Modern Wisdom - #646 - Scott Griffiths - Why Are So Many Men Unhappy With Their Bodies?

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Scott Griffiths is a researcher and psychologist at the University of Melbourne and an author known for his work on male body dissatisfaction and muscle dysmorphia. Many men have experienced this phenomenon - looking at photos of ripped guys on social media and longing for a more muscular physique. Why are so many men dissatisfied with their bodies and why do they continue to feel bad even when they're in great condition? Expect to learn the risk factors associated with body dysmorphia, why men's body dysmorphia is on track to overtake women's, the influence of action figures on the our expectations, the preferences men and women truly have regarding different body types, why gay men exhibit higher rates of body dysmorphia, if your concerns over your height and penis size are genuinely warranted and much more... Sponsors: Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get 10% discount on Marek Health’s comprehensive blood panels at https://marekhealth.com/modernwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at http://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied)  Extra Stuff: Follow Scott on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Scott1Griffiths Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's happening people, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Scott Griffiths, he's a researcher and psychologist at the University of Melbourne and an author known for his work on male body dissatisfaction and muscle dysmorphia. Many men have experienced this phenomenon, looking at photos of ripped guys on social media and longing for a more muscular physique. Why are so many men dissatisfied with their bodies and why did they continue to feel bad, even when they're in great condition? Expect to learn the risk factors associated with body dysmorphia, why men's body dysmorphia

is on track to overtake women's. The influence of action figures on our expectations, the preferences men and women truly have regarding different body types, why gay men exhibit higher rates of body dysmorphia, if your concerns over your height and penis size are genuinely warranted, and much more. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. It's a healthy alternative to sugary electrolyte drinks, each grabingel's stick replaces essential electrolytes with no sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients, or any other junk. It contains a science-packed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue, whilst optimizing brain

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slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. And in final news this episode is brought to you by whoop. Whoop is a personalized digital fitness and health coach that monitors your body's physiology 24-7 via a non-invasive wearable and provides you with feedback on your lifestyle, training, sleep, and recovery via an accompanying app. Woop doesn't just tell you what you've done, it tells you what you need to do. Crucially, it is more than just a fitness tracker, it's a coach that can help to identify areas for improvement in your life, it reinforces positive behaviors and helps you to alleviate bad habits that have a negative impact on your overall health and wellbeing. You don't even notice that

you've got it on, it charges ridiculously quickly the battery lasts for ages. I love it. I absolutely adore my whoop. Also, you can join for free, pay nothing for the brand new whoop 4.0 strap plus you get your first month for free and there's a 30-day money back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free, and if you do not like it after 29 days, they'll give you your money back. Head to join.woop.com slash modern wisdom. That's join.woop.com slash modern wisdom. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Scott Griffiths. What is muscle dysmorphia? You can think of it like reverse anorexia. Sometimes it's been called digorexia or muscle rexia. If anorexia is a preoccupation we've wanted to be thin and typically being

successful at achieving that, then muscle dysmorphia is the opposite direction. The preoccupation is wanting to be as muscular, as leanly muscular as possible. And it obviously extends beyond just being a hobby or a pleasurable pastime, and it causes real misery and impairment for the folks who have it. What are the risk factors for this? Risk factors include things like low surf asting.

Guys that have muscle dysmorphia, they almost always have pretty low self-regard and training, dieting, looking their best is one way to feel better about themselves. Often it's one of the few, if not the only ways for them to achieve that. There is often a history of bullying, they may have been skinny when they were younger, maybe they were fat and were teased and want to do something about it, they may have experienced some trauma with a physical, sexual or similar, often they're perfectionists, so they want to do a job to their absolute best and they want it done right, which means

that if they're going to train, they want the best training regimen. If they're going to diet, they want their diet to be on luck and they pour over research. They really can't stop. And often some obsessive compulsiveness as well. So folks who have muscle dysmorphia will tell us, you know, when I do something, I really do it. I go for it and get a little obsessive about it. What does that tell us about why muscle dysmorphia comes about, that it's born out of, is it feelings of weakness and maybe some learned helplessness perhaps in some regards and a few of the

bit. What does it tell us all of those different risk factors you've just explained there about why muscle dysmorphia comes about? Well, when your training is on lock and you're diet at some point, it gives you a sense of control. It gives you a sense of control and it gives you a sense of achievement. Having a feeling of control and achieving and having success in any pursuit is generally broadly great, but in muscle dysmorphia it becomes the singular focus and generally speaking when anything becomes a singular focus where it's the saff to a wound like low self-esteem, it doesn't often work out very favorably for the person affected. Does it co-occur with anything else? So you mentioned there that people tend to be slightly obsessive.

Does that mean that there is more obsessive-compulsive disorder? Is there autism spectrum disorder? Is there anything else? Yeah, all of that slightly elevated. I think depression is what you see quite a lot. It's not clear that the depression is their first, I'd say it often comes about afterward. So if you have been training and dieting that hard for so long, maybe it's cost you a relationship or two, maybe you don't socialize with your friends as much as you're used to, then depressions are a fairly understandable outcome of going through that for some time. Guys are muscle-to-small fear, you know, higher background rate of having anxiety in general, often some social anxiety, particularly when they were young, So if you're used to thinking that others are laughing

behind your back or judging you, but you don't belong in social situations, those kinds of thought patterns are gonna set you up for that critical self analysis on how you'll peer to others, which is your muscles, your height, any of the things that men are often concerned about. I suppose that also creates a base of

a ruminative thought to considering yourself, how other people see you. If you're not spending that much time in social situations, then the few social situations that you do spend time in are going to be judged a greater extent because there's fewer incidents between you and other people for you to think about, which means you'll ruminate about the more, which means you'll think more about your body image and how you can control this.

