Toxic Masculinity & Misogyny in Schools: Signs, Impact, and How to Tackle It (with George from MyoMinds)

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Toxic Masculinity & Misogyny in Schools

Speaker 1  0:00 

You, hello everyone, and welcome back to the JenUp Podcast. So, if you’re struggling with an eating disorder and feeling lost, you’ve certainly come to the right place. And so, both myself and Becky Stone are former sufferers of eating disorders, and we understand the challenges that you’re facing. So, join us for inspiring, educational, relatable content, whether you’re seeking support, guidance, or just someone who understands, we are here for you. So, today we’ve got George on the podcast. He is the founder of MyoMinds. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Worcester and a research associate at the University of Exeter. George’s work focuses on men’s experiences of eating, exercise, and body image concerns. Today we’re having him on the podcast, so we’re going to speak about toxic masculinity, and so I’m really excited to have him on. And George and I have done a couple of talks, actually, in schools, where I spoke about my own journey, about my eating disorder and exercise addiction, and George has spoken about his story as well, around muscle dysmorphia and toxic masculinity. So, it’s really great to have you on the show again. Yeah,

Speaker 2  1:10 

thank you. Yeah, I was gonna say I’ve definitely been on before, haven’t I? I remember, I think it was a while ago, though. It’s nice to be here.

Speaker 1  1:18 

Yeah, I can’t remember how long it was, a long time ago now, and you spoke about your story about muscle dysmorphia, so I think it would be good. Obviously, we’re talking about a different topic today, and it’s something that I’ve seen come up a lot in schools. So, and I’ve had questions about it, and we’ve done a talk on it, so I think it’d be really good to help everyone to understand who’s listening to this, just to explain what is actually what is toxic masculinity?

Speaker 2  1:42 

Yeah, absolutely. So, the.. it’s.. I guess I’ll start off with saying it’s a bit of a messy one. I think everyone, when you.. the terms used so often that I think everyone has an idea, roughly, of what it’s meant by it, you know? If you say it, most people recognise what it is, but actually defining it, as you said, I’m a researcher, and one thing that we obsess over is definitions of things, and actually getting a definition of the term is really rare, because so often it’s kind of assumed that you know what you’re taught with, no, you know what it is, even in academic papers, the actual having a route around the first kind of instance I can find of it is from someone called Shepherd Bliss, who I believe was a researcher or a journalist or somebody who he used the term to talk about his dad and his dad’s kind of a militarised and authoritarian kind of esque masculinity, I think he was an ex-serviceman and had this very kind of military focused way of living and acting, and the researcher Shepherd Bliss mentioned that he kind of noticed how it was like poisoning his dad, and also kind of poisoning the people around him. It was having this impact on his relationship with himself, with the people, with his family, and friends, and he described it as toxic in that sense. And also he kind of specified that it was, he used the term toxic specifically because he saw that there was such a thing as an antidote to this, you know. There are there are healthy versions of this. There are there are non-toxic masculinities, and I often I don’t really like the term toxic masculinity. I use it usually because it’s cloak, like it’s the colloquial term, like I said, it’s everyone knows what it means, but I think the one of the problems with the term, in my personal opinion, is especially for a lot of young men, and I do my research with men and young men and speak to people all the time, if you mention the term, there is a, you know, I can’t give an exact number on it, but maybe a 5050 split of them that immediately seem to just turn off or just think, oh, like you’re, you’re kind of somewhere at your labelling me negatively, or whatever it is, and I try, and I try now, and use like toxic forms of masculinity now, just because it’s, we’re saying the same, they both mean the same thing in my, in my mind, but there’s a bit more specificity there, and I think that seems to help me kind of break through that initial barrier sometimes.

