Muscularity vs. Masculinity: The Western Man’s Burden

American males are more likely to be dissatisfied with their bodies than their Taiwanese counterparts, a difference that may be due to cultural factors, according to the results of a recent study conducted jointly by a Harvard undergraduate and a Harvard Medical School (HMS) professor.

Jeffrey Yang ’05, a biochemical sciences concentrator in Leverett House, collaborated with his former teaching fellow Peter Gray and Professor of Psychiatry Harrison G. Pope on the study, published in this month’s American Journal of Psychiatry.

When asking male subjects to describe the type of man they believed women would find attractive, the researchers discovered that American, Austrian, and French men thought women would prefer men who were 20 to 30 pounds more muscular than average. Taiwanese men described an ideal man who was only 10 pounds more muscular than average.

In constrast, women, when asked what type of men they preferred, gravitated toward a body image that was much closer to the average man.

Yang said that the male overemphasis on muscularity in Western culture is reflected both in the high occurrence of body image disorders—an example of which is muscle dysmorphia—and the prevalent use of anabolic steroids.

“There’s nothing pathological about wanting to go to the gym,” Pope said. “But if it gets to the point where you lose your girlfriend or your job because you spend 45 minutes a day examining [your] body and become distressed because it’s not muscular enough, then you’re getting into muscle dysmorphia.”

Pope estimated that the number of men in America who have muscle dysmorphia is in the hundred thousands, although he said that such number is a “crude estimate” since most people are extremely secretive about the disorder. Similarly, he said that three to six percent of all American teenagers have tried anabolic steroids at least once.

Yang said that American males’ desire for bigger muscles differs vastly from the attitude in Taiwan, which he attributes to cultural influences both in the past and present.

“If you think back to the Olympics, Greek or Roman sculptures, or about Norse gods, Western culture has traditionally associated muscularity with masculinity,” said Yang. “In China, Confucius—when he wrote about the ideal gentleman—placed more value on literary ability and cultural attainment.”

And in the present, Yang said that “American guys are bombarded with muscular images all the time.”

In looking at magazine advertisements, Yang found that American magazines had pictures of undressed men 27 percent of the time, whereas Asian magazines only had undressed men 4 percent of the time.

“It helps support the hypothesis that muscularity is simply not emphasized in Chinese culture,” he said.

Although Western ideals of body image may not be healthy, it appears that they are spreading rapidly through Asian countries, according to Katharine A. Phillips, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown Medical School.

“Studies have shown that Asian women have recently succumbed to Western ideals of thinness,” Phillips, who is also director of the Body Image Program at Butler Hospital, wrote in an e-mail.

But one expert cautioned that the results of the Harvard study should not be used to make “sweeping generalizations” about Asian and Western cultures, adding that further questions need to be investigated.

“Who are we talking about? Class? Race? Age? Who looks at such magazines?” said Paul Hamburg, assistant professor of psychiatry at HMS and associate director of the adult eating disorder program at Massachusetts General Hospital. “I would be exceedingly cautious about making large conclusions.”

—Staff writer Risheng Xu can be reached at xu4@fas.harvard.edu.