Adonis Complex - Irish Independent

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Irish Independent Wednesday, 17 September, 2003

The Adonis complex Now men get obsessed with the perfect body More and more young males are being put under pressure to have a six-pack and bulging biceps but, says JANE LYONS, there are many hidden dangers in this quest for the body beautiful

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ike many young lads, Keith likes to go to the gym. He works out every day for two to three hours but insists it is more from boredom than vanity. He says that he initially wanted to get bigger but he can’t explain why. He’s now a big lad for 17. “Some people go overboard. They think they’re better because they’re bigger,” says Keith. “You see them down in the gym, posing.” Women have long been hypnotised by the Holy Grail perfection of a Britney Spears belly, dieting and tummycrunching as if their lives depended on it. But it now seems that her taut male counterpart, Justin Timberlake, is presenting the same kind of challenge to the fellas. Long considered the territory of women and gay men, an increasing number of guys are falling prey to their own kind of beauty myth — the tyranny of the six-pack, the Becks-pecs and the bulging biceps. Where men once wore their insouciance about appearance like a badge of honour, they are now displaying a marked change in attitude and nowhere is this more evident than in the sales of men’s cosmetic and toiletry products. According to the European Cosmetics Markets magazine, the sale of men’s body care items is booming. Last year men in the UK spent over £35m on products like self-tanners, moisturisers and body toning lotions. Even more telling is the development of male make-up. Jean Paul Gaultier is bringing out a range in black rubber, King of Shave is marketing a tinted moisturiser and lip balm and even Chanel is rumoured to be getting in on the act. Marion Byron, director of the Irish Cosmetics Detergent and Allied Products Association, says the same market trends are happening here. However, this concern with appearance has a dark side. Three American psychologists have labelled the increasing male obsession with the body beautiful and its connection with self-worth as the ‘Adonis complex’. Excessive dieting, bulimia, over-training and preoccupation with muscularity and bulk are characteristic of this search for the physical ideal. Poor body image and self-esteem are commonplace. At its most extreme men may suffer muscle dysmorphia, where their view of themselves is so distorted they never believe they are big enough. According to a recent survey presented at the American Psychological Association in Toronto, even top male athletes are suffering from poor body image and the pressure to achieve physical perfection, with one in five believing he does not have enough bulk. Like everything in the US, many of the case studies paint pictures of excess: steroid abuse among teenagers, increasing lev-

els of male cosmetic surgery and even one man who wouldn’t kiss his girlfriend because of her calorie-laden saliva. But although the Adonis complex may lose some of its all-American excess in the leap across the Atlantic, it is still an issue here. Barbara Doyle, development director of Bodywhys, the national support organisation for eating disorders in Ireland, says 10pc of eating disorder sufferers are men, with the majority struggling with bulimia and over-exercising. “It’s no longer just a woman’s issue,” she says. Ms Doyle believes there are many more male sufferers out there. She says these men do not access support because they find it difficult to talk about body image and eating disorders, which are still seen as female issues. She says the Adonis complex “is indicative of a culture of beauty, a culture of perfection and a very body-conscious and fat-phobic culture. This is affecting young people and children”. Jerry Kavanagh, a 23-year-old student from Dublin, describes himself as obsessive about his weight. He says he has good days and fat days. He has even been known to put a biscuit in his mouth and take it back out again just so he could taste it. According to Kavanagh, his boarding school friends also took part in a variety of unusual weight-loss techniques. One put himself through a rigorous exercise regime while eating only bread and water. Another wrapped himself in cling film and jogged up and down the stairs. “At the time I thought I was overweight but I look back at photos of myself now and realise I wasn’t,” he says.

No pain, no gain: many young men are obsessed with achieving the perfect body in an effort to look like popstars such as Justin Timberlake, right ....................................................................................

‘An increasing number of guys are falling prey to their own kind of beauty myth — the tyranny of the six-pack, the Becks-pecs and the bulging biceps.’