Speaker 1  4:28 

Okay, cool. That’s very involved. No, thank you for explaining that to everyone. I think that it’s, you know, it’s.. it’s something that has come up a lot. It’s something that I’m seeing in boys schools as well, obviously, in like things like mixed six forms as well, not just all boys school, boy schools, I mean, for if there’s like a culture of this, so in schools, let’s go sort of deeper into it, like how. Can school sort of tackle this if they’re seeing a rise in this amongst, you know, students?

Speaker 2  5:07 

Yeah. Well, I guess, like, the.. if people are seeing, because I guess I could take it a step further with my definition, in regards to, I think what we’re probably talking about more so in this regard, and maybe what you’re seeing, Jenny, is like misogyny, and perhaps some elements that are often associated with traditional masculinity that seem to have negative impact on boys’ lives, I mean, in regards to like misogyny and some of these traditional masculine values, I think often what a lot of organizations do that try and tackle this is through education, so I think I have a real interest in the like quote unquote manosphere, another term that I think everyone uses, or I use it, but I think also can be a bit reductionist in the sense of it is labelling a very complex, like a load of subgroups, which we maybe we could talk about, which is I think is interesting under one big barrier or under one big label of the quote unquote manosphere, but actually there’s quite a lot of diversity in there that I think a lot of people don’t understand or realise, or that would, I think, is really interesting, but yeah, I think for teachers or people who are like seeing this in students, I think when, when we look on, if you look in like various places, there’s not too much literature on it, but there are bits and pieces online that I read and look at, and the young men I speak to, and men that I speak to in my research, whenever it does kind of delve into this area, I think often the reasoning people give for leaving the quote unquote manosphere or leaving this misogyny is through education, is through speaking to women in their lives, is through learning about patriarchy, and learning about perhaps some of the statistics, and the kind of pseudo-science that a lot of this, like misogynistic areas, these manosphere areas tend to use, so the classic one that people may have heard of, if you’ve watched the adolescents show, is the 8020 rule, which is this idea that that women pick 20% of men, and that means that 80% like the 20 top percent of men, so to speak, and 80% of men aren’t picked, and this this point they get shared quite often. I’ve done a bit of kind of digging into this, and it seems from what it’s hard to kind of connect all the dots, because it gets shared across various different forms, but it seems to come back to dating websites, so like Tinder and Bumble, and these kind of things, who have shared data on how many people swipe left or swipe right based on their gender, and what they report is that men tend to, again, it varies massively, but around men tend to swipe right, or kind of accept 80% of the people that they, they come across, and this is the looking at heterosexuals in particular, and women tend to only swipe right for 20% and what that, the key difference here, that the manosphere, all these kind of misogynistic online spaces that we see, the thing that they miss here, or from from what I can tell anyway is they take that as it’s the women who are swiping are always swiping for the same 20% of men, but actually what seems to be the case instead is women tend to be more picky, basically, which makes total sense with the issues with misogyny in the world and like violence against women, all these kind of things. I would, it makes sense that women might be more picky in that, in that position, when you’re on dating websites and that kind of thing. But the, the manosphere spaces, these misogyny spaces, they use, they use this like quote unquote data, but like read differently to try and back up their ideas and this misogyny, and then, and then basically make this claim that women are very shallow and so focused on these like physical attributes or money attributes or power attributes, and use this to kind of teach young men that women and girls are against them, or that they’ve got this very poor chance of being able to ever speak to them, or that they, you know, all these kind of, and these like misogynistic ideas seem to come from that, but I think, I think, what. Sorry, just to wrap that up. I think, as I’m saying, that this is often based on, like, a lack of fact, lack of factual evidence, and I think, actually, what, what, what teachers and what organizations can do is just through education. People about how you know people are actually very diverse and individual, and you know, as much as there is some, you know, evolutionarily evolutionary psychology around maybe differences in different people, or whatever, which is often what they focus on. Actually, there’s everyone’s nuanced, everyone’s diverse, everyone has different opinions. Just because you happen to be born a woman or a man doesn’t mean you think and feel a very particular way, and having these conversations, sparking these conversations between young boys and young girls, and with teachers, I think can have can go a long way to rectify that, or to kind of undo these, these lies that some people seem to share.

