After watching the movie Troy and seeing the 40 pounds of sculpted and toned muscle Brad Pitt gained for his role, Chris Brown and his roommates went home and looked up the workout routine Pitt followed while preparing for the movie.

It was aesthetic results like those seen on the big screen — looking stronger and more toned — that were the primary motivators for Brown, Oberlin senior, a few years ago when he began to exercise and lift weights on a routine and regimented schedule.

Today, Brown’s commitment to his strict strength and weight training routine is motivated by ambitions of a future career in law enforcement. But he remembers that a few years ago his only goal was to “look big.”

Trying to reach those results, images of the “ideal” body image projected by the media that Brown now realizes are nearly impossible to duplicate, often became immensely frustrating, he says.

When men are exposed to images of muscular or overly toned bodies, they become depressed and dissatisfied with their own appearance, says Stacy Tantleff Dunn, director of the Laboratory for the Study of Eating, Appearance and Health at the University of Central Florida. In 2004, Dunn began one of the first studies that eventually showed that men, as well as women, were vulnerable to concerns about appearance.

The study, titled “The Impact of Media Exposure on Males’ Body Image” and published in a 2004 edition of The Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, divided a random sample of male undergraduate students into one experimental group that watched a 30-minute television show with exclusively appearance-related commercials containing ideal male images. The control group watched the same television program but saw only nonappearance-related or neutral commercials.

The participants were polled before and after the experiment in regard to their general feelings of anxiety, depression, body image and satisfaction with their overall appearance. The study showed that men who had been exposed to the appearance-related commercials became significantly more depressed and more likely to report high levels of muscle dissatisfaction.

The dissatisfaction men feel about their bodies after being exposed to ideal body images projected through the media can force men to practice unhealthy ways of attaining and duplicating these results, such as extreme dieting, dangerous workout routines and steroid use, Dunn says.

Media projections of muscular images led Chris Barlett, a graduate teaching assistant at K-State, to research whether handling action figures with exaggerated and extreme muscles would lead male participants to feel worse about their own bodies and, if it did, why it was happening.

In his study, published in Sex Roles: A Journal of Research in December 2005, randomly assigned groups of college-aged men handled action figures with varying degrees of muscularity. One group was asked to hold figures with extreme muscle depictions, Barlett says, such as wrestling action figures or figures of the Incredible Hulk. Another group handled figures with less pronounced muscle definition and the third group never saw an action figure upon entering the laboratory. Those handling the action figures were asked to position the figures in a number of poses, forcing them to touch and feel the level of muscularity in the arms, legs, abdomen and pectorals of the figure, Barlett says.

After holding and positioning the figures for 10–15 minutes, participants were asked to fill out questionnaires about their self-esteem and body image. The result was that the men who handled action figures with exaggerated and more pronounced muscles felt worse about their own bodies. Barlett says that when men handle this extreme degree of muscularity they tend to think they will never be able to accomplish this level of strength — a frustration that can lead to depression about their own bodies.

Images within the pages of Men’s Health, a magazine with a circulation of more than 1.8 million readers, are meant to be inspirational, says Adam Campbell, the publication’s sports and nutrition editor. He says that although most men don’t boast the same lean and defined physiques often depicted in the magazine, the potential is there. Most guys could use the images and expert advice found in Men’s Health as encouragement to do better, Campbell says.

Campbell also says that the media may be touting the lesser evil in categorizing lean and fit images as a negative for men’s health. Perhaps a bigger problem in the United States is that too many men aren’t concerned enough about their bodies. When you consider that belly fat is strongly linked to heart disease and diabetes, he says, the quest for six-pack abs isn’t simply a shallow pursuit.