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acinta O’Brien-Lyons, a social psychology lecturer in the department of physical education and sport science at the University of Limerick, has studied body image in Ireland and America. “I’ve been looking at this area for over 20 years. The main difference is that 20 years ago we thought if girls could be more like boys in their attitudes to their bodies they’d be healthier. We couldn’t say that now and it’s getting worse.” In a recent study Ms O’Brien-Lyons found the majority of boys, when faced with computer-generated images of themselves in shorts, underestimated their weight and chose to have bigger, more muscular bodies. A Dublin City University study showed the same dynamic. “People are very concerned about male bodies because when boys do things in adolescence they do it to extreme if they are dissatisfied. They have that tendency towards hypo-manic behaviour,” she says. Ms O’Brien-Lyons has fielded a lot of

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questions from concerned parents about whether it is appropriate for their 14- or 15-year-old sons to start weight training. “If a kid or an adolescent or a young adult undertakes the programme for aesthetic reasons then they are going to be vulnerable to abuse,” she says, referring to steroids. “We get lads coming in all the time asking: ‘Do you sell steroids?’ We don’t,” says Rob O’Keeffe, manager of Workout

World, a body building shop in Dublin. The majority of his clients are looking for weight gain powder and supplements. “I think more and more young lads come in and they want to get huge next week and they don’t want to put the time in,” he says. Mr O’Keeffe has noticed possible candidates for muscle dysmorphia among his clients, as has Clodagh Kilmurray, manager of Westwood Gym in Leop-

ardstown. “There’s men here who are like tanks and they are still trying to get bigger,” she says. According to Ms Kilmurray, most of her clients are more concerned with looking good for the ladies. “An awful lot of lads are conscious — you can’t be 21 years of age, weigh 16 stone, with a belly out here and drink 20 pints on the weekend because women just don’t like it,” says Mr O’Keeffe. And, as bare-chested male models jostle with the leggy perfection of pouting females in magazines and on billboards, experts point to the media as the source of the new male ideal. According to Ms O’Brien-Lyons, the male body has become the new commercial product and it’s Ireland’s young tiger cubs, flush with disposable income, who are being targeted and seduced by this market and the images that promote it. “There are more and more magazines on men’s health and all you see is sixpacks and lads training and lads looking good,” says O’Keeffe. Seanie McGrath, a secondary school PE teacher for 14 years and trainer for the Cork hurling team, agrees that there is too much emphasis on looks. “These magazines don’t seem to focus on skill or acquiring a physical competency with something. They basically focus on

The younger the fiddle, the sexier the tune Myles McWeeney

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igel Kennedy’s idiosyncracies — his spiky hairdos, stand-up collars and grungy clothes — may have raised the blood pressure of the mandarins of classical music but his anti-establishment and populist approach has helped thousands on the path to enjoying classical music. The fact he painted his Jaguar sedan claret and blue in honour of Aston Villa made him a pin-up for many young people. His recording of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons has sold in excess of two million copies, an astonishing feat in the rarefied world of serious music, and record companies have been desperately seeking a formula that will replicate the Kennedy phenomenon. Looking to the crop tops, hipster jeans and sexy moves of MTV and its myriad clones, record executives have been throwing serious money at goodlooking young classical artists willing to be photographed in sexy gear. If some of them don’t make the crossover breakthrough it certainly won’t be for the want of trying. The latest kids on the block are Amici, an operatic quintet consisting of five extremely good-looking and, according to their publicist, talented individuals. Tellingly, one of the tracks on their debut CD is a song called Prayer in the Night based on the Sarabande from Handel’s Harpsichord Suite in D minor, which was used in a Levi’s television commercial. What makes Amicia stand out from the crowd is that they look remarkably like the now defunct made-to-measure pop band Hear’say. Among the first talented classical

musicians to break with the traditional evening dress and penguin suit look were the Kronos Quartet, four eminently serious and now highly respected musicians. Their first hip and edgy album covers of some 30 years ago pictured them looking like a cross between Steely Dan and a grunge band. There have been plenty of other classical musicians in the last number of decades who have unbuttoned more than their top shirt button in pursuit of fame and record sales. The celebrated German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter’s plunging cleavage has graced a number of CD covers, and Vanessa Mae’s standout talent, clearly visible in her wet t-shirt pose for the cover of the album Red Hot, brought her to the attention of the hormone-addled MTV generation and onto pop crossover stardom. Crossover violinist Linda Brava went quite a bit further in seeking exposure by appearing on the cover of Playboy’s special Sex & Music edition five years ago. It didn’t do the curvaceous Finn’s career any harm at all, and her discs are huge best sellers in her homeland.