Speaker 3  10:39 

Quite scary, though, isn’t it? How some of the information can get so distorted. I mean, I, I got brought up with four boys, I’m the only girl, so.. but everyone has insecurities, everyone has difference of opinions, and it’s that bit of people like who they like.

Speaker 2  10:57 

No, yeah, absolutely. I think the thing that I think is really interesting about, you know, the kind of like toxic forms of masculinity, the manosphere, this like misogyny stuff that seems to be coming out, is so often what I see is that it begins at the root, or like the kind of the pathways into these spaces for so many young men is based on like relationships, like romantic relationships, and what basically wanting to be attractive to they’re often heterosexual, so often women, or you know, women at the school that they’re at, or whatever it is, and so much of it seems to be based on this idea that they, they think that they’re unable to date girls in their school, or that they’re not attractive enough to date girls in their school, so then they go online to these forums, or they go on whatever, and they, and they, you Google, like, you know, I’m, I think I’m ugly, what can I do, and then they come across, like, you know, incel forums, or they come across pickup artist forums that tell them, like, oh, we can help you get girls, we can help you get women, we can show you how to be more attractive. What you have to do is you need to look after yourself some more, so do some exercise. These things that feel very like small and small steps of, you know, so do some exercise, think about what you’re wearing. Also, women love it if you make all the decisions for them, and also women want to be subservient to you. And also, like, so it starts to pick up and become like also women are lesser, and also women don’t want you, and it becomes this. It seems to be this kind of these small steps, it’s almost like the I forget the name for it, but there’s a, there’s a term for something, window, I can’t remember the term for it now, but it talks about how, like topics in politics or topics in general conversation, you can all it takes is someone to take a slight step out of what’s a social norm, like what’s something you’re able to talk about. So, there’s a certain amount of things that you’re allowed to talk about, and it’s okay to talk about, and somebody will talk about something ever so slightly out of it. And then the window shifts, so you’re allowed to now maybe becomes more normal to talk about those things, and eventually those things happen over and over and over again over a certain amount of time, where the window gets wider and wider, and suddenly think way more things are able to be spoken about, or whatever it is, and that can be seen in positive ways in certain aspects, but also is seen in very negative ways, for I think in this example, where very like misogynistic, like really kind of dangerous and scary, or you know, at least offensive language and thought can feel normal and feel okay, and because, because these young boys take very small steps into it, and then suddenly they’re surrounded by it, and it’s very normal to them, but yes, it’s, yeah, it’s really, it’s really interesting, but also really, really scary, like you say, Becky.

Speaker 1  14:07 

Oh, yeah, I’m just processing that. I’m just thinking, God, what if that cult thing starts, and then that’s quite serious, like, especially grows within the school.

