to take care of themselves.
And if they don’t, they won’t get laid.