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ussian cellist Nina Kotova, formerly a successful model who used her fees from the like of Commes des Garcons and Karl Largerfeld to buy her first good cello, says she’s proud to be a pin-up and on the sexy cover of her latest classical CD it’s hard to tell which has the better shape, Nina or her cello. Three years ago the group that’s been described as the Spice Girls with strings were launched with great hoop-la. Bond, made up of violinists Haylie Ecker, Eos and Tania Davis as

well as cellist Gay-Yee Westerhoff, are highly trained and stunningly goodlooking classical musicians, but have suffered a slap in the face by the decision of the Chart Information Network to de-list their best-selling album from the classical charts because it wasn’t classical enough. A year later Karen England and Rebecca Knight joined forces and formed OperaBabes. Their debut album, Beyond Imagination, was a big success — think One Fine Day from Madam Butterfly with a backbeat — but their star has dimmed and their record company has dropped them. Other really sexy-looking groups whose appeal doesn’t seem to have had a lasting impact include the Medieval Baebes, stunningly beautiful young women dressed in flowing white robes who sing the hottest hits of the 13th century, the Planets, and that hunk of hormones on the hoof, former butcher Russell Watson, who didn’t cut it in operatic recital and has gone MOR. The purists may sniff and suggest, with a certain amount of right on their side, that sex doesn’t seem to sell classical music, but it is interesting to note that the front covers of the two latest issues of BBC Music, which bills itself as the world’s best-selling classical music magazine, feature smouldering portraits of the lissom and willowy 43-year-old Russian violinist, Viktoria Mullova, and the gorgeous and voluptuous Romanian diva, Angela Gheorghiu, who was the star of this year’s Last Night of the Proms. Nigel Kennedy appears tonight at The Helix, Dublin City University

Classical good looks: Nigel Kennedy ... and the Medieval Baebes

CLASSICAL EYE CANDY . . . Dominic Millar: An Argentianian classical guitarist with male model looks. His Shapes album, pop reworkings of familIar pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Albinoni, and featuring Moya Brennan singing Ave Maria, is in the classical charts. Likely to be a mega crossover star. Myleen Klass: Had fame thrust upon her thanks to appearing on Britain’s Popstars TV show. Recently signed a reported £1.4 million six record deal with Universal as a classical pianist. Didn’t make it in pop, so what chance of a classic Top 10 spot?

Beautiful music: Charlotte Church ... and Vanessa Mae

Charlotte Church: Hit the headlines at 13 with the first of a series of best-selling classical albums but gave up the frillly gingham dress a couple of years ago and now plans MOR/Classical career. Made her film debut this year in I’ll Be There but looked very lost at the Mercury Music Awards last week in an uncool Pirates of the Caribbean T-shirt.

the physique.” And it’s adolescent boys who are particularly susceptible to these physical ideals. According to Mr McGrath, puberty is a time of identity crisis and, with some boys developing faster than others, physical size is a huge factor. For boys who are not sporty or who are late developers the obsession with the body beautiful can fulfil a need. “Boys need something masculine and physical to identify with,” he says. But adolescent boys are not the only ones facing an identity crisis. Some argue that changes in society have destabilised men’s roles, leaving them with the unconscious need to control their identity and to use muscularity as a signifier of masculinity. And, as an increasing number of men fall prey to these masculine ideals, there are danger signs ahead. “The amazing thing about the pursuit of beauty and perfection, whether it be thinness or muscularity, is that there is never a point at which it is enough. It is a behaviour, not an endgame, and they just keep moving the goal posts,” says Ms O’Brien-Lyons. “And what if you have an accident?” asks Mr McGrath. “If your whole ego depends on that, you are going to be running psychologically into serious trouble.”