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Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Combining case studies with scientific research, this book reveals a threat that is as serious as the beauty myth for women or anorexia nervosa for girls. Growing numbers of young men are taking the quest for perfect muscles, skin and hair too far, crossing the line from normal interest to abnormal obsession. The symptoms of this body obsession, excessive workouts, steroid abuse, eating disorders, and body and muscle dysmorphic disorder lead to problems with sex and intimacy, relationships and work. This book shows what men really think and feel about their bodies, so no-one need suffer alone.
You see them everywhere. With their bulging arms and deltoids and pecs, not to mention their rippling abdominal muscles, they appear on magazine covers, in underwear ads, in action movies. And American men have noticed them; after a generation of being bombarded by images of idealized male physiques, men are growing increasingly insecure about their own appearance. The authors have studied everything from bodybuilders to Playgirl centerfolds and concluded that the images presented to men and women have gotten steadily more muscular. As a result of this bombardment of pumped-up male imagery, American men have been developing eating disorders, working out to the point of obsession, and taking steroids. None of this is for health or sports performance but rather to develop a physique that matches those seen on the cover of Muscle & Fitness or in the next squat rack over. Another consequence is a condition the authors call "muscle dysmorphia," also known as "reverse anorexia" or just "bigorexia." In this, men who are large and muscular look in the mirror and see someone who is puny and frail. So they pump iron and eat and take steroids and swell to ever-larger proportions, while being too ashamed of their bodies to take off their sweatshirts at the beach. The authors postulate that all this has to do with the rising power of women in society. To back this up, they produce timelines showing how women's-rights milestones correlate with increasing images of men as sex objects. What's the solution? The authors list some Web sites to help men suffering from the Adonis Complex to find therapists familiar with the problem. Sometimes antidepressants can work. But for most people, the answer is to understand that the images of perfect male physiques they see are unattainable, and that no one really expects them to look like that anyway. --Lou Schuler
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| The Charisma of Adonis |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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"The Adonis Complex" touches on a subject I've been interested in since childhood: the impact specific body types have on our psyche as well as the opposite sex. The salient point of the book is that male and females view things totally differently in defining attractiveness. According to the study, it isn't always what we think is the ideal, but what we think others believe to be the ideal. From a male perspective, when we see a woman ogling a muscular male, we believe that to be her ideal type. However, in her mind, she may prefer less muscle and more brains. Men, as visual creatures, view her ogling as her standard not indicative of mere appreciation of a certain body type. Consequently, we strive for the kind of body we "think" women want. In other words, what people say and do, might be different than how they really feel--Cognitive Dissonance.
"The Adonis Complex" is a good book in explaining how a media-centric society has made males equally insecure and obsessive over their physical appearance as has been the case traditionally for women. The book does a great job of breaking down the components of being physically "Big," but does not make a compelling case on how to overcome media influence. The typical bromides of "Loving yourself for who you are...and looking for acceptance within" are always the high road, but does very little in truly making a person feel complete within a social structure that values physicality. I recommend the book as a means of dissecting this psychosis for male victims and an aid for women who may come in contact with such males.
Edward Brown
Core Edge Image & Charisma Institute
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| The "Adonis Complex" is really part of a larger problem: the "Excellence Complex" |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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The promulgators of psychological health would like humanity to be as uniformly mediocre as possible so that no one will feel uncomfortable with his mediocrity. The program for achieving this dystopia is to make excellence into a disease, and pursuit of excellence into a disorder. Over time, as people are "cured" of their drive to achieve excellence, which is now re-labeled an "obsession," the paradise of uniform mediocrity will be realized.
One of the most efficient ways to kill the drive to excellence is to make it appear that excellence is impossible. The first step in this process is to remove from public view the people who have actually achieved excellence, to make them invisible. Such people demonstrate by their very existence that excellence is sometimes achieved, and so is possible. The fact of their existence must therefore be ruthlessly suppressed.
Thus the psychologists become irate when they see, for example, excellent male physiques in underwear advertisements. They label these "unrealistic" because in the dystopian reality they are trying to create, excellence is not real. The fact that the model has actually achieved an excellent physique, means, of course, that it is "realistic." It is realistic because it is real. This is the inconvenient fact that they desperately need to conceal.
The psychologists reason that not everyone can achieve an excellent physique, so we should not instill false hopes by placing models with excellent physiques before our children. But not everyone can write like Shakespeare. Does this mean that we should not instill false hopes by placing Shakespeare before our children?
In their dystopian world, the psychologists would require that only people with mediocre physiques appear on the covers of our magazines. This will ensure, they tell us, that no one develops "body dysmorphic disorder." But if we follow their reasoning, we must also require that only mediocre writing appears within our magazines so that no one will develop "writing dysmorphic disorder."
The fact that examples of excellence might inspire the talented person to become excellent himself is, to the psychologists, inconsequential; what matters to them is only the effect of such examples on the mental health of the mediocre.
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| The Adonis Complex |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Good educational book for males to understand other males with body concerns and females to understand the male psyche regarding their body concerns.
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| Long-overdue study on a "modern" men's crisis. |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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The same impossible expectations regarding attaining the "perfect" body that have been relentlessly imposed on women by (mostly) the media are now being imposed on men--albeit in a different context. This book examines the lengths that some men will go to in order to attain the "perfect" body--and the physical, mental and emotional damage that can result from trying to live up to unrealistic standards. While I do agree that staying fit is important I can assure you that ( in normal situations) it's NOT the guy with the most muscular or well-built body that wins. Face it: low self-esteem is what drives both women AND men to aspireto attaining the "Perfect" body knowing full well it's impossible.
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| needed book |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I have a son and a daughter who struggle with body image. I could start a library with the books I own about a girl's struggle with an eating disorder! Books for males are hard to find. I'm thankful for this book. I first read it at the library, but ordered it because I wanted my own copy. It points out symptoms, has tests, case studies...a little of everything. Men tend to deny there is a problem and this book made it very clear that my son had one. Good read.
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