Reading the T Leaves
After timidly doffing my jersey for a shirts vs skins junior high basketball game, a blond, athletic, attractive, popular kid guarding me pointed to my pear-shaped midriff, laughed, and said, “Look, Pell’s got handles.” I was humiliated, but I also made a determined pledge to myself that no matter what, that basketball game would be the last time anyone ever made fun of my upper body physique. And I kept that promise for the rest of my life. By making sure, from that day on, I was always on the shirts team.
+ If I had come of age in a more recent era, I may have been convinced that my body type and lack of manly prowess meant I needed a testosterone boost. (I’m guessing I had such low T that I was probably closer on the sliding scale to having high U.) For many males, this era has become T time. “From the Trump administration to online influencers, the hormone is increasingly seen as the key to achieving a new male ideal.” Even people whose T isn’t low are joining the T party. “Prescriptions are rising most rapidly among men ages 35 to 44, powered in large part by a surge in direct-to-consumer online clinics often marketing testosterone as a lifestyle product rather than a treatment for disease. The American Urological Association reports that roughly a third of men who are prescribed the drug do not meet the criteria for a diagnosis of testosterone deficiency, leading some critics to argue that this has created a legal market for low-grade steroids.” NYT Mag (Gift Article): Why So Many Men Are Obsessed With Testosterone. “All of this prompts a question: If one of the defining stories of the 2024 election was that young men swung to Trump in part because they felt masculinity had been demonized, what does it mean that so many men now believe they need to take testosterone to feel more like men?” I worry most about today’s young men who are motivated by influencers and ignoramuses to take drugs or alter their bodies in ways that could trade short term gains for longterm health issues. Hopefully, they can learn from my story. You know that blond, athletic, attractive, popular kid who made fun of my body? Today, his newsletter has like four subscribers. What comes around goes around.
+ Of course, testosterone is just one of the roids that’s all the rage. Boys and men are increasingly going to extremes to improve their looks. “For as long as he can remember, Trevor Larcom wanted to look different … That’s how he fell into the online world of looksmaxxing, where young men relentlessly pursue physical ideals. He dyed his eyebrows. He did neck exercises and chewed extra-firm gum that he’d seen looksmaxxers claim would help build the jawline’s masseter muscles. And after seeing numerous before-and-after transformations, he ordered a peptide ‘stack,’ or a combination of several peptides for supposed enhanced results. Unrealistic beauty standards have long saddled women and girls, from models to movie stars to the growing masses of GLP-1 users. Now men and boys are facing their own heightened images of perfection.” WSJ (Gift Article): Teen Boys and Young Men Are Injecting Peptides in Search of Perfection.
+ Meanwhile, whether it’s to get more buffed or just to offset the effect of GLP-1s, everyone is adding protein to everything. You may not have a protein deficiency, but society does. Protein powder shortage threatens America’s biggest food craze. And this shortage could last til the cows come home. Literally. Whey protein comes from dairy. (Full disclosure: While my shirt is on, I wrote that line with my pants off.)