Speaker 2  14:17 

Yeah, well, I mean, the, like, I really don’t want this to be just scary. I think the it is really scary in certain extremes, but a lot of these spaces as well. So the classic one, the one that most people know about, the incels, the involuntary celibates, are the ones that get a lot of attention, but actually a lot of the, a lot of the data on the on in cells shows that they score really poorly on like mental health and mental well-being, and like really high on suicidality, so they’re really like have really, really bad mental health issues. They tend to, they tend to be like higher up on like autism spectrum disorder. They tend to be from minority ethnic groups. They tend to be from like these various different groups that seem to, that you could think in like general society would make them feel or struggle to work in like social situations or feel marginalised, at least, anyway. And actually, Ofcom did a report in 2025 looking at some of the manosphere spaces, and they, in their like introduction title, I read it relatively recently, I’m working on a paper around this. They mentioned that, you know, most of the, although there are some really misogynistic and problematic content on there, most of the content in the forums and the spaces that they looked at actually wasn’t like misogynistic at face, at least at face value. Obviously, there’s there could be like, you know, slang or whatever that they’re not picking up on, but I think the thing that I find so fascinating about this, and I think, where sometimes we get it wrong because we panic, and we see the really scary side, and then we think this is, you know, we’re scared of it, so we want to just say, don’t, don’t engage in that at all, but I think in a lot of the cases it seems to be it’s young boys feeling like marginalised, feeling ostracised for whatever reason for their personal experiences, and then going online and finding these spaces, and then there are these like, I guess, like perhaps a smaller proportion of people in these spaces who have these really horrible thoughts, and they’re not called out, that’s the problem, I guess, and then people might start to kind of pick up bits and pieces of that, yeah, but it is, is, it is fascinating, but yeah, just, just to say, like, I guess I wanted to add that caveat, because you know, if you are someone who, whose son or daughter, or anyone, or you know, people in your life, are on these forums, or you know, I don’t want you to immediately think that they are this like extremist, you know, there are there are certain levels within that, and there are certain people who, who seem to just feel like it’s their only form of social connection is within these groups, and and I think that, yeah, there can be some kind of gentle handling of that, potentially, that isn’t just like a, you know, I think you’re definitely a misogynist because you’re on this website or whatever, I think there are, yeah, there are stages to that,

Speaker 3  17:32 

it’s also opening up communication within your family, isn’t it? I think being able to talk and take away some of the judgment and the shame of being able to open out the light and be in normalised conversations, and that in it opens up space to have education.

Speaker 2  17:48 

Absolutely, yeah, I think it’s obviously a really like difficult topic, and a really like, you know, emotional topic, because it’s so. there’s so much extremism in it, you know. There’s so, there’s so much really like difficult and horrible language and events that happen, and you know, the violence against women and girls that kind of comes from some of these spaces and comes from some of these ideas, at least, anyway, is obviously really dangerous, and I think that scares people off from even having the conversation with boys about it, but I think, like I said, I think there are a lot of boys that even, even are in those spaces that don’t, that aren’t at that level or aren’t at that extreme level, they just like, they like the idea that maybe this will make them better at dating, or they like the idea that maybe this is a way of boosting their self-worth and feeling good about themselves. There’s an interesting report from the company Equamondo, in it was in the, it was in the US specifically, but they, they asked people, they called it the man box rather than the manosphere, but similar idea, and they did a survey with people in the man box, or engaging in man box stuff, and people who aren’t, and they found that when they asked them to, on a scale of like one to 10, or whatever it was, that the amount of purpose they felt in their life, the young men