T

oxic masculinity and its 
dangers 
are 
becoming 

more known, and you likely 

already know of examples embodying 
it, from nonsense that “men don’t cry” 
to certain things being deemed “gay” 
with a demeaning connotation. Yet, the 
intersection between toxic masculinity 
and eating disorders, specifically ones 
that revolve around fitness — think 
the avid gym-goer that won’t eat a bit 
outside of their macros for the day — is 
undeniable. 

Toxic 
masculinity 
boasts 
a 

message of what a man should look 
like physically, equally as much as 
it sends messages discouraging the 
prioritization of emotional and mental 
health. In fact, culture of suppressing 
one’s emotions and feelings, which 
is a crucial component of toxic 
masculinity, could not exist alone; it has 
to be paired with physical strength. 
In other words, the physically strong 
appearance of men is the outer shell, 
housing their equally tough inner-self, 
which they have been socialized to 
believe is necessary for manhood. 

To meet these physical and 

behavioral expectations, they grasp 
for things they can control. Food and 
exercise are examples of these things, 
and in my experience, turning to them 
for a sense of control can quickly turn 
into misuse or abuse and a strained 
relationship with two things that 
are needed to live a high-quality life. 
Furthermore, unless these behaviors 
are addressed early on as being 
actually harmful to holistic health, 
men will continue to engage with 
it under the guise that in doing so, 

they’re leading a healthy lifestyle. 

You likely already know that 

sufferers of eating disorders tend to be 
female. But, the usually lower number 
of males suffering from eating disorders 
is likely underreported. There are a few 
reasons for this, but a main one being 
the stigma around eating disorders 
that can lead to feelings of shame or 
embarrassment. However, I want to 
dig beyond this into the population of 
males who might not even think they 
have an eating disorder or on a path of 
disordered eating — guys who are pure 
muscle, live at the gym (or wherever 
their choice setting of workout may be) 
and track everything they put in their 
mouth. 

While current statistics say men 

make up 25% of those suffering from 
anorexia, there is reason to believe 
this number is actually higher because 
of the tendency for anorexia to be 
defined in its most narrow, outdated 
form as merely severe restricted 
eating. This doesn’t include atypical 
anorexia, which may still include 
severe restricted eating — which isn’t 
atypical at all — nor anorexia athletica, 
which is specifically relevant since its 
defining characteristic of excessive 
exercise is the feature also present in 
toxic masculinity. 

With toxic masculinity promoting 

a pursuit of strength, it is completely 
understandable 
that 
guys 
have 

turned to exercise, specifically weight 
training, to pursue this because it’s 
the most tangible avenue under 
their control. And I can’t dispute the 
benefits of strength training, nor do I 
want to. What I want to call attention 

to is the culture that encourages it to 
its extreme, more often than not also 
leading to disordered eating patterns, 
if not full-fledged eating disorders, and 
for all the wrong reasons. 

Reasons of physical appearance 

and wanting to feel stronger are not 
“bad” in and of itself, but when you are 
conditioned to believe that you have 
to attain a certain physique before 
you can be anything more, and that 
you have to be stronger because of 
some notion that you have to be ready 
to fight at a moment’s notice — all of 
which today’s males are conditioned 
to believe, in short — it becomes 
increasingly difficult to engage in 
activities like weight training that 
would otherwise be beneficial to 
your holistic health, without these 
detrimental underlying reasons. 

Even if one is truly pursuing weight 

training for all the right reasons, 
disassociated from toxic masculinity, 
this person is likely in the minority. It 
is incredibly difficult for people to fully 
abstain from societal expectations 
and social and gender norms because 
it’s human nature to want to meet 
them. Most people then, naturally, 
have fallen to the various pressures 
that exist, and will continue to do so 
until we change the norms, pressures 
and cultures themselves, rather than 
berate the individuals merely trying 
to successfully exist under them. 

