regularly being an exercise enthusiast even if youre serious about it is part of an extremely healthy lifestyle the problems start when you find a towering hulk in the mirror and yet sulk away in fear of not being big enough thats when life becomes consumed with delusions of massive muscularity and their tragic fallout experts estimate that as many as ten per cent of the men at any hardcore gym may have bigorexia ranging from mild to crippling this does not include men who are said to be generally dissatisfied with their body imagea surprising number of men even into late middle age and beyond feel deep in their bodies that they have somehow missed out on manhood writes peter clothier reviewing houdini tarzan and the perfect man for the los angeles times we look around us at the empty cultural stereotypes to which we believe we are expected to conform and suffer from the knowledge that all too often we dont but there is a deeper level too he continues since childhood we have looked surreptitiously at other male bodies and compared them with critical subjectivity to our own most frequently to our detriment those others are taller more commanding in their presence have more muscular arms or abdomens and so on not to mention of course the dreaded question of the penissurely the most endlessly fascinating and most vulnerable of our bodily features not surprisingly the mass media and its preoccupation with ideal male imagery ranging from action toys to playgirl pinups seems to play a significant role in these outbreaks of muscle maniawe shall examine this next week the newly identified psychiatric syndrome is supposed to give a bodybuilder the perception of being a 98pound weakling no matter how big or beautifully sculpted he or she is