Because you're not that socially adept, you think, well, the way that I should become more socially adept is by getting bigger in the gym because that's the only thing that I've got control over in my life. And it means I need to die at heart. And if I get bigger than the girls, or like me, yeah, I mean, you're, you're, you're, you're, exactly right. You may be able to tell a little bit of personal story coming through here, but, you know, as someone who really didn't understand social dynamics very much, especially throughout school, and then getting into university, I really was just, like thrust into this hypersocial world,

and I didn't understand how to navigate it that much. And this is 2006, 2007. So like, MISKBODYBILDING.COM forums. And yeah, like the... And I don't exactly what you're talking about. Right. Like, dude, this was before this. So in the pre-Zero, before if it fits your macros, was revolutionary and not old hat. And that, for me, very quickly, I attached a lot of my sense of self worth to this. You know, I yeah throughout

second year and third year of uni, Thursday night, Friday night, saturday night, I would be hosting in a nightclub with my top off with a bunch of my mates, pouring drinks on everyone's throats and having a good time. It's like this brand new premiere, the number one nightclub in the city, and that very quickly attached my sense of self-worth to the way that I looked, because I was the guy, one of the few guys that was walking about with his top off, and that meant if I was bigger, if I was a leaner, then people would respect me more. And yeah, you can very quickly wrap your sense of identity and self up in your condition. very quickly wrap your sense of identity and self up in your condition.

Yeah, exactly. That often is true, especially when you're younger. Like, there's not that many arenas where young people can compete in a social kind of way and an achieved success and be respected. People like, young people are not so different from one another at that point. You're all in high school together. The way you look is such an easy thing to attach your self-esteem and self-worth to. And it's so clearly digested by your peers as a marker of social status and success. So it's no wonder that so many young people end up getting into the kinds of mindset that you found yourself in, found myself attaching importance to my appearance when I was a teen, as almost all teenagers do. And now, ultimately, or ideally,

as people get older, you know, they find the job that is their passion, they find interest hobbies, they find their tribe. Suddenly, there's lots of different social arenas that you can put effort into and achieve prestige and feel good about yourself from dead art, your appearance, but that takes time. That's getting older. What is the age of onset for body dysmorphia amongst males? I'm gonna guess that nine-year-olds don't have body dysmorphia? No, no, they really do. We know that like young kids are aware that they are ideal ways for men and women to look so they pick up cues from society but in terms of when muscle dysmorphia

on sets, it's really after adolescence where you start to see big differences due to puberty in the rate at which poison developing suddenly you are short. And there are tall kids. Kids are getting broader, they're getting more muscles, but you've still got those skinny, blanky arms and a lot of adolescents are suddenly aware that their body can be different to their peers and then they're kind of thrust into this environment where you throw sex and attraction and dating on top of that where it feels if you don't pay attention to this, then you're just not gonna make it. Like you're not going to have the respect

to get the girls. So it's no wonder that young men are susceptible to this kind of thinking. Well, that suggests that there's maybe two things going on. One being that almost all children are basically made out of the same rubber and magic and broadly just like a blob with a face on it. But then you hit puberty at different rates and puberty kicks in and the Androgens set

this guy off a little bit more and this guy off a little bit less. But the other thing being that sexual selection and being chosen and the desire to be chosen and realizing that you yourself are a sexual being is very intimately linked with men's views and presumably females as well. I'm going to guess that you don't see anorexia in like six, six, seven, eight-year-old girls either. No, no, typically not. Right. What, how many men are there compared with women who have body image issues that would cross whatever the threshold is of pathological? That's a great question. I don't think the data out there are convincing enough yet for me to put a firm, you know, prevalence estimate on that. It's not as common

as for women. So women by and large experience more eating disorders, they're more likely to say they don't like the way their body looks at all levels of severity from just not really liking it all the way up to the kinds of severe body to satisfaction that might characterize eating disorders. But it's certainly there for men to give you a sense of how the prevalence estimates fall out around one third to one quarter of the eating disorders that are thinness oriented about which we know quite a bit in regards to prevalence, they affect men. in regards to prevalence, they affect men. But of course, the type of body that is thin and skinny

is typically one that women will say thereafter and men will not. When you look at muscle dysmorphia, the kind of more muscularity oriented eating disorders that my team have specialized in in recent years, those prevalence estimates switch. Suddenly it's like 80, 90% of sufferers men, which is what you might expect.

We just don't have the big population levels out to slap a percentage of them. Are eating disorders and body image disorders the same thing? Well, I think you can make a really good case for that. The DSM, which you use in the States, and we use here in Australia to classify all matter of psychological disorders, it's not a very old text, like psychology, psychiatry, in general, compared to a physiological medicine, physical medicine. It's young.

So, you have this category of disorder called eating disorders. You have a category of disorder called eating disorders. You have a category of disorder called body dysmorphic disorder, which is about body image, and you think these, these two seem to have a lot of similarities and they're absolutely right. They're absolutely right. And the way we would go about treating it is pretty much exactly the same. It's just a quirk of a diagnostic system that's constantly evolving in response to evidence. Have you worked out what the mechanism is that's causing this to occur inside of somebody's mind? Like, so they see themselves in the mirror, they're able to, what they objectively see

and what they subjectively see begin to diverge more and more, that causes them to ruminate about their image, it causes them to use self-referential thought, it causes them to be obsessive about their training, to eat more, or to dial the calories in, and do all of these things. Why? Like, what's going on inside of these people's heads? What are they hoping to achieve?

Like, what are the behaviors that these people display? What characterizes them? Yeah, look, I don't have an excellent answer for you here because the number of reasons, the central reasons why muscle dysmorphia can come about are really diverse. We could have someone to take the example you were providing who, when they look in the mirror, there is some perceptual distortion that goes on in their head so that what they see reflected back at them is completely divergent from how they actually are and how others see them. This is the person with muscle dysmorphia who is constantly seeking reassurance.

They can be the biggest guy in their frame group, but they're still terrified to take off their shirt in case someone thinks that they don't train. Like, do you even lift brokind of mentality? And they exist, but there are some guys who have muscle dysmorphia. They know exactly how they look like. They know that they're the biggest guy in their friend group, one of the biggest guys in the gym, but it's just never enough.

