OBSESSION FOR MEN.

• Author: HALL, STEPHEN S.
• Position: Body image for teenage boys

BOYS ARE LEARNING WHAT GIRLS HAVE LONG KNOWN--IT ISN'T EASY LIVING IN A BAYWATCH WORLD

In a southern New Jersey gym, Alexander Bregstein lies on his back in the weight room, head down on an incline bench, gripping 85-pound weights in each hand. After a brief pause to gather himself, he muscles the dumbbells into the air with focused bursts of energy, each lift accompanied by a sharp exhalation, like the quick, short stroke of a piston.

At 16, Alexander is bright, articulate, and funny in a self-deprecating way. However, about a year ago, he made a conscious decision that those weren't the qualities he wanted people to recognize in him, at least not at first. He wanted people to see him first, and what they see these days are thick neck muscles, shoulders so massive that he can't scratch his back, a powerful bulge in his arms, and a chest that has been deliberately chiseled for the two-button look--what Alexander now calls "my most endearing feature."

There is a kind of timelessness to a teenager's battle with body image, but in most accounts the teenager is female and the issue is anorexia or bulimia. As any psychologist and most adult males know, however, boys have body-image problems too. While girls make up about 90 percent of the teenagers treated for eating disorders, boys traditionally feel pressure, not to look thin, but to be strong and virile, which increasingly seems to mean looking bulked up and muscular. And to hear some psychologists tell it, they may be catching up quickly in terms of insecurity and psychological problems related to body image.

As his spotter looks on, Alexander lifts the weights three more times, arms quivering, face reddening with effort. Another half-dozen teenagers mill around the weight room, casting glances at themselves and one another in the mirror. They talk of looking "cut," with sharp definition to their muscles, and of developing "sixpacks," crisp divisions of the abdominals, but of all the muscles that get a workout, the most important may be the ones that move the eyes in sweeping arcs of comparison and appraisal.

PICKED ON EVERY DAY

Between sets of his 90-minute routine, Alexander's eyes wander to the mirror again and again, searching for flaws, looking for areas of improvement. The gym rats here have a nickname for him, Mirror Boy, but that's a vast improvement over the nicknames he endured at school not long ago. Until recently, he carried nearly 210 pounds on a 5-foot-6 frame.

In seventh and...