A look into the thoughts men hold 

around their bodies and how exercise 
and fitness plays a role then shows 
that the wrong reasons discussed 
earlier — the ones rooted in harmful 
and largely unhealthful beliefs about 

what it means to be a man — are 
rampant. A study surveying the 
attitudes and beliefs among college 
men on body image and ideals found 
that they feel heightened pressure 
to have a muscular body. In addition 
to being preoccupied with building 
muscles, they were also very focused 
on obtaining a very low level of body 
fat, and the more dissatisfied they 
were “with their muscularity and 
body fat, the more they engaged in 

unhealthy behaviors.” 

It should come as no surprise 

then, that we’ve seen “bigorexia” 
enter the eating disorder scene in 
recent years. Also referred to as the 
Adonis Complex, this eating disorder 
is characterized by an obsession 
with one’s body, specifically a desire 
to build more and more muscle, 
known 
as 
muscle 
dysmorphia. 

Body dysmorphia is also a crucial 
component of it in that individuals 

suffering from it view themselves 
as “weak” or “small” even when 
they are very visibly muscular to 
others. This then leads them to 
engage in more extreme behaviors 
(e.g. anabolic steroids) to build 
even more muscle. 

Opinion

SIERRA ÉLISE HANSEN | COLUMNIST

T

he United States historically 
has been eager to meddle 
with Latin American affairs. 

From the Monroe Doctrine to the 
overthrowing of the democratically 
elected Salvador Allende in Chile, 
American imperialism has a long 
and storied history. Our penchant 
for interfering didn’t stop when 
we entered the 21st century, with 
Venezuela and Bolivia as the newest 
targets. 
Just 
recently, 
former 

President Evo Morales’s Movement 
for Socialism Party won an election 
with a wide margin of victory. This 
is following a U.S.-backed coup in the 
country that brought a right-leaning 
leader, Jeanine Áñez, in power. 
Her party’s loss is a victory for the 
people of Bolivia and is an example 
of a spectacular failure of the U.S.’s 
meddling in Latin America. But to 
understand why and what it means, 
we must look at Morales and his party.

Morales is a deeply popular 

figure in Bolivia, not only for the 
good work he’s done but also for 
what he represents. Morales was 
Bolivia’s 
first-ever 
ndigenous 

president. He started his political 
career as a leader of a coca-growing 
union and has kept that as a point of 
pride during his tenure as president. 
As 
president, 
he 
established 

infrastructure 
and 
instituted 

regulations that prioritized native 

farmers in the rural area for 
economic stability. Last year, in the 
rural province of Chapare, Morales 
received 90% of the vote. He 
rewrote the Bolivian constitution 
to enfranchise more people and 
to solidify the rights of indigenous 
peoples all over the country. The 
average annual GDP increase under 
Morales was nearly 5% per year, and 
he halved poverty from 36% to 17%. 
Morales nationalized the oil and 
gas industry and redistributed 
millions of acres of land. Through 
the nationalized industry, he built 
more than 4,500 schools in rural 
and impoverished areas. Other 
socialist policies he instituted 
included a pension for low-income 
people aged 60 and above and 
welfare policies for uninsured 
young mothers. Morales changed 
Bolivia for the better.

Why would the U.S. want to 

overthrow someone who brought 
stability and prosperity to their 
country? One of the main motives 
was the aforementioned eagerness 
to nationalize industry. Bolivia holds 
one of the most abundant deposits 
of lithium in the world, an element 
necessary to create products like 
batteries and solar panels. In 2019, 
Morales reportedly won the election 
with a 10.1-percentage-point lead 
in votes, just barely a tenth of a 

percent higher than the lead needed 
to prevent a runoff election. The 
Organization of American States 
led an investigation shortly after 
accusations of electoral fraud were 
slung around, and concluded that 
they found “serious irregularities.” 

