The Adonis Complex: The Secret Crisis of Male Body Obsession

The Adonis Complex brilliantly demonstrates that body obsession is an equal-opportunity menace and that men who seek physical perfection are in an insidious double bind. The "male body image industry" (think Calvin Klein underwear ads) creates impossible ideals of beauty and body, yet men--unlike women--are prohibited from discussing how they think and feel about their bodies.

The image industry is displayed in fascinating detail--for example, photos of the new buff makeovers on GI Joe and Star Wars action figures. The book offers stunning evidence of men's silent suffering to achieve Adonis-like beauty: secret dietary rituals, hair transplants, penis enlargement, cosmetic surgery, and abuse of steroids, ephedrine, fat burners, and diuretics. Two clinical disorders, "body dysmorphia" and "bigorexia," a chilling inverse of anorexia, in which men continue to think they are tiny even when they are alarmingly muscled, are also introduced. The authors' prescriptions are as well targeted as their descriptions.

The final chapters offer compelling advice in vivid case studies, self-tests, and one of the author's own stories of recovering from an eating disorder. Parents of growing boys and men trapped in the mirror will find a clear, cognitive behavioral program that allows them to set more realistic goals for their bodies and minds. --Barbara Mackoff