Department of Anthropology, The University of Alabama, Box 870210, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487-0210, USA.
Cult Med Psychiatry. 2023 Jun;47(2):443-465. doi: 10.1007/s11013-022-09784-3. Epub 2022 Mar 29.
Men's body image is an issue of increasing importance as related illnesses continue to grow in prevalence around the world. However, cross-cultural attention to men's body image experiences has been relatively understudied. Based on data derived from cognitive anthropological methods of cultural domain analysis, I develop the concept of "muscularities" to more effectively examine the expectations inherent in multifarious models of body image men continuously navigate. Related to but distinct from "masculinities"-the recognition of culture-bound hierarchies of ways of doing-being a man-"muscularities" attends to the culturally particular ways in which muscles are conceived and evaluated as indices of socioeconomic status, intelligence, social skills, and professionalism, to name a few. Young South Korean men's experiences of chan'gŭnyuk ("small muscle") and manŭn kŭnyuk ("large muscle") challenge universalist assumptions about the kinds of muscles people value in global perspective, demonstrate the necessity of recognizing multiple muscularities in research, and encourage new directions of inquiry that attend to the consequences of variable embodiments of muscularities.
男性的身体意象是一个日益重要的问题，因为相关疾病在世界各地的患病率不断上升。然而，跨文化对男性身体意象体验的关注相对较少。基于从认知人类学的文化领域分析方法中得出的数据，我提出了“肌肉”的概念，以更有效地研究男性不断应对的各种身体意象模型中所固有的期望。与“男子气概”（认识到特定文化中的男子行为方式的等级制度）相关但又不同，“肌肉”关注的是肌肉被视为社会经济地位、智力、社交技能和专业精神等指标的文化特殊性方式，仅举几例。韩国年轻男性对 chan'gŭnyuk（“小肌肉”）和 manŭn kŭnyuk（“大肌肉”）的体验挑战了人们在全球视角下对有价值的肌肉类型的普遍假设，证明了在研究中认识到多种肌肉的必要性，并鼓励关注肌肉表现的变量所带来的后果的新研究方向。
