The Adonis Complex: How to Identify, Treat and Prevent Body Obsession in Men and Boys

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

William Pollack, Ph.D. author of Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons From The Myths Of Boyhood Ten years after The Beauty Myth we finally understand the relationship between society's expectation of boys and men and how they think about their bodies.

Time magazine cover story Groundbreaking. Ripped male bodies are used today to advertise everything that shapely female bodies advertise: not just fitness products, but also dessert liqueurs, microwave ovens, and luxury hotels. The authors of The Adonis Complex want guys to rebel against those images, or at least see them for what they are: a goal unattainable without drug use.

Publishers Weekly Compelling [and] convincing...A provocative look at what has been, until now, a largely unexplored subject.