The goal posts are always moving. They get to one point, get to one success, but then it's on to the next, because perceptual distortions are not the motivating factor there. It could have been, as in the words of one of the guys, we were interviewing Mussel Dismorphia earlier this year, that when he was younger, he got bullied for being scrawny, and this kid would come up and put his fingers around this guy's wrist just to show how skinny his wrist was. And from there came a whole bunch of very critical commentary on his own body and he's just never really been able to outrun that and isn't dealt with it.

Right, so the underlying belief or worldview is that if I continue to train something will happen that will fix the problem that I've got inside. Yeah, it's that control, right? Like if I just, if I get my training on lock, if my dieting is on lock, if I keep just doing this, things will be better. Like the underlying problem, insecurity, the distortion, it will go away, but it's not going to. It's for the same reason that someone who has body dysmorphic disorder, they think that nose is grotesquely misshapen, even though no one else can see it. They go to a cosmetic surgeon who says, yeah, fix your nose right up, here's a nose job, they get it done and they look in the mirror

and they go, still doesn't look right. I think they've botched it. I'm going to have to have another one because it's not the problem, it's just not the underlying problem. I saw an article that I've had saved for the last couple of months since I knew that you were coming on, which you may be familiar with. Poor relationship with one's father associated with heightened muscle dysmorphia symptoms via vulnerable narcissism. Are you familiar with this? I'm familiar with the title, I... So something that's been happening in research on muscle dysmorphia that I think is worth mentioning is folks who do research, have been doing it sometime in the area, wanting more focus on studies with clinically diagnosed individuals with muscle dysmorphia. The study in question,

you've just mentioned, no doubt has some value but it's using self-port questionnaires of muscle dysmorphia symptoms. And what tends to happen, right, is you might get 300 college students recruited into a study like that one, and you give them a symptom questionnaire of muscle dysmorphia. And like the average level of muscle dysmorphia symptoms when you look at it is just a bunch of guys who go to the gym and train. It's not the same. It's just not the same. And you can say, oh, okay, but if they score about 20, we're going to say that, you know, it's a clinical cutoff and they've probably got it. Again, it's just not the same. We don't know enough about muscle dysmorphia. You've really got to sit down for some on for 45 minutes to work out of them,

hitting the gym twice a day, six days a week, is just something that they do for fun because they're a bit of a gym rat, or if it's an actual problem. So what's the difference? And I think this is important because what we spoke about early run, this very high number of men

who are dissatisfied with their body in one form or another, but the difference between it being a clinical diagnosis or something that's pathological, and it being what almost any guy who goes to the gym feels like, which is, I wish I'd, you know, I've got this insertion thing on my bicep and I really wish I could get that to be a little bit more. Oh, you know, it's the lats, because if I could get a little bit more width on the lats, I'd feel a little bit more. Oh, you know, it's the lats, because if I could get a little bit more width on the lats, I'd feel a little bit more sort of follow from the back. That self-critical eye that everybody has, which can sometimes, you know, list across intamilicious and even malignant, but not necessarily pathological or clinical, what's

the line between them? No, I feel you. Look, if we were diagnosing my sort of small fear on the basis of anyone who wants to go to the gym and is a little bit critical of their appearance and wants to look better, we'd all have the disorder. We'd all be in therapy right now. But it's not the case that the disorder is characterised to simplify things by two things. The first is preoccupation.

Now, preoccupation in clinical psychology, the very specific term, it's not just, this is the thing, I'm super into a hobby, it's preoccupying. You think about it every single day. It's something that even when you want to stay focused on a conversation with a friend, your mind keeps coming back to it. It might be that you're training, you're dieting. It's something that you just cannot stop thinking about focusing on, planning around, to the point where you start to stress. If you aren't going to be able to eat the food that you need as part of your diet plan, if you won't have control over the food, if you aren't going to be able to eat the food that you need as part of your diet plan, if you won't have control over the food, if you think there's a chance that your training might

be a bit compromised the next day, if you go and do this social plan, you start to make compromises like this. And one of the good red flags that we look out for is, well, in the context of interview, we'd ask this, but your listeners could do it as a self-reflection is to think about how you would feel if you couldn't train for one week. Now, if you don't have a lot of dysmorphia, you might just find that irritating or disappointing. Now, you've got goals, people want to make their goals, folks with a lot of dysmorphia could have done it. So totally fine. But when you have a problem,

that one week that's anxiety. A lot of it might be guilt. Guys might say, you know, I would feel like shit, if I don't have it, if I miss my training, then like the whole day is pretty much wasted. Forget about it. There's shame, there's guilt, there's a lot of very mean body commentary. They might feel like their muscles are shrinking, like they're going backwards and then suddenly, you know, the mean voice in their head is all they can think about until it goes away when they step back in in the gym and get back on lock and things feel okay again. So that sounds like you then potentially flirting with a sort of small fear territory. That was the first one. What's the second one? Oh yeah, thank you for, thank you for keeping me in check. So the second one is in pammet, right?

So generally speaking in cleanse like, if you don you don't have impairment, if you are suffering and your relationships aren't suffering, your work, your study, if your day-to-day functioning is fine, then you don't have a problem. I don't care if you're in the gym six days a week, three hours a day, if you've got a really tightly controlled diet, if the fruit is full of tupperware containers, and that's all that's there, and you bring like little packets of fat-free salad, dressing up to hang with your friends. If you're loving your life and you've got relationships, you're happy with friends, the family, if you can take your

shirt off during sex or at the beach, then you don't have muscle to smolfe. You're just super into the gym. More of the gym than I am. Like, you're just super into the gym when it's fine. But if you're the sort of person for whom life outside of the gym is controlled by the gym and controlled by training and controlled by calorie restriction and diet and macros. That's it. Yeah, then it's not. And what's really tricky in eating disorders and muscle dysmorphia is this thing in clinical psychology called egocintinicity where it feels like it's working for you. The disorder feels like it's a good thing. If you have depression, no

one wakes up with depression and goes, oh, this is so great. I love feeling miserable every day and doing nothing. But when you're in the throes of anorexia, you could be in the hospital with a feeding tube down your nose. But because you're so wrapped up in the need to be thin and to not eat, you can convince yourself and try to convince the others around you. Actually, everything's fine. It's going great. Similar thing can happen in muscle to small fear. Guys' lives can be slowly falling apart.