in the man box scored a higher sense of self, sense of purpose in their life, compared to men who weren’t, so it kind of speaks to me, this idea of, you know, some, so again, it’s not, and this is not to, you know, to say that it’s okay that they’re doing these misogynistic things, but it’s just, I guess, just to say that I think there is that there are some in those spaces that aren’t quite at that level, maybe some who are that even just saying to them and educating them around, you have purpose outside of this, you don’t need to be doing these things, you can find purpose through other means, and I think you have. Purpose, just being you, and just being, you know, whatever, whoever you are, I think is, I think there’s probably, there’s like, yeah, there’s potentially something there with that, and even just, you know, talking about in the talk that me and Jenny do, I talk about, you know, I think one of the things that often gets brought up in the conversations about this is this idea that we’re saying that masculinity is toxic and by definition is toxic, but it isn’t. There are there are really healthy versions of it. There’s a really big meta analyses that came out a few years ago now, but they looked at a bunch of studies that looked at the kind of relationship between adhering to like traditional masculine norms, which tend to be seen as more like toxic key, and the impact it has on people’s mental health, and they found that specifically there were three elements of these traditional masculine norms that seem to have a negative association with help-seeking outcomes, and the three were self reliance, so that’s the idea that as a man, or as this like traditionally masculine man, you have to handle stuff yourself, and you’re not allowed to ask for help if anyone else, if anyone else helps you, that’s a making you less masculine. Second one is power over women, so this idea that as a man you should dominate and be be more powerful than women, you should be able to control the women in your life, in whatever way that is, obviously very problematic, and also has negative health mental health outcomes. I think, I think understandably so, even just from the sense that I imagine most women in your life won’t want to talk to you anymore, or won’t you, won’t be, won’t respond very nicely to that, and hopefully a bunch of men in your life also won’t, so that’s going to impact your mental health, and social health is another element of it. And then the third one is Playboy, which is the idea that, as the more masculine man should be able to date multiple people at the same time, and that makes you more masculine, and those three, each of those three elements are like the ones that seem to be negatively associated with mental health outcomes across various studies, but there are other elements of masculinity, you know, there’s one of the ones in there that didn’t seem to impact negative mental health, although obviously the study isn’t foolproof, but breadwinning didn’t, so the idea that as a man you want to be able to earn money and support people in your life, it wasn’t necessarily that the other person in your life or your partner or whatever isn’t allowed to, it’s just the idea that you should be able to, or you could be able to, that didn’t necessarily negatively impact people, there’s the ideas of toughness and determination, again, this isn’t to say that these things are inherently fine, then, but I think I think what, what the thing that I notice in many of the ones that don’t seem to correlate, at least with the things like toughness and determination and breadwinning and even risk taking and these kind of things, is I think there’s I think if a lot of these can be used flexibly, in the sense of it’s good to be tough sometimes, it’s good to be determined sometimes, it’s good to be risk taking sometimes, you know, there are out there are times and places where those are really useful and helpful, and I think that’s where the line between some of these like masculine ideals that people can align with and have a negative impact on them. I think that’s where the line between it being toxic and not, I think, tends to sit. At least, in my opinion, I think it seems more.. it’s okay, even with stuff like, you know, even with the self-reliance thing, I think sometimes it’s okay to be sometimes you’re in a situation where you do just need to get it done, or you do just need to push through, you do just need to, but that doesn’t mean that, should, that doesn’t, first of all, doesn’t define your identity, and second of all, shouldn’t be put on every situation in every, every space and time, yeah,

