Toxic Masculinity in Nutrition: Targets of Diet Culture, Body Standards, and Stereotypes

By Gage Gruett

“Why are you so skinny?” A flippant remark usually made by a male authority figure in a young man’s life seems to be nothing more than just that: an insignificant remark. However, I would like to discuss a fictional boy named Timmy–an impressionable thirteen-year-old growing up in a suburban town near Durango, Colorado. Upon hearing his father’s remark on his body, he finds himself binging on unhealthy foods in the cafeteria to break away from his father’s description. Of course, his friends see these actions and attempt to intervene, but Timmy accounts for this by hanging around them less and eating in private. Eventually, Timmy successfully gains weight, yet his father’s maladaptive comments have now shifted to “You really should hit the gym, you know?” Crystallizing this positive feedback loop, Timmy now begins to hyper-obsess and fixate on counting his calories, going to the gym after every meal, and comparing himself to every other guy at his school–an unhealthy eating disorder more recently coined with the term orthorexia nervosa that proposes itself under the guise of routine and health and will be elaborated upon in this issue (Koven & Abry, 2015, p. 386). Now, let’s modify the previous vignette by telling you that Timmy actually never had a father, but rather, simply a nagging internal voice derivative of the systemic toxic masculinity, bravery, and strength expectations imposed upon men.