They can have partners saying, look, this is, it's, it's really intense. Now, like you're getting really intense, maybe they're starting to lose friendships, but hey, it's better than being fat, or it's better than doing drinking and doing drugs on the weekend like everyone else. You can rationalize it as something good for you. And it's only when you look back that you go, oh, damn, I was in deep. I did not see it for as bad as it was. This is one of the most interesting elements, I think, of your work, which is

Muscle Dismorphia is one of the very few mental disorders which has positive reinforcement, and not only positive reinforcement individually, but positive reinforcement socially as well. There are very few things. If you're schizophrenia is getting worse, and you're strolling down the street with your friends talking to yourself or pointing out all of the animals that aren't there. Yeah, there's very few pets on the back. Precisely. Whereas if you rock up, after having spent the last three months monk-modeing it in your house, you've lost your girlfriend,

your testosterone through the floor, your hate yourself, you can't bear to look in the mirror. But you've managed to gain five pounds of muscle and you've lost a couple of percent of body fat. Your friends will go, oh, dude, you're looking... You're fat. You've been training? You look jacked. You look good.

Yeah. And look, it's deeply frustrating for us too, because you could have a young woman with anorexia who, where trying to say, don't do this, don't get this thin, I know that you've got the leafs about what people are attracted to or design, what gets you respect as a young woman, but it's not the bill on end all and when she says to us, but people treat me better as I get smaller, she's not wrong. That's a difficult spot to be. It's a difficult thing to resolve. The guys who must have a small period are just the same.

You know, they've put in all this work to get to a certain size and in some respects, all this work to get to a certain size. And in some respects, their life may have improved. If for them what is important and it often is more desirable, I get more respect, but it isn't sufficient to offset all of the energy that's going in and the crumbling that's happening around? This makes it really hard to do so. It's such a nuanced point to try and get across that the net benefit from this is in the negative overall that when you cross into the, I can't bear to go away on holiday.

Dude, I remember, I remember as a young 20s something guy, I would be, I would go on holiday to places that were within a close radius of the gyms because I knew that I had to train. And if I was going away to Ibiza with the boys, we'd go away to Ibiza maybe twice a year or something each summer. And I'd do a cut. I'd do a hard cut for eight or ten weeks to get that one photo or to look good at the beach club. When I traveled around Thailand when I was 27, 28, this was a little bit more well balanced. I was coming out the

sort of the back of the aesthetic side, but I basically did my entire trip around Thailand moving from Muay Thai gym to Muay Thai gym. That was the foundation of my day. That felt a little bit more holistic because it was the people I was going to hang with and I knew that we had similar goals, but I can see this, you know, move from more pathological to less pathological. I can see that arc in my own life. I can observe it happening to myself. So yeah, thinking about the fact that and it's such an easy trope on the internet right to say, well, look at all of these fat fucks, 60% of America's overweight, 40% of America's obese, what do you want me to do? You just want

me to be one of those low testosterone cucks, just like the rest of the world. You're like, no, no, no, absolutely not. It's not denying the fact that you can take tons and tons of value both yourself and in terms of how you respected your prestige, your ability to show dominance and feel confident and comfortable in the world. And that the world is going to reinforce it and they're going to make you feel better about yourself. But there's a limit, bro. But there's a limit.

I agree. You know, I call it boring solutions to exciting problems because the problem is exciting, right? And in your head, the solution, you know, to find balance and everything and moderation is, it's not very tick-tockable, you know what I mean? And it's hard to grasp, especially when you're young. And stories like the one you're talking about, super, super common.

I think lots of guys, lots of girls have experiences like that and didn't necessarily mean that they have muscle dysmorphia or an eduosalota in the same way that you can be 18 or 19-year-olds and you're getting a blind drunk at some parties. It doesn't mean you're an alcoholic, but you certainly put yourself in a situation where it was a chance that you know higher chance than it is perhaps now when you know like myself You have a two paylals on a Friday and then you're home

so so yeah, yeah, I do feel for young people trying to navigate this. And I don't think that things like social media are very assistive to young people looking for frames of reference. It's pretty tough. If you want a realistic depiction of what other people's bodies look like, Instagram is

not the place to go. I was looking to, I went back through some photos of me from, what's it been, 2018, I think 2017, 2018, and I remember at the time this was after a big injury that I'd had, and I'd dropped tons of condition, and I'd got smaller and lighter, and it was after this year that I'd been in really great condition. I remember thinking at the time, God, I look so shit compared with how I was now. And then I looked dude, I looked at these photos and I fuck you not. I'm like, that is that condition is outrageous, like absolutely outrageous. Striations across my chest, vascularity running out from my delts across onto my chest. And looking back now, I think,

fuck, I wish I could be in that condition. Jesus, I'm like a fat, slow, slavinely mess in comparison with that now. And I'm sure that in 20 years time, I'm gonna look back at the condition that I'm in now and think, what the fuck are you doing? So there is a degree of, I guess, disbelief that we have on varying scales about how we

look and it's persistent. Yeah. And folks are very self-critical in this regard. Like, you see your body in America every single day. You are so much more familiar with it than anyone else, even a long-time partner, right? And your ability to criticize different parts of you and to see imperfections that other people don't see, and then to disbelieve those other people, and they tell you that they don't see it, you don't have a thing to worry about, is pretty impressive, but we do it. We do it all the time. And it's not surprising, I think,