Speaker 1  24:02 

so a lot of this is what you said. I’m thinking, like, this is identity, this is self-esteem, like purpose, what you’re linking it to, just like everything what you just said. And you know, I think that I think that’s something that a lot of young people are struggling with nowadays.

Speaker 2  24:19 

Absolutely, and as I said, I think so much of it, you know, this is a Eden sort of podcast, and just to bring it round to that, something that I find really interesting, and I think speaks to this identity thing that you’re talking about, is a lot of the, a lot of the manosphere spaces, so the, if we think in particular, like if we just take the incels and Lux Maxes, which is another subculture, which I’ll talk about in a second. A lot of them revolve around appearance, and that a lot of them are focused on appearance and seem to push quite eating disorder slash body dysmorphic disorder behaviours and. Yeah, in the sense that, so the the incels are basically they have this, this thing, this ideology that they call the black pill. So, in the manosphere, they talk about red pill, and red pill is this idea of it’s that it’s a, they’re linking it to the Matrix movie, where the main character, Neo, can either take a red pill or a blue pill, and if he takes the red pill, he gets to wake up to the reality of what’s going on in this film, and they basically say that taking the red pill is like joining the manosphere and being woken up to the realities that of like the sexual marketplace and like the difference between genders and sexes and these kind of things, which I won’t go into now, but part of it talks about this, this concept of sexual market value, which is that everyone can be kind of ranked or given a kind of like monetary value to how how they perform in the sexual marketplace. I’m using inverted commas a lot here, for people listening. It’s this idea that that your appearance, your power, and your finances make you more valuable as a man, in particular. So, if you, if you’re a powerful person, so like a high opening organization, if you have lots of money, and if you look a certain way, and, and if you can boost these things, you can grow up the sexual market value, and you can become more powerful and better, and do better, and whatever. And then you’re better, you’re a better man, basically. I’m reducing this a bit, but that’s in a nutshell. And the black pill, which is the incels, they basically believe that your sexual market value, to some degree, is set, that you’re born a certain way, and there’s nothing you can do about it, and some people are just born like invaluable, so like you just, you are, you are born so ugly, or so, like feeble, or there’s something so wrong with you that there is no way you can ever have a sexual or romantic relationship with anyone, because no one would ever want you, and those people are the incels, so the incel community basically, that they’re self-identifying as, as the involuntary celibate, that they are physically, because they are so they think they’re so like repulsive to people, to so to speak, that they could never ever be able to speak to a woman or have a relationship with a woman ever, because there’s something wrong with them fundamentally, that’s really sad, like that, that’s the to me, that you know, that’s a real like problem, and that speaks to me of like a level of body dysmorphic disorder, or like a body image issue, or there’s there’s something there in the sense of that, like it’s mad to me that we don’t, we haven’t spoke about this in regards to like that, a lot of the research hasn’t really touched on this, and then the Lux Maxes, which I’ll be quick, because I know we’re already going to get in close on time, but the Lux Maxes of this community that are all about like maximising your appearance as a man, and this idea of like kind of boosting your sexual market value through appearance as much as possible, and they’re the ones that push these concepts that parents or teachers may have heard, you guys may have heard of, of like mewing, which is the thing where I won’t give too much instructions, but it’s basically an idea that you push your tongue into the hard palate at the top of your mouth, and it’s supposed to clench certain muscles in your jaw that over time will give you a more pronounced jaw. They also push a lot of, like, cosmetic surgery – that’s one of the more harmless ones. It is kind of funny, like I don’t want to say it’s funny, because for some people it means it’s really meaningful, like it becomes like problem, like a problem, like something they’re depending on, or feeling like they need to do, in the same way that you might see someone compulsively exercising, I imagine there are people compulsively mewing and feeling like they have to do it, you know, it could be a problem, I think we need more research on this to know for sure, but I think it’s interesting. Then there’s there’s a lot of pushing of like cosmetic surgeries, so a lot of stuff around like leg lengthening, so like height is something they think is really important, you know, getting like nose surgery, facial surgeries, whatever. And then the third one, which I saved to last, because I think the name is the most shocking or jarring, is called Bone Smashing, which the name, it kind of says it on the tin, which is literally they on these forums they instruct young boys to hit themselves in the face with a hammer or some other hard implement on their orbital bones, so like your cheekbones and their jaw, and the idea is you hit it over and over again, like kind of lightly, to cause micro breaks in your bone, so then the bone grows back in order to be more pronounced, so give you more pronounced cheekbones, more pronounced jaw bones. Yes, and just to say that these Lux Maxim forums, one of the biggest Lux Maxim forums that’s out there, gets over 6 million unique hits every month. So, there are over 6 million different people accessing these forums every single month, and the forums are filled with people like young boys or young men posting pictures of themselves, and then people critiquing the way they look and saying, you know, your orbital bones are like two centimetres out from your jaw, your, your two, you know, your six inches too short, so you need to do bone smashing three times a day, you need to do some leg lengthening, you need to get leg length in surgery, so you need to find a way to make money for that, and so you can afford that, you need to do x, y, and z, like, and you’re pushing these really like drastic, risky behaviours onto young boys and men, and they’re doing it, like it’s really, yeah,

Speaker 1  30:52 

and when I just got 6 million users, what per

Speaker 2  30:57 

per month, 6 million unique, unique users on those forums per month,

Speaker 1  31:02 

not just UK or worldwide.

Speaker 2  31:04 

I think it’s a worldwide forum. I think it’s, it seems to mostly be like US, UK, like Western, Western world on those forums. But

Speaker 1  31:14 

what’s the age group, but rough age group of those people?

