Emily Wing Smith, a fabulous fellow-Flux-author who also shares an agent with me, sent this report today via Ypulse, a group that features all things Generation Y:

Manorexia: Thin Is In…For Guys, Too
Posted in TV

Male stars of Gossip Girl - Back when I worked at Oxygen TV on a teen show called Trackers, we aired a POV-J (Point of View Journalist) segment about teen boy wrestlers and the insane rituals they go through to "make weight" -- everything from running in warm clothes to actually purging after meals. In some circles, this purging behavior is called eating disordered. Still, guys doing radical stuff short term for a sport seems unhealthy but more temporary than guys having full blown eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. Whenever we talk about the role of the media in eating disorders, we usually talk about its impact on girls -- from the modeling shows, celebrities Mary Kate or Kate Moss to the recent criticism of "90210's" younger female stars. But new research coming out of the UK and Australia reveals that "manorexia" or male eating disorders are a growing problem for young men -- and not just jocks. From this BBC report:

-One of Britain's leading eating disorder experts says as many as one in five young men are deeply unhappy with their body image.

-Dr John Morgan said that for every man with an eating disorder there were 10 more who desperately wanted to change the way they looked.

-"One in five young men have some degree of quite extreme distress," he said.

-Dr Morgan said he had also seen a big rise in the number of men with anorexia and bulimia.

-Dr Morgan, who runs the Yorkshire Centre for Eating Disorders in Leeds, told the BBC's news programme for teenagers, Revealed, that men who were unhappy with their bodies would like to change them.

I know this has been an issue in the gay community for some time, but what's new is the awareness around this trend for younger heterosexual guys. So maybe as we criticize The CW for its stick thin actresses, we should also be critical of how teen guys are portrayed or the lack of realistic teen body types (female or male) in these high school dramas. Did anyone else notice that the returning "90210" characters "Donna Martin" and "Brenda Walsh" look almost-heavy compared to their younger co-stars? Are you seeing or hearing teen guys talk more about this issue? Is it a theme that's popping up on any teen TV shows or in YA literature?