that in studies of what men and women find ideally attractive in the opposite sex with respect to muscularity and body fat, men think that women want bodies that are far more muscular than what they actually want. And women think men want bodies that are far more muscular than what they actually want. And women think men want bodies that are far skinnier. And when they're asked to select proportions of men who they think have a type that is, oh, they want skinny women with big boobs and then for men, tall men with broad shoulders, it's their wildly divergent on that too. All of the nuance that comes in your 20s and 30s when you finally encounter people

who can say, oh, you know, actually I actually kind of like men who are a bit more way fish and a feminine, I don't like the big jacked broads. 20-year-olds kind of love to believe that. But then you realize, oh, it actually is the case. There's a lot more diversity in terms of what people are attracted to. Sure, there's a general trend, but then you cannot base world views on general trends. It's too black and white. Correct. Yeah. There is an average, I think, you know, on average, taller guys will be

more successful in the dating market, on average, guys that have a broader shoulder to waste ratio will be more successful. On average, guys with a dating market. On average, guys that have a broader shoulder to waste ratio will be more successful. On average, guys with a lower voice, on average, guys with a full head of hair. But Jason Statham, fucks. Like he's seeing, is it Rosie Huntington, whatever a face is? That like fucking hyper model from the UK that was in Transformers?

You know, my point being that there are particular markets for pretty much every single niche. And, you know, I don't think I'm not the guy that's going to advise anybody not to go to the gym. I think that for every guy, you know, it's protective. I learned this from Ed Hagen the other week, that it's protecting against depression. That depression, when you control for pretty much everything else, depression seems to be just, it seems to be just It seems to be very highly correlated with physical like fragility the less physically fragile

You are the more robust you are defended mentally against depression through how you show up physically So I'm like, you know go and train your hand grip or whatever it is that it goes on but Yeah, it's it's such a It must be fascinating to try and pass all of this apart because you've got a world which will reward people for being in good condition. That's taken to the extreme, we'll get more reward but we'll begin to cause costs to the individual.

It's like a reverse tragedy of the commons. It's like a tragedy of the individual. So I know that, I think you've, I've heard you say that 20s, the typical avatar for this would be a guy in his 20s or his 30s that is going to the gym and maybe using steroids and doing the blubbler. Why does it start to drop off in 40s? some folks will come and get treatment, but I think another significant contributor and you see this for a number of psychological conditions, including things like social anxiety, it's called spontaneous remission and it's where the disorder kind of resolves on its own and the process of that happening is not dissimilar to how you felt about training and dieting

when you were say 20 compared to now. It's not that you're a fundamentally different person. You've just relaxed in certain areas. You've perhaps diversified your priorities. You probably have a more stable sense of self and self-esteem. that's like internal to you, not external contingent on others. So you would be less likely to have muscle as well if you are, you would be less likely to be socially anxious. It might push you below the threshold for having the disorder anymore. Now you can just be the guy in the gym, who enjoys being there, gets all the physical benefits of exercise, which as you mentioned are numerous and very real. And you want as many people in there enjoying those benefits for what they are as possible.

Are people less satisfied with their bodies now than ever before? Yes. How so has he done? Yeah, it's how he tracked that. There are good general population estimates of body dissatisfaction for men in women and women in several countries. And to take Australia, for example, it's unfortunately the case that far from all of this awareness and advocacy diminishing body dissatisfaction among women, we've just watched the rate of body dissatisfaction for men climb up at a faster rate than women such that at some point in the future we could conceivably achieve parity. So we're not making progress there, it's not unsurprising because I have not felt for one sense that a one second, sorry, that the importance society puts on physical appearance and the broad arbiter that it gets to be of social success and prestige has diminished that that hasn't gone anywhere. So it's no wonder that when people feel

anxieties about being in this social arena that they succumb to it, there's companies everywhere who will cater to your anxieties, influences, who will have those anxieties, whether intentionally or not inflamed, that's tough, so the way. How have representations of men changed over the last few decades? They have become more muscular and that's not just anecdotes, that's from research. We can show that representations of male bodies in a variety of media have become more disproportionate relative to the average male. You can look at things like action figurines where say, looks gook, a Han Solo from the original Star Wars, the action figurines look like normal regular guys, but then for the re-release, they look

jacked. You can see this for Superman, Teenage, and Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman, when you look at magazines, when you look at TV, you see a similar pattern as well. So, in terms of being a young guy growing up and you're thinking, oh, how am I supposed to look? Am I attractive? Am I hot? And you look for a frame of reference. Let's say you see 100 male bodies in your media diet per week, the 100 that you see today in 2023, you come out on the negative end of those comparisons much more than you did 20, 30 years ago. You're not measuring up,

as far as you're concerned in your own head, a lot more than you used to. I heard you talk as well about the switch from Thin Spo to Fit Spo for girls. Yeah. Can you explain that? Yeah, and that sucks. So in the late 90s, early 2000s, Pramanna, Thin Spiration, huge thing on Tumblr and elsewhere, where the goal was to be as thin

and skinny as possible and you'd see lots of motivating images and memes being like, you know, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels, etc. Do you remember thigh gaps? Do you remember thigh gaps, Richrend? Oh, I remember. I mean, they're still there. They come up on TikTok, a reasonably regular cycle of body trends and fidspiration emerged as this quasi healthy balance, right? Where it's like, don't just be a waif, don't be thin and skinny, get healthy and build some muscle, but the bodies that you see in images that are valorizing, right, this fit and healthy lifestyle, you'll have a woman who is very skinny and has a six pack.

And I'm sure you would be familiar, and as many of your listeners probably are, that if you're a woman who wants to both be thin, strong, and have a six pack, it's going to be even harder work than if you're a guy. It's even more impossible to get that body type. And the idea that we've made this gigantic improvement in representation for women's bodies, we've just given them another thing to chase. Very interesting, man.