Speaker 2  31:17 

I’m not aware of any data on that? I think, like, manosphere spaces tend to be like younger generations, so, like, Gen Z, yeah, but I think I imagine there’s a mix to some degree, but I think it’s people who are chronically online often, so it tends to be younger generations. Okay,

Speaker 1  31:38 

that’s mentally.

Speaker 3  31:41 

No, I didn’t know. I’m sitting here, and I’m gobsmacked, and I can talk for Britain, and I don’t quite know what to say. It’s like that is scary stuff.

Speaker 2  31:49 

Yeah, absolutely. And this is where I think it’s really important that kind of one of the reasons why I, at the bat, I’d mentioned that, you know, these kind of the term manosphere, I think, is a bit reductive in the sense that it contains people like Andrew Tate, who are like disgusting, horrible people who are trying to hurt people and control people, but then it also controls these people who are hitting themselves in the face with hammers because they think it’ll, it’s the only way they can get a girlfriend, or they can be loved or cared about, you know. There was a data point recently, I might be butchering this slightly, so someone listening might be able to fix this, but there was a report that came out, and it was something like what it was, either one in five or one in four young men reported, and that they felt that they would never be loved, that like no one could ever love them, which is so like that’s heartbreaking, like I’m getting emotional even saying it, but and I think I think it’s these young, these young men, these young boys, and that maybe turn into these spaces, not always, and sometimes it’s going to be people with other opinions and other things, but I think it’s a real, like, gap that would no one’s talking about, or no one’s considering that this could be like a body image problem, like this could be a night. There are elements of like disordered eating in there as well, of you know, there’s a lot of like muscularity-orientated stuff in there, and that you need to be really physically like muscular, very lean, and that you know, and they kind of talk about that in regards to being able to fight, and how that’s going to make you look more attractive, and that kind of thing as well. So there are elements of disordered eating in there, and disordered exercise, and but it really just speaks so much to this like body image concern to me. Anyway, it seems so obvious, and I think that I think that’s a kind of another reason, and like I said, I’m hoping to do some research on this moving forwards to kind of make this more of a science-backed thing, because there’s barely any research on it. This is more just my like readings, and my like, I have – I’m an expert in men’s eating, exercise, body image concerns, and I’m really interested in this masculinity and manosphere stuff, but I’m by no means an expert, but I think we need some like data on this, or some real kind of like research on this to be able to say for certain, but I think an angle to this, talking about like how can schools reduce this, I wonder if working on young boys’ body image and young boys’ relationship with how their body and their face, and you know how they appear, could stop some of this, or could let you know at least stop people from initially engaging with it, because I think that’s often what seems to be the spark,

Speaker 3  34:35 

boosting up confidence and self-worth, and taking away the judgment and the shame, and putting things into everything doesn’t have to be perfect, and being able to really work on that, and also work on their values and their morals, things like all of these little underpinnings, so people know who they are, so that they’re not trying to find answers because they’re vulnerable, because they’re, and also very impressionable, where. Their brains are developing

Speaker 2  35:02 

absolutely, absolutely, yeah. I think so. So many of the kind of concerns around soil eating, body image, exercise issues, so much of it seems to come down to these like identity concerns. I think I think it’s biopsychosocial, so to say, I think there are, there are like biological elements, you know, people can, there’s, there’s links with things like hyper mobility and stuff for people to be more likely to have eaten disorders, those kind of things, then there’s like the, but I think I think there are these like psychos, psychological and social elements around identity, around people not liking me, not loving me, not caring about me, and having to prove myself in some way. You want one of the one of the most common correlations between men and young men’s and men’s in general drive for muscle, so how badly they want to be muscular is masculine discrepancy. So how, how much they think they are below the marker for how masculine they’re supposed to be, so if they, so that basically, if they think they’re 10 points below masculine, the masculinity they’re supposed to be, then they tend to be around 10 points more, you know, the wanting to be more muscular, that making up those numbers, but you know, you just to paint a picture, and I think so much of that comes down to identity as young men who feel like they’re not man enough or masculine enough or this identity that they feel like they’re supposed to be as someone who’s identifying as a man they desperately cling to things like muscle building and perhaps lux maxing and these kind of things, and maybe manosphere spaces as a way to find a sense of feeling worthy, or feeling masculine, or feeling something. So, I think, yeah, on picking that, and as Becky said, you know, working on that self-confidence of self-worth, that kind of stuff. I think that can, that can go a long way.

