Boys and body image: ‘They just don’t talk about it. But it doesn’t mean they’re not feeling these concerns’

Bombarded with images of muscled and toned bodies, boys grow up with distorted notions of the male bodily ideal, often leading to eating disorders. Professor and author Charlotte Markey explains what we can do to help boys challenge this image

Boys often think a broad muscled body is the ideal. Picture posed

Tanya Sweeney

As a professor of psychology and Director of the Health Sciences Centre at Rutgers University in the US, Charlotte Markey has become one of the world’s foremost experts on body image and health. As part of her pioneering research in the field, Markey has been talking to teenagers for over 25 years about how they feel about their bodies.

And yet, she began to realise that when it comes to body image, the conversation has effectively passed by young men for generations.