Eating disorders plague males, too

Some experts say boys are starting to face the pressures long placed on girls, as buff, bare men proliferate in pop culture. Boys today watch Channing Tatum strip as “Magic Mike” or weigh themselves against the muscular Dwayne Johnson. The nonstop chatter of Twitter and Facebook has amplified those messages, therapists say.

“Boys are growing up now with the billboard of the guy with perfect pecs and biceps,” said Roberto Olivardia, a clinical instructor in the Harvard Medical School psychiatry department. “You just didn’t see that years ago.”

Steroid use

Teenage boys say abs are prized and ogled. Andrew Shrout, a 19-year-old junior at the University of California-Berkeley, said boys felt they needed to be very lean at his former high school in Long Beach, Calif. “Men are pressured to have as little fat as possible — but you’ve got to pretend like you don’t watch what you eat,” Shrout said.

He decided to lose weight for his health but also because another guy on the water polo team used to grab his stomach and jiggle it. “I can see why a lot of younger kids get sucked into a vortex and end up doing bad things,” Shrout said.

Steroid use is also on the rise among Los Angeles teen boys, the survey found, with roughly one out of 20 saying they have used steroids — only a slightly smaller percentage than those who had recently turned to diet pills, powders or liquids.

Sports can pile on more pressure. Wrestlers, for instance, often aim to lose enough weight to grapple with lighter opponents. For some competitors, throwing up or downing laxatives can be a gateway to a disorder that lasts beyond the sporting event, said Dawn Theodore, clinical director of the Eating Disorder Center of California in Brentwood.

Los Angeles isn’t the only city where boys have been increasingly likely to purge or turn to diet substances, with higher-than-average rates also seen in Chicago, Houston, Charlotte, N.C., and elsewhere. Government estimates show that the number of males hospitalized for eating disorders rose 53 percent between 1999 and 2009. Some experts say they are unsure whether more boys and men are in fact suffering such disorders or whether more are now willing to seek help.

Gender divide

Females remain much more likely to be hospitalized for eating disorders than boys and men, who made up 12 percent of such hospital stays as of four years ago, the government estimates show. However, researchers say that because men fear coming forward, the rates among males might be higher than the numbers suggest.

When they finally get help, the boys’ cases “tend to be especially severe,” said clinical psychologist Jennifer Henretty, who directs intensive outpatient programs at the Center for Discovery, a national system of eating disorder programs. “People don’t look until it’s really out of hand.”

Experts say part of the problem is that traditional methods of detecting disorders were made with girls and women in mind.

Benjamin O’Keefe, 18, remembers Googling the word “anorexia” and finding a website that said it halts menstruation. “There was nothing targeted at me,” said O’Keefe, who struggled with the disorder in high school in Florida.

He exercised constantly and sometimes ate only a cheese sandwich for days at a time. He suffered massive headaches, slept incessantly and fainted onstage while rehearsing for a play.

While he weakened, “people were saying, ‘Wow, you look great,'” O’Keefe remembered.

He began talking about his past struggle with anorexia upon launching a petition earlier this year urging Abercrombie & Fitch — known for its shirtless models — to carry larger sizes.