Melbourne’s most elite gyms are where you’ll find them: the men chained to the mirrors like slaves, dumbbells in each hand, fanatically searching for advancements in the muscles beneath their paper-thin skin.
The men that despite their worshipped physiques and status, crave physical perfection beyond their ability; that use bodybuilding as emotional armor from the outside world.
Muscle dysmorphia is just that; a body dysmorphic disorder often referred to as “reverse anorexia”, anorexia’s muscular equivalent: a “frequently under-recognised psychiatric condition”.
“It can typically be characterised by an extreme worry to be perceived as too small or too frail”, says Mitzi Paderes, a clinical psychologist at the Swinburne Institute of Technology.
“A large portion of their time is spent ruminating about their perceived size”, she says. “As well as in the subsequent activities that address this perception.”
Its tell-tale signs often go unnoticed amongst the normalcy of bodybuilding culture, involving obsession and compulsion to engage in excessive exercises, a preoccupation and anxiety towards missing workouts, excessive dieting, laxative, and diuretic abuse and steroid abuse, according to Paderes.
“Their extreme self-consciousness interferes with their ability to socialise and to make and expand networks. It can even prevent them from trying.”
According to the Australian Psychological Society, men’s body image dissatisfaction has tripled within 25 years: from 15% to 45%.
This dissatisfaction has had a disastrous lead-on effect: a 2010 Mission Australia study found that Australian male youth aged 15-25 years found that body image was their number one concern.
How did this come to be?
Societal conditioning has created a breeding ground of impossible standards of beauty and perfection, for both men and women. But why is such a large emphasis placed on female body image and not male?
Our concept of the perfect man has created a strong correlation between muscle size and masculinity, wherein, the bigger the muscle, the better the man. The stereotype of the emaciated teenage girl as synonymous with eating disorders can no longer apply.
“Societal norms have defined the ideal male as big and strong,” Paderes says of the impossible standards set by modern-day Australian society: rippled muscle, little body fat, and peak endurance as the exact opposite of the coveted body type of Anorexia sufferers.
In the context of bodybuilding, a perfect physique becomes a currency that buys units of self-worth.
Michael Licciardo, 27-year-old national sales manager for International Protein and exercise physiologist, coaches the men that seek guidance and advice from him as a fitness supplement expert, in pursuit of the perfect body.
“A lot of people come to me being influenced by social media. They’re wanting to look perfect, and usually following down a path that can easily funnel into steroid use,” Licciardo says of his clients.
But, as Licciardo questions, “when can you finally say that you’re happy?”
“It is human nature to always want something more.”
Licciardo understands the plight of men who constantly strive for perfection. “I used to train for purely aesthetic purposes and to look as good as possible”, he says, but following a re-articulation of his standards, he describes that “[he doesn’t] need to sit at 5% body fat to feel fulfilled”.
He counters the alarming number of men who allow the pursuit of perfection to tip over into obsession.
When Brent, a 35-year-old plumber by day and bodybuilder by night, “cheated” on his strictly regimented diet of what he describes as “food that tastes like shit”, he felt the consequences immediately.
“I instantly regretted it”, he says. “It wrecked me.”
When he was absent from his comparably regimented training schedule, it was “a total disaster”.
Not a few days can pass without debilitating anxiety towards his training following. For Brent, training surpasses recreational enjoyment and enters the dangerous territory of muscle dysmorphia in the everlasting push for perfection.
For Brent, perfection is pathological.
A common practice for Australian bodybuilders is to showcase their almost evangelical devotion to bodybuilding through physique and fitness competitions: a microcosm of spray-tan and coveted posing techniques, a display of physique to a panel of judges before them.
Kevin Bassinger knows how to choose winners.
As a veteran bodybuilding judge and retired bodybuilder, he knows which men have dieted “hard” enough, and who hasn’t. Purely through visual observation can he judge who fits the ideal male standard in bodybuilding.
Though competitions are built upon standards of natural talent, they almost always fall short of their premise with the presence of performance-enhancing drugs and anabolic steroids.
“There are a lot of natural events nowadays that are not actually natural”, he observes, explaining the almost impossibility for natural bodybuilders to compete with the men who have used steroids to significantly enhance their size.
“It would be extremely difficult to compete with a non-natural competitor if you weren’t also using steroids. You just wouldn’t have the size to be able to compete with them,” Bassinger says.
Through twenty-four years of competition judging, he has watched the shifting muscular ideal slowly morph from an obtainable body type to undeniably impossible standards.
“You could never have a natural Mr. Olympia now. You’d be like a skinny chicken against a big ape if you were natural. You just couldn’t obtain the aesthetic requirement to win”, he says.
Preparation for a fitness competition requires a level of dedication that often favours physical results above all else.
For the dedicated bodybuilder, training becomes not one thing in their life, but the only thing.
In its formulaic approach, comes a dangerous underside to the pursuit of aesthetic flawlessness.
Consequences of competition preparation and extreme dieting and exercise are vast, yet conspicuously not spoken of. The ramifications of extreme bodybuilding lifestyles affect both the physical and the mental-and can be truly “disastrous”.
Bassinger, as having competed himself former to his retirement from bodybuilding in 2001, understands the requirements of competitions and their tolls.
“If you’re doing two or three competitions a year, it’s very straining-it’s a lot of discipline. You need to develop a ‘thin skin’, which refers to dieting so much that your skin becomes paper-thin at 1-2% body fat. You need to restrict yourself to that point.”
As a seasoned bodybuilding competitor, Brent routinely follows the formula that leads its contenders to stages.
“It starts with carb cycling: no carbs during the week and a refeed on weekends. It involves fasted cardio (cardio in a ‘fasted’ state), eating food that tastes like shit and sometimes only eating once a day”, he says.
“It involves water cycling as well; some days I’ll have up to 10 litres of water and the days following I’ll have none. Closer to the comp is steroid cycling, usually using ‘mast’ (Masteron), Trenbuterol, and Clenbuterol.”
Though it is an event that lasts for a mere twenty-to thirty minutes, it’s preparation calls for months or even years of dedication in advance.
“I get sick a lot, and I feel terrible. I get stressed. I get short-tempered, easily. I lack energy, and I have no time for anything or anyone”, Brent says on a recollection of his last comp prep, wherein, despite his efforts, placed second.
“It felt terrible to lose. It felt terrible because I knew I could have looked better.”
Muscle dysmorphia is a real and serious disorder that continues to be invisible amongst our standards of masculinity, and satisfaction is a point that is forever fleeting in the context of body image. Whether it can be achieved through bodybuilding is an intriguing concept; though, sadly, it almost always is forever to be chased.
“I remember there was a time where I wanted to be 90 kilograms with abs”, Brent recalls.
“When I got there, I wasn’t happy. I’m not happy now. I’m still far from happy”, Brent says.
“I could go out on the weekends and party and it was no big deal. I just didn’t care about this sort of stuff.”
To enter bodybuilding is to enter a rabbit-hole of taut physiques, #fitspo, and an internal drive to compete against both everybody and ourselves: in moderation, a balanced approach to wellbeing. In excess, a dangerous path to follow.
“Some days I wish I had never started. I didn’t care about my body hair or my fake tan. I was happy without it.”
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