The problem with the OAS is that 

it has historically been used as a tool 
for the U.S. to advance their own 
goals, especially throughout the Cold 
War. The OAS was notably complicit 
with the U.S.’s infringement on the 
national sovereignty of Guatemala 
when they tried to nationalize the 
fruit companies. Banana republics 
were assets to the U.S. given the 
revenue they generated. Another 
notable example was during the 
Cuban Missile Crisis, when the 
OAS collectively agreed to impose 
a quarantine on Cuba, preventing 
anything or anyone from crossing 
the country’s borders. They are 
historically a political tool for the 
U.S. and didn’t prove themselves 
any different here. In the end, the 
discrepancies were easy to refute 
but Evo was forcibly removed in 
another instance of American 
imperialism. 

SAM FOGEL | COLUMNIST

America’s failure to topple Bolivia’s sovereignty

Sam Fogel can be reached at 

samfogel@umich.edu.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

NYLA BOORAS | COLUMNIST

Dismantling flex 

Nyla Booras can be reached at 

nbooras@umich.edu.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

Michigan legislature must revise its labor statutes

Sierra Elise Hansen can be reached 

at hsierra@umich.edu.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

O

ur nation’s leaders have long 
been engaged in a deadlock 
due to disagreements over 

the new coronavirus federal aid 
package. America is at a juncture 
of crises and there is one critical 
solution: providing relief through ease 
of access to necessary assistance. If 
its legislature does not do something 
to this end for the improvement 
of 
unemployment 
conditions, 

Michigan will likely see a deadly and 
costly mental health catastrophe 
substantially worsened by a rapid 
increase in homelessness. 

The agonizing uncertainty of 

waiting for unemployment benefits or 
other forms of government assistance 
to process is an issue affecting the 
American people on an unprecedented 
scale.

Without 
timely 
access 
to 

unemployment 
benefits, 
many 

Michigan residents will be evicted, 
go hungry and lose access to critical 
care. With people waiting for five 
months or longer to receive any 
unemployment assistance at all — 
even after being approved — bills 
will not be paid. Resulting evictions 
along with other life-shattering 
changes 
caused 
by 
financial 

hardships could have repercussions 
for years to come. 

This week, I spoke to labor lawyer 

and University of Michigan Clinical 

Assistant Professor of Law Rachael 
Kohl. She was able to explain why 
Michigan is falling short of adequate 
emergency provisions for its residents. 
Perhaps more importantly, she was 
able to shed light on what our state 
government can do, now and in the 
future, to remedy these shortcomings.

Kohl currently serves as clinical 

director of the Workers’ Rights law 
clinic at the University of Michigan 
Law School. Her colleagues and the 
law students under her supervision 
provide pro bono assistance to 
Michigan residents from across 
the state — they have helped many 
residents fight to receive adequate 
and timely funding. For some, 
these emergency funds represent a 
critical lifeline for staying afloat in an 
unprecedented crisis — for others, a 
depiction of the money as a lifeline is 
terrifyingly literal. Michigan residents 
are facing eviction and food shortages. 
There has been a devastating rise 
in the number of overdoses and 
suicides with the looming threat of 
more mental and physical health 
crises. Under our current system, 
health insurance is not ubiquitously 
available to pay for potentially life-
saving treatment. For many residents, 
their health insurance is tied to 
employment. 

Kohl detailed how many of 

these Michigan residents not only 

navigated a system they may have 
never encountered before but have 
also been forced to navigate a system 
ill-equipped 
for 
unemployment 

numbers that would have seemed 
inconceivable only a year ago. As 
she described Michigan’s current 
unemployment crisis and how it 
stacks up against similar scenarios 
playing out around the country, she 
provided a comprehensive picture of 
precarious and unforgiving realities 
unemployed Michiganders can face.

“It’s been an overwhelming need 

for unemployment in the state,” she 
said. “That need is only exacerbated 
by the fact that the unemployment 
insurance agency had to try to figure 
out a way to process more claims, in the 
last seven months, than they’ve had to 
process in combination (over the) past 
six or seven years.”