I see, I've got a number of friends. Lucy Davies is one of them. She's marrying my good friend Ben. And she had eating disorder. And she regularly posts photos of herself, you know, like from when she was at the depths of anorexia and she was super, super thin. And now she's, you know, like she runs

and does all this stuff. And she eats peanut butter sandwiches and has an almond croissant. It doesn't really care so much. But there is an element here where I think a lot of the girls downstream from that, some of the girls downstream from that now have two battles. They're waging a war on two fronts. That it's not just that they're trying to be thin. It's like, I need to be thin, but I also need to be able to be dead left 100 kilos. And that's also tough. So yeah, I, I guess because you're coming at this from a clinical psychiatry perspective, I don't think that anybody would argue that

a woman who is, you know, a probably a healthy BMI who is holding more muscle, who's bone density is improved, who's got a better VO2 max, who's got a better resting heart rate, heart rate variability, all of this stuff. Physiologically, they are probably objectively significantly better than the size zero girl that had diated themselves into the floor. But from a clinical psychiatry perspective, I imagine that there isn't actually all that much difference. They've still ruminating about their body image, still obsessing, trying to dial absolutely everything in,

still probably got terrible, the ruminative thoughts about the way that they look and stuff like that. And I guess this is a difficult line to pass as well. Again, objectively, the world is not only going to say, yeah, you look good and wow, that's healthy. And you know, it's so much better than when you were really, really thin, but where's the drive coming from?

Mentally, how much of that has been fixed? Yeah, exactly. The underlying psychology is still there. And that's part of the reason why we often see in guys with muscle dysmorphia, they've had a history of anorexia, or guys with anorexia, they had a history of muscle dysmorphia, because the underlying psychology is the same, maybe the disorder got really rough, and so they engaged with some medical professionals or talk to people in their life who said,

okay, maybe just try and pull back on this. And instead, they've just, they've shunted it in the other direction because they're still that same person. And they get caught up in it again. We call it, is it the tyranny of progress? Yeah, the tyranny of progress, because all the progress comes up in the narrative of people with muscle dysmorphia constantly. They have to be progressing. They have to be getting better because they didn't use to be how they are now. They were deficient in some or many ways. And now they've finally got to this point where they can be okay with themselves, but they need to get more and you have to be on block with your diet, your training to progress. But it's a tyranny because it's never enough.

You know, a good sign that you don't have muscle to small fear is if you set yourself a goal and you get there and then you're just happy with yourself. Great, you achieved a goal. That's awesome. That won't happen in muscle dysmorphia, or it'll be fleeting. You'll feel good for the day. And the next day it's like, oh, yeah, but I've still got that. I've still got quite a bit of fat around the midsection, don't I?

And then off you are again, on another little goal. What do you think about lifestyle dysmorphia, or personal development dysmorphia, or business success dysmorphia, in the same regard, the tyranny of those different things? Yeah, I've got you. So, look, I think any time you put all of your eggs in my basket and have your self-esteem and sense of self-worth and what makes you feel like you're in control of your life coming from one source, you just make yourself super vulnerable.

That's a fragile psychology, right? And it's no wonder that we have so many terms like, workaholics, for example, none of some of these have let themselves more to clinical psychology and psychiatry in a way of diagnoses than others. Oh, you mean that you haven't managed to come up with some sort of diagnosis, DSM statistical manual for monk mode grind set sigma males? I believe me, I'm trying, is out there trying to diagnose as many as I can

and bring that money in, but no, but I take a broader point, right? Because you are correct that the way clinical psychology and diagnosis are set up, we more readily recognize the pathology that comes from the singular pursuit of somethings, we have preoccupation and less with others. Because workaholics can ruin their lives, but we're not going to see that as a diagnosis anytime soon, I suspect. So interesting, mate. It's like this cyclical dissatisfaction, or this ambient dissatisfaction that happens. I have a goal, I work to the goal, I achieve the goal, I'm dissatisfied.

I set another goal. I presume that this goal is the way it was because I didn't, it wasn't big enough, it wasn't long enough, it wasn't whatever enough. Yeah. And, um, you know, I, I'm really trying to square this circle as somebody who takes an awful lot of value in progress and life in becoming better and growing his impact in improving day by day. improving day by day. And I wonder how much of, I've said this to myself for a very long time, how much of your personal development is papering over the cracks of fundamentally not being happy with the person that you are and feeling that you're not worthy of love and acceptance and praise unless you're making progress. And the reason that progress is able to paper over those cracks is because as long as you're continuing to make progress, it doesn't matter if you're dissatisfied with yourself right now, because the version that you are tomorrow might be the one that you can finally

be satisfied with. Yeah, and you'll find out how much of a problem it is once there is a setback or something that stops you from making progress because if it is an issue that's substantial looking in the background, you won't find a enjoyable at all. So matter of balance, that boring solution to exciting problems, again, where you, I think, achieving and being driven is important for people to feel good about themselves. and is important for people to feel good about themselves. And having a core, inalterable sense of your worth as a person is core as well.

You need both, and both of that just makes for a healthy individual. That's a strong psychology that is resilient against the world and can grow and evolve as a person strives and succeeds. That's a really good point and I think that again, it's a subtle one but an important one to think that for all of the people who are part of the Sigma male grind set mode thing, which I fall into as I had fucking David Goggins on the podcast a couple of months ago, right? Like is the ultimate fucking is If the ultimate discipline grow. Go ahead and speak right.

Correct. You'd be always be grinding. But there is an element, I think, and I would say this to David, if you require this complex framework of daily activities in order to buttress your sense of self, and I don't know whether this is true. I don't know whether if he did take time off how bad he would feel about himself. But if that is the case, how can you say that that's a robust state of mind? The whole goal here, the internet and a lot of the spaces that I inhabit valorize is this kind of like Spartan-esque, very sort of tough guy.

I can deal with the discomfort. I can deal with the fragility. Okay, well deal with an injury for two weeks. Or deal with not being able to go to the gym. You know, like, what happens if you're not allowed to train or follow your diet for two weeks time? How resilient are you then? When there's no enemy to fight, there's no weight to lift, there's no battle to wage. How resilient are you then? When there's no enemy to fight, there's no weight to lift, there's no battle to wage, how resilient are you then? And I think that that's a really interesting and a very uncomfortable

question because most people would say, oh, but that's just like that's a cooked mentality. You don't need to worry about that. Like you just you keep grinding man, like you know, you just work through the difficulty and you go, okay, well, why is it genuinely? and you need to ask yourself this question with a very sort of gentle and open heart, is it because you want to be better, is it because you have a fear of not being enough? And how much is your drive coming from both of these? One of the other things that you did, you worked with Grindr, not personally, well, like professionally you worked with Grindr. What about the Gays? Tell me about the Gays, Scott.

