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This article was taken from a recent edition of a free local newspaper in my area called "24 Hours."

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A University of Toronto study in 2000 suggesting that 1 out of every 6 people who qualified for a full or partial diagnosis of anorexia was male.

Implications that damaging effects of cultural and media pressures that glorify thinness and endorse narrow definitions of beauty have surfaced.

"Research has shown that the media play an impressive role in shaping, instead of merely reflecting, conceptions of the ideal body," says Dr. Lou Rappaport, eating disorders expert and associate dean of the school of psychology and behavioral science at Argosy University/San Francisco Bay Area in Point Richmond, California. "I think marketing of a certain body image and clothing is part and parcel of eating disoders."

Similar to women who have been compelled to uphold images of twig-thin models for years, men are more likely today to be swayed with depictions of thickly-packed muscular torsos, visible ripples of abs, and narrow waists.

However, the media is not solely to blame.

"There are also too many variables. For example, organized sports in elementary and middle school, such as [wrestling], boys [are] needing to be below a certain weight to be on a football team, [is] also a part of this. The Greeks and Romans went down this road of glorification of the body. They are gone, and we seem to have learned little from that lesson," Dr. Rappaport contends.

It also looks as if health professionals are gradually becoming more adept at recognizing male eating disorders, inevitably leading to higher numbers of reported cases. Traditionally, men have been reluctant to persue treatment, perhaps in response to the effeminate stereotype that surrounds the disorders.

But as the myth of the eating disorder as a "woman's disease" becomes discredited and education develops to incorporate a male perspective, more men appear ready to accept their problem instead of denying or covering it up. Experts contend that male eating disorders may have been common throughout the past quarter century as the University of Toronto study indicates they are at present. Only now, they suggest, is the medical community better equipped to take notice.