Kohl further stated that the way 

unemployment insurance is funded 
piles even more bureaucratic procedures 
on top of already urgent and dire 
conditions shaped by a global pandemic. 
“The 
way 
that 
unemployment 

insurance is funded is based on the 
last quarter’s unemployment rate, and 
so the federal government didn’t give 
states more money to increase its ability 
to hire more people and train more 
people until well into the actual need,” 
she said.

This particular mention of federal 

funding sounded like a harbinger of 
more explanations to come, concerning 
federal impediments to funding. 
Trumpian and national right-to-work 
politics have hindered workers’ ability 
to seek legal recourse to statutes. But 
the reasons some Michigan residents 
have been suspended — in limbo 
and without relief — extend much 
further back than the overwhelming, 

dystopian climate of a Trump 

presidency.

Zach, a junior in LSA studying 

economics whose name has been 
changed to protect his privacy, 
said he applied for unemployment 
back in May, when he would have 
started his summer lifeguarding 
job had it not evaporated due to the 
COVID-19 pandemic. He received 
the first round of the Coronavirus 
Aid, Relief, and Economic Security 
Act funds relatively quickly and 
reported encountering a relatively 
short two-and-a-half week delay 

before receiving another round 

of emergency funding, which he 
applied for at the beginning of 
August to purchase the school 
supplies he needed. However, he 
described encountering consistent 
barriers to clear communication. 
He said he experienced high levels 
of anxiety while waiting for other 
funds to come in because he did not 
have the possibility or safety net of 

another income. 

In July, after Zach fixed what he 

described as a “stupid error” over 
the phone — the worker he spoke 
to told him Zach had switched 
his first and last name — the same 
worker told Zach he’d be receiving 
his funds shortly. But Zach said he is 
still stuck on the “pending payment” 
status, according to his online 
unemployment portal, and has not 
received any funds. He continues to 
call each week and says that most 
times he is not able to get through to 
anyone at all — his calls will often go 
to an automated voicemail box and 
the agency’s computer will hang up.

During 
our 
conversation, 

Kohl outlined the litany of ways 
our 
Michigan 
legislature 
has 

historically failed to update state 
labor statutes that govern the 
distribution 
of 
unemployment 

funds in the state, which have in 
turn harmed workers. Moreover, 
she declared the statutes were 
encoded in a notoriously unreliable 
computer system that has harmed 
Michigan’s workers in the past. 
She provided an abundance of 
statistical 
evidence 
supporting 

the claims that Michigan’s state 
statutes 
frequently 
undermine 

the well-being of the workers who 
need it most, including the students 
who may depend on a second 

income stemming from work that 
no longer exists because of the 
pandemic.

“One of the biggest issues through 

Michigan for unemployment ... I’d say 
it’s a two-fold issue. The first issue is 
the Michigan statute ... is incredibly 
restrictive,” Kohl emphasized. “It 
is one of the most restrictive state 
statutes governing unemployment 
out of any of the rest of the country. 
We are in the bottom, I’d say bottom 
five to bottom ten states for how 
many workers we actually cover and 
how well we cover them.” Kohl stated 
a failure to account for inflation 
plays a large role in Michigan’s 
unemployment statutes lagging far 
behind the rest of the states.

“We have one of the lowest weekly 

benefit amounts meaning the most 
you can get in the state is $362 per 
week,” she said. “... It used to be 
tied to inflation and then in 2002 
it was removed from being tagged 
with inflation, so it’s just remained 
stagnant for almost twenty years. 
$362 in 2002 represented about 58% 
of the average weekly wage of the 
state, now it’s less than 35% of the 
average weekly wage of the state.” 

ZOE ZHANG | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT ZOEZHANG@UMICH.EDU

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Design courtesy of Lauren Kuzee/Daily


