Muscle Dysmorphia (Bigorexia)
Muscle dysmorphia is a psychological condition characterised by an obsessive preoccupation with being insufficiently muscular. Clinically classified as a form of body dysmorphic disorder, it shares the same underlying engine as anorexia: a relationship with the body that no physical change can satisfy.
The same preoccupation, a different expression
“For men I have never seen a lot of anorexia. What I see is bigorexia, men who have the same preoccupation as women: they want to be lean, they don’t want fat, but instead of being very skinny they want to become very big.”
Philippe Jacquet Where anorexia pursues thinness, muscle dysmorphia pursues size and leanness. The physical goal is opposite. The psychological structure is identical: a body that is never enough.
Why it is underdiagnosed
Training extensively, controlling diet rigorously, pursuing a lean and muscular physique, in most contemporary Western cultures, this is admired. The disorder hides in plain sight. By the time it presents clinically, it has often been present for years.
The eating disorder men present with
Eating disorders in men are systematically under-recognised. Muscle dysmorphia requires the same clinical attention, and the same compassionate, non-shaming approach, as any other eating disorder.
Book a consultation with Philippe Jacquet, psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, London.
Further reading: Male eating disorders, why men don’t seek help
Anorexia inverted
In twenty-five years of practice focused on eating disorders, I have seen genuine male anorexia only rarely. What I see constantly is muscle dysmorphia. And it is the same mind as anorexia: the same fear of fat, the same pursuit of a “pure” body in which only lean muscle may show. Anorexia wants to disappear; muscle dysmorphia wants to gain mass and harden, but the mechanism is identical.
The gym, or the church of self-hatred
Thirty years ago the gym did not exist as it does now: you trained as a complement to a real sport, for football or karate. The gym has become an end in itself, and often a kind of church of self-hatred. You do not see the joy of play there: people watch themselves in the mirror, and a face falls when someone more sculpted walks in. The body is built for the gaze and judgement of other men, in a comparison between men, far more than for the preference of women, who most often lean toward a lean body rather than an enormous mass.
A powerful body as a bid for power
There is something here of the energy I call the Kronos energy, the devouring father-energy I describe in my work on the father-son bond: a powerful, heavily-muscled body is a way of making power visible. And this bid for power takes different forms in different milieus: strength and the body here, knowledge and education there, network, relationships and financial mastery elsewhere. It is the same energy, simply seeking whatever currency of power is within reach. Read this way, muscle dysmorphia is not vanity: it is a bid for power in the only currency available.
For the male-specific picture, see bigorexia at Men Who Heal, Dr Jacquet’s practice dedicated to men’s eating disorders.
The cultural side of this, the cult of youth and the industries behind it, is the subject of Dr Jacquet’s essay The Church of Self-Hatred.