If Cristiano Ronaldo rips off his jersey during the World Cup to reveal the chiseled body underneath, could it inspire worldwide ab rage?
Women have had fashion magazines to make them feel badly about themselves for decades. Now, lots of men have joined the party.
Research has found that when men were shown images of other lean, young and muscular men, they became angrier and more depressed.
"That's exactly correct," said David LaPorte, director of clinical psychology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. "Studies in which they show a bunch of undergraduate males pictures of muscular guys, guess what? Right after that, they feel kind of crappy about themselves."
Men, long considered more comfortable in their own skin, so to speak, aren't immune to the evolving cultural standards of hotness.
The gap between men's and women's body image is closing. Men have become more critical of themselves as the male body ideal has become more muscular, cut and lean.
"Over the last decade, there (has been) a huge increase of men reporting they are dissatisfied with how they look," said Heather Hausenblas, a Florida-based psychologist who has studied body image, eating and exercise behaviors.
When a cultural standard, such a perceived body ideal, changes within 15 to 20 years, that's a rather rapid pace for social change. LaPorte remembers when the shift began in marketing, with female images becoming ever skinnier. A few decades later, the male image became more of a "testosterone-fueled monstrosity."
The men most susceptible to this sort of ab envy tend to be younger (teens to 30s), come from a higher socioeconomic status and are more likely to be white than an ethnic minority, according to Hausenblas.
I asked her to consider the notion of male body image in the context of World Cup soccer athletes. Here we have a regular parade of the most fit male athletes in the world. Isn't that bound to create some ripples in the male psyche?
"I've got a nice picture of David Beckham in my mind right now," Hausenblas started.
"You're looking at one percent of the population," she continued. Most people are aware of the long hours of training, the science and extreme discipline of diet required to maintain such a form. "Most us are quite aware of what the ideal physique looks like," she said; it's only those who internalize it as their own standard who may struggle with body image issues.
Still, many men seem blissfully unworried about how they stack up to the body elites. (There's ample evidence of this in the swimwear choices on beaches across the country this summer.) Why don't more women share their carefree attitude?
"Part of the disparity is that, to this day, females continue to be evaluated on their appearance much more than males are," LaPorte said. Men are afforded other measures of self-worth, such as career success. Women are held to the impossible standard of an airbrushed magazine cover.
Among men and women who report dissatisfaction with their bodies, it's a small subset who succumb to extreme problematic behaviors, such as developing an eating disorder or using steroids.
Whatever body dissatisfaction men may experience, it likely will never affect them on the same scale that it does women, LaPorte said. Partly, it's a matter of biology: It's easier for a man of any size to lift some weights and bulk up, but for a woman whose body is naturally a size 8 or 12, slimming down to a size 2 or 4 will require some pathology in behavior, he explained.
Hausenblas says people who begin exercising to change their physique are less likely to stick with it as opposed to those who exercise to become more healthy.
Obviously, playing soccer is better for you than watching the World Cup. Unless, of course, your goals are measured in eye candy.