What do we know about the Gays? I've got to, well, first of all, that's the Gays are doing just fine. They do experience higher rates of eating disorders and muscle dysmorphia. And it is in significant part because you've got more appearance pressures in that community. And because of that, if you want to feel like you belong, if you want to feel like you've got the right credentials to be in gay spaces, whether it's my clubs or the famous Māori goas parade here in Sydney, feel like the way you look is pretty significant part of that. So, guys are more susceptible

to my sort of small-parent eating disorder because of that gays game it. Men sometimes objectify the thing that they sexually desire, is that news? I believe so. I believe so. I don't know. I don't know if it'll go international, but it's definitely news where we. Well, there's been for quite a while, I know I have a number of gay friends and it seems to me that gay men are a lot more open around their preferences for what they want, especially physically around their preferences for what they want, especially physically from a partner. I know that sometimes they list things on their dating profiles about what they do

and do not accept and stuff like that. I imagine that plays into this. Yeah, it does. And you can think of the like listing of a laundry list of physical traits that gay men as sexual partners or partners in general in other gay men has one manifestation of that appearance, centric culture. It's something we would point to to say that, you know,

it's physical appearance is more prized in these spaces. And yeah, I think that it makes it very, very tough. And so when we interview gay men about this, they will very quickly tell us of a universally implicit, but often made explicit hierarchy of physical traits in the gay male community, where some are very prized, like being tall, being muscular, being

white whereas others push you further down that hierarchy and a lot of gay men feel comfortable saying, you know, no fat, no fames, that kind of energy. Sorry, I can't wait to steal. Just gay people are so they don't give a fuck. Man, like they don't like there is a large, a large cohort of them who simply don't and I suppose as well, this kind of plays out of the male trend of banter and of digging and of being able to take a jab that a guy on Tinder or Hinge, but no fats, no like masks or something is probably going to come up against some distaste, but in an environment where it's other guys and, you know, no matter how gay and defeminate you have grown up in your childhood, you've been subject to more male banter, and male

banter means that you can take the shit a little bit. And if the shit includes no fats, no fangs, well, you know, like you were, you've been prepping for this entire life. Fucko, like this is part of your culture. And like, the reason we advertise studies on Grindr, so when we advertise on Grindr, we advertise this guy out nationwide, because we don't just want to talk people in our own circle, we want to know what people are actually thinking. And like, we talked so many gay men and the one thing that always happens, they all know that it's a problem. No one is thrilled about this very appearance

of objectification within this gay man. Like it doesn't mean they don't participate in it, whether with some regret or not, that they can all point to it and that they can all very easily say, I don't think it's very helpful. Like it can be a pretty mean and dispiriting place to be as a gay man in a gay male community because of those kinds of attitudes and expectations, but as for solutions, those are harder to come up.

Well, the problem is that we're fighting with human desire here, right? Like we don't have a massive amount of control if any at all over the things that we desire. We can have control over the actions that we take around the things that we do or don't desire. Many people that are listening will have done things physically with people that they

didn't desire that much or maybe didn't really desire at all. And vice versa too. So I think that a challenge that we have here is, you know, we can roll this back into the heteroconversation by saying, well, I can say that because I've got this handlebar mustache at the moment, I'm allowed to bridge the gap across both. What's interesting there is look at the increase in objectification. Am I using the right word there? Would it be objectification? Or like focus on physical appearances?

Yeah, it's not, I don't think it's necessarily rectification, but focus on physical pieces. Okay. That gay men find when they're on these sorts of apps. Now, the reason that straight men don't feel quite the same amount is that the other sex that they're being judged by has a different list of criteria. This is to say, not to say that women don't have a high, a big list of criteria, it's just other things, right? It's you, money, status, et cetera, et cetera, bunch of other traits that you can have. But I do think that, you know, and it's certainly giving me a little bit of pause

to think, okay, if gay men are reporting this very overly emphasized focus on physical appearance, what's it like for women? Because women are in the market of men, right? Yeah. We are the supply to demand problems. Yeah, women having seen for a long time that it's extremely tough to be subject to male desire that so overwhelmingly privileges and positions, physical appearance is the central arbiter. It's a very tough spot to be, and I think hard to reconcile, right? Like you can put all this effort, it seems to you into diversifying the number of things that ought to make you you think a attractive potential partner to someone

But and then to learn that physical appearance Ponsetude's such a significant part of that. I think I think is pretty disempowering and I always try to get young men who And I always try to get young men who are criticizing what they believe to be the unfair physical appearance preferences of women to take stock of the very clear robust research finding that actually women are much more chill on your physical appearance than you are on their on average. Jump show you for a little bit. Yeah, I am, am. And again, the trend on the internet at the moment, especially in a lot of the minus via spaces, is that women's hypergamous nature and the fact that any guy can fly them out to Dubai at the drop of a hat and they're going to be a shake's wife and no other guy can compete with them means that the high probability scenario means that women's selection criteria is out of the window and that all of these normal managers have been able to get

a look in. I don't deny that there's a tall girl problem of hypergamy given that women are overachieving in education and employment comparative with men. I think that there has been a massive retreat of men from the mating market that isn't assisting them. And I also think that men are being accused of not only being the tyrant of everybody else is downfall, but of their own as well. There are very few groups where when they have a problem, we say pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Instead we spend billions of tax pay a funded money to try and create initiatives and charities and startups to title nine was introduced in an effort to do that.