Speaker 1  36:58 

Yeah, I mean, that’s thank you so much for sharing all of that. I’ve learned so much, like I’m just gonna take it all in. I’m so surprised about that online forum. I’m just sorry, I’m gobsmacked by that. I didn’t even know that. So, yeah, I mean, just to finish things off, like, if anyone you know is struggling with this, that a young person, you know, where can they go for a bit of, you know, support with this,

Speaker 2  37:23 

yeah. So I think there are several charities that I’d turn you to, you know, if you’re, if you’re struggling with various things. I think if you’re struggling with the kind of behaviours that we’ve been talking about, I think places like the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation, they do like spaces where you can talk about it, they have therapists, that kind of stuff. Charity-wise, I have a special place in my heart for a charity called First Steps Ed that do eat and sort of charity work. They do like eat and sort of care groups. They have a men’s only group, I believe, that at least they did relatively recently. There’s also Beat and various organizations, I think, if, if it’s like general mental health concerns and stuff, though. I always turn to, like, your general helplines in regards to, like, Samaritans. I think Shout are also really great, especially for younger people. Shout is the text service. If you just Google “shout” like mental health helpline, or whatever, it will, you’ll, you’ll see it, but yeah, I think there are lots of organizations out there that can help, and yeah, just I would say, if you, if you’re listening and you’re struggling, I think even if, even if you don’t have a positive experience with them at first, or they don’t know quite what to do, or whatever it is, because a lot of these concerns, like I said, there’s very little research on it, I would just really like, I would really really kind of push you to just keep trying, like, so eventually you’ll find someone in these organizations, or you’ll find an organization that will listen and will will be there for you, and yeah, just keep going at it.

Speaker 4  38:57 

We need to make another resource on it, or did we mention about toxic masculinity, and then massive small for your arm.

Speaker 2  39:03 

I don’t think we did. No, I think we need to. Then maybe we should do something.

Speaker 1  39:06 

Not a razor,

Speaker 2  39:08 

I need to do this research first. I’m hoping if anyone’s out there has links with getting academic funding, or just happens to be a millionaire or something, and wants to give you some money to do this research, I would be, yeah, very keen. Similar, if there’s organizations out there that are interested in this kind of thing, that think they have funding, or you know, that are interested in being involved. I think there’s some,

Speaker 1  39:32 

yeah,

Speaker 4  39:32 

there’s

Speaker 2  39:33 

a lot of work that needs to be done there.

Speaker 1  39:35 

I’ll definitely keep an eye on the funding front for you. I might have one that I’ve come across actually recently that can send you, actually, no, you said that, so I’ll send it to you.

Speaker 2  39:41 

That’d be great. Thank you.

Speaker 1  39:43 

Thanks so much for coming on. It’s been amazing to have you on. And Becky’s gonna finish off the podcast now.

Speaker 3  39:53 

Thank you so much for listening to JenUp Podcast. Please subscribe and share this podcast, so others can benefit. You can find us. On Facebook and Instagram at Ask Jen Up, and on Jenny’s website at www.jenup.com If you visit the website, you’ll find lots of different resources available there. Please like, subscribe, and share.

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Jenny Tomei is a Nutritional Therapist and Eating Disorder coach. See all her credentials on her About Jen page and then should you need help then make contact with her today. Your road to recovery can start now!