53.

Muscle Dysmorphic Disorder (known as Bigorexia)

It’s a messy name, nonsensical. A Latin-English mutt. Nineteen ninety-seven, coincidentally, is the first year it was coined. But people, some of them very specifc people, have exhibited symptoms of this disorder since the early 1980s.

Think of it as reverse anorexia. Anorexia strikes the women, bigorexia is for the fellas. Anorexics can never be skinny enough; bigorexics can never be big enough.

Not fat, mind you. Muscle. This is a stud’s disease. These guys scope themselves every time they pass a reflective surface. Mirrors and windows, obviously. Also car bumpers. Mud puddles. Dead television screens. Black patent leather shoes and tinted sunglasses. Fifty, sixty times a day, they gawk at their maleness. Always scoping their sizes. Flexing as they appraise. A calf here. A tricep there. Gluteals. Pecs. Always mentally measuring themselves against other dudes, and yes, even other women—and always coming up short.

Bigorexics are trapped in a world of incurable puniness. Their own. (Despite what they insist to the contrary.)

Like anorexics, every day is a quest for the perfect body. They’ll do anything and everything to reach the unattainable goal of looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the opening scene of Commando (except better, dude!). They’ll skip their sister’s choir per -formance. They’ll bully their sister into doing their chores and homework. They’ll feign illness and stay home from school so they can eat raw eggs and squat a couple hundred thrusts. On the job, they’ll call in sick or late, trying to squeeze in one more workout. Or else they’ll get to the job on time but be written up for bench-pressing bags of kitty litter in aisle eleven.

They’ll monitor every meal. They’ll never eat at a friend’s house. Eating at a restaurant by choice is rare. They’ll dine at home only. That’s where they can control what goes into the food. They’ll want to see it being prepared. They’ll count the calories. They’ll get furious, red in the face and spraying flecks of spittle, when a sufficient carbohydrate isn’t represented on the dinner table. They’ll order Mom to micro wave a plate of frozen Ore-Ida’s. RIGHT NOW.

They’ll step on a scale eight times a day. They’ll put a moratorium on masturbation because it expends energy that might be saved for “feeling the burn.” They’ll eliminate excess sleep, surviving on five or six hours to allow more time for free weights. They’ll jump out of bed in the middle of the night to do pushups and jumping jacks. They won’t care if it wakes up the girl on the other side of the curtain.

The exercise will be an end unto itself. It will be about the Way rather than the Goal. But they won’t know this; they’ll still believe in the Goal.

The Goal, in fact, doesn’t exist.

And because they’re doomed to feel inadequate, they’ll be inadequate.

With every blink, every gulp of milk, every lathering of shaving foam, they’ll know the crush of emptiness, the misery of unfulfillment.

And you’ll try your best not to laugh.