Now, I have harped on for as long as it's possible trying to sing the song of men being forgotten, right? To the point where I've been accused by guardian readers of being a bigot, but because I don't believe that women have it just super easy and that no man is sexually or in terms of appearances over focusing on that, to the detriment of women's mental health, a lot of the time, that also causes me to be like a blue-pilled cook. So I, again, this

misstatshe appropriately, as it straddles my mouth, it straddles both sides of the conversation. as it straddles my mouth, it straddles both sides of the conversation. I really, really think that this discussion, trying to work out or trying to teach people about what each side finds attractive, the differences that you can have and how that's a challenge, is really, really fucking important. One of the common tropes that we're seeing on the internet at the moment, which you must have become familiar with, is height anxiety among men. Yeah, we've put a fair bit of effort into studying this for a while. Tell me, tell me all about it.

Guys are getting fucking femur, extension surgery, they're wearing shoes that increase their height. There's stats coming out of, okay, cupid and Tinder about if you're below five, nine, don't even bother getting on there. What's the current state of mental health and men's height? Okay, it's definitely a prominent anxiety. It is less severe in all respects no matter how you approach it than you might

think. So the number of men who are anxious about their height is less than you think. The number of women who care about height is less than you think. The number of men going out and doing something as drastic as a leg lengthening surgery is less than you think. It's just generally less of a, like, what's the issue on these, like a population exploding issue than it might otherwise seem. but it's definitely the case that for a bunch of men it really sucks and it's understandable why and there are certainly there's certainly a preference among women for taller men out there but that's that's about where it ends because there are preferences for women and men toward all sorts of physical attributes. And another thing worth noting is that it's very easy for people to say that they have a preference.

Like people can say, you know, this is, I'm into this and then you might see them dating someone who's completely different. They're almost surprised by who it is that they ended up being attracted to or with. And that tends to happen quite a lot too. Like, you know, you can say, you might be a young woman who wants to date men, and think, I want a date of full guy, but then you're out. Maybe you meet a five foot nine guy who's really funny, you're like, huh? And then, look, maybe you don't. But someone's already taken what you tweeted saying, I like to all the eyes and being like,

look, they're all like this. And now it's a big flame, what on the internet. How do you pass apart stated and revealed preferences when it comes to this? Because it seems like that's the real challenge here. Yeah. That's tricky. This starts to move away from my expertise admittedly, because we're getting into social science

as opposed to clinical psychology. I think you either have to follow people up in terms of how they've actually dated, which is tricky from a statistical power standpoint a few other things, or you can corroborate it with data from things like okay, cube, et cetera. I don't okay, cube, it's data, blog, and dump often gets trotted out in support of various

arguments in their space. And yeah, there can be a difference between people's stated intentions and their revealed, but again, it tends to be not as drastic as people think as far as I can tell. That's interesting. What about penis size sensitivity? Is this something you've looked at? Yeah, and this one, black, because we've outright looked at how many people are dissatisfied with their height, is it men, straight men, and came in, how diss satisfy the eye with their height, their muscles, their body fat, and their penis. We put it all floor against each other because we wanted an actual answer to this. Pain is the satisfaction. It was right down the bottom. Very few men. We said this stereotype that when guys get worried about how they look, it's just

because they want the addictivey bigger. I think that's like a generation's old trope. I just don't think as many men are worried about that as we might think. By and large, what men worry about is, I wish I didn't have as much body fat on me and which my biceps would be better. Like that's fine. What was the percentages and the order of stuff for those four statements? Can you remember? So you'll have penis-sized dissatisfaction at the bottom. You'll have height dissatisfaction above that, and then you'll have muscularity and body fat sitting quite similarly. And it changes according to age. So for young men, it will be muscle dissatisfaction that's worse than body fat dissatisfaction. I think because a lot of young men, they've

possibly been skinnier growing up anyway. But then as people get older, the battle quote unquote turns to body fat less muscularity. So body fat starts to become the thing that most worried about. And body fat dissatisfaction, muscularity dissatisfaction for young men, almost normative. So in the field, we call it normative in the sense that it's more normal to find someone who says, yeah, I'm not happy with the amount of body fat

on muscularity on me than to say that I'm happy. But when it comes to like, penis size diss the satisfaction, we're talking under one intent. So, nine intent, then we'll say, yeah, I'm fine with the way my penis looks. And height, probably around six, seven intent. Happy with that. High dissatisfaction drops off with age as well. What's the proportion of men who say weight or muscularity? Can you remember? For gay men I think that will be up at 60. For straight men, straight men, first straight men, I can't recall it separable. It's probably around 40, 35 to 40. There's still a massive portion. We're speaking to a huge number. And again, I don't know, man,

there's not a single guy I know. I don't think who, if I asked them, would you like to lose a bit of body fat or would you like a bit more muscularity that wouldn't say yes? I don't know anybody. There's no one listening to this. There's no one listening to this. But there's also no one listening to this that says, dude, if you just go up, do you want an extra like, you know, inch in girth, is not going to go, yeah, why not? You know, like there's room in the garage, like we'll fit, we'll fit it in.

No one's not going to say that. That's, yeah, exactly. But there's a distinction between like, if it was offered to, would you take it? And I am unhappy with this thing. So I agree with you. I think most men if offered something like, you know, would you want an extra inch of high, very

inch of, and so it's almost like, yeah, well, I mean, why not? It's not going to hurt. That's, I think that's the mentality. Whereas a lot of men offered, say, an inch more on their bicep, very inch off their waist. They're like, yeah, because like, I think my arms are skinny. Or I actually do wish that it was fixing it to efficiency. It's dissatisfaction as opposed to like, well, have you gonna offer it then yes. Scott Griffiths, ladies and gentlemen, Scott, I think this stuff is absolutely fascinating.

I love the work that you're doing. I can't wait to see what you do next. What should people go? If they want to keep up to date with the work and the publications and all the rest of it, if you've got somewhere on the internet that you can direct them? Yeah, you can follow me on Twitter, at Scott Long Griffiths. Yeah, and thanks for having me a really thoughtful questions. I appreciate it.

Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah