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"America's New Male Body Obsession\nIt's official: The male gaze has turned upon itself, and American men are focused on their physiques as never before. From Marky Mark's abs and the transformation of Marc Jacobs to the rise of Abercrombie &amp;amp; Fitch and the fall of Anthony Weiner, here are the 41 moments that changed the way we look in the mirror.\nIt's official: The male gaze has turned upon itself, and American men are focused on their physiques as never before. From Marky Mark's abs and the transformation of Marc Jacobs to the rise of Abercrombie &amp;amp; Fitch and the fall of Anthony Weiner, here are the 41 moments that changed the way we look in the mirror.\n1. Marky Mark Ushers in the Age of (Naked) Truth in Advertising\n\nFor much of 1992, a giant billboard featuring a Herb Ritts photograph of a 21-year-old rapper in Calvin Klein boxer briefs snarled traffic in Times Square. The baby-faced guy, whom we now know as Mark Wahlberg, looked like a supermarket bag boy. But each of his pecs was the size of a taxicab, his cut abs two stories tall. His boy-next-door smile sent a message to our collective subconscious: You, too, could look like this. A lineage of erotic male-underwear ads was established (see: Messrs. Ronaldo, Beckham, and Nadal), but these days you can find naked or barely clothed men in fragrance ads (D&amp;amp;G's Anthology), deodorant commercials (AXE), and sitcom promos (Two and a Half Men). The selling power of the male form is now a given.\n\nPhoto: The Advertising Archives\n2. Preppy or Porn?\n\nMiddle America wasn't ready for Abercrombie &amp;amp; Fitch's daring late-nineties rebrand. Protests and lawsuits often followed the publication of Bruce Weber's ber-preppy, barely legal photography on giant billboards and on the pages of the A+F Quarterly magalog (the 2003 holiday issue featured photos of a circle jerk and discussed oral-sex tips). If rippling six-packs and lithe legs\u2014plus a heady dose of homoerotic appeal\u2014are now integral elements of your average high-schooler's deepest aspirations, the credit (or blame) goes to A&amp;amp;F.\n\nPhoto: Splashnews.com\n3. The Forever Altered Manscape\n\nA 2009 study at the University of South Florida found that more than 80 percent of 360 male students had removed body hair. That year, Braun and Remington launched new body groomers. Farewell, Burt Reynolds. Hello, Ryan Reynolds.\n\nPhoto: Stuart Tyson\n4. Lifeguards Get Their Own Network TV Show\n\nPicture David Hasselhoff. Is he shirtless and tan, in red trunks, running into the surf in slow motion? How about David Charvet or David Chokachi? Saving lives was always secondary. Burning imagery of the beach body in your brain\u2014that was the job of Baywatch.\n\nPhoto: Everett Collection\n5. First Rule of Fight Club: Get Ripped Like Brad Pitt\n\n\"A guy came to Fight Club for the first time, his ass was a wad of cookie dough. After a few weeks, he was carved out of wood.\" \u2014Fight Club (1999)\n\nPhoto: Everett Collection\n6. Food Gets a Designer Label\n\nFormer FDA commissioner Dr. David Kessler on the impact of the Nutrition Facts label, which was introduced in 1993: \"It created an awareness that it's important what we put in our bodies. The label also creates an incentive to make products that are healthier. The label won the Presidential Design Award. It became an icon.\"\n\nPhoto: Getty Images\n7. The Body Politic\n\nPollsters have always known the importance of appearances, but political muscle of the ripped variety is now a real, if unspoken, campaign issue. Lest you forget, Barack Obama's popularity spiked after we saw photos of the swimsuit-clad president-elect in Hawaii. Consider Aaron Schock, who bared his chiseled abs and chest in a shot that found its way to TMZ, making a sensation out of the freshman Illinois Congressman. In the next election, the gym-rat Republican upped his share of the vote. And while this new \"fit to serve\" ethos isn't good news for, say, Chris Christie, it augurs well for Mitt Romney, who recently started wearing skinny jeans.\n\nAbove: Barack Obama in December 2008.\n\nPhoto: Bauer-Griffin.com\n8. One Nation, Under the Knife\n\nIncrease in the number of men having cosmetic surgery between 1997 and 2011: 88%\n\nPhoto: Corbis Images\n9. The Chic-quinox Effect\n\nWhen Equinox launched in 1991, it changed the game of health clubs, offering basketball courts, restaurants, spa services, and personal training. Membership fees (nearly $200 a month versus about $40 at 24 Hour Fitness) priced many gym-goers out of the market. Which was the point. \"It became not just a status symbol,\" says Mary Gotaas, a health-club analyst at the research firm IBISWorld, \"but a place to network with higher-income earners and even find a mate.\" In related news, tight-fitting gym gear began to replace baggy tees and ratty sweats, a trend handily exploited by brands like Under Armour, which quickly mushroomed into a company with more than $1 billion in revenue.\n\nPhoto: Courtesy of Equinox\n10. The Gym Openings That Reshaped Us\n\n1965: Gold's Gym\n\n1979: The Sports Club/LA\n\n1983: Bally Total Fitness\n\n1989: Crunch Fitness\n\n1991: Equinox\n\n1991: David Barton Gym\n\n1998: Barry's Boot Camp\n\n2006: SoulCycle\n\n2008: Pure Yoga\n\n2008: Crossfit\n\nPhoto: Getty Images\n11. The Workout Pros Go Hollywood\n\nPersonal trainers used to train millionaire celebrities. Now they are millionaire celebrities.\n\nPhoto: Courtesy of David Kirsch Wellness\n12. Fashion Cuts Back\n\n\"The slim silhouette feels right. Somehow I think this will never go out of style.\" \u2014Barneys New York executive VP for menswear Tom Kalendarian on the enduring appeal of the narrow cut\n\nPhoto: Stuart Tyson\n13. The Transformation of Marc Jacobs\n\nA bout with ulcerative colitis inspired designer Marc Jacobs to dump sugar, caffeine, dairy, and white flour from his diet in 2007. Two-and-a-half-hour daily gym sessions added bulk and definition, and a transformation that stunned the fashion world was complete. \"When I went from 21 percent body fat to 5 percent body fat and I had muscle, I was like, 'This is great!'\" said Jacobs, who displayed his new body by posing nude last year for an ad to launch his BANG fragrance.\n\nAbove: Jacobs in 2004 and 2009.\n\nPhotos: Splashnews.com, Getty Images\n14. Infomercials Shape Up\n\n1986: Soloflex\n\n1989: Ab Roller\n\n1991: NordicTrack\n\n1995: George Foreman Grill\n\n1996: Tony Little's Gazelle\n\n1998: Tae-Bo\n\n2000: Body by Jake Bun and Thigh Rocker\n\n2001: Jack Lalanne's Power Juicer\n\n2005: P90X\n\n2009: Shake Weight\n\n2010: Insanity\n\nPhotos: Courtesy of Insanity, Courtesy of P90X\n15. D'Angelo's Anatomy Lesson\n\nDevil's horns. Jesus crease. Groin dip. Thunder road. Dick cleavage. All euphemisms for a well-defined inguinal ligament, a piece of anatomy we might not have considered had it not been for D'Angelo's 2000 music video for \"Untitled (How Does It Feel).\"\n\nPhoto: From \"Untitled\"\n16. Stars: They're Ripped Like Us!\n\nIt wasn't until the 2002 downmarket revamp of Us Weekly and the rise of competitors like OK!, In Touch, and Star that male eye candy was commodified and sold at the supermarket-checkout aisle. Look\u2014Matthew McConaughey is doing shirtless pull-ups! Zac Efron too! And yes, Kellan Lutz took off his shirt to walk his dog! With this vision of male objectification, it's no surprise that the most popular spots for paparazzi to shoot male stars are the beach and outside the gym.\n\nPhoto: Stuart Tyson\n17. Bond: Then and Now\n\nFor four decades, they came and went . . . pretenders to the throne. No one touched Sean Connery. No one even came close. Until Daniel Craig emerged from the surf in 2006's Casino Royale, looking fitter and more chiseled than any 007 before him. And with this stunning entrance, a new piece of Bond lore was born. To the martini (shaken, not stirred), the Aston Martin, the Rolex Submariner, and the Beretta 418, add the tiny blue-on-blue swim trunks.\n\nLeft: Sean Connery in Thunderball (1965); Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006).\n\nPhotos: Photofest; Splashnews.com\n18. The Soccer Body Moves the Goal Posts\n\nIf you'd mentioned a six-pack to George Best, one of the finest players to kick a round ball, he'd have looked for a bottle opener. In his seventies heyday, soccer players smoked during training-session breaks, drank freely after games (alcohol abuse killed Best at 59), and sported physiques that were thin but definition-free. Like Best, Cristiano Ronaldo displayed his genius in the red jersey of Manchester United, but there the comparisons end. Ronaldo, now with Real Madrid, is the poster child for the new breed of soccer player\u2014V-shaped torso, abs to die for, thighs of steel.\n\nLeft: Cristiano Ronaldo.\n\nPhoto: Getty Images\n19. The Other Desirable Six-Pack\n\nMichelob Ultra, \"the low-carbohydrate light beer,\" is introduced in 2002. Calories: 95. Carbs: 2.6 grams.\n\nPhoto: Stuart Tyson\n20. Everybody Loves a Loser\n\nWhen the weight-loss craze met the reality-TV trend with full force, the result was NBC's The Biggest Loser, a contest unlike any other. The entrants weren't vying for a record deal or trying to survive on an island or racing cross-country; they were dieting and treadmilling and sweating their sizable asses off. Suddenly we found ourselves rooting for, and even joining, them.\n\nPhoto: Courtesy of NBC Universal\n21. The Big Mac of Wake-Up Calls\n\nSuper Size Me, Morgan Spurlock's 2004 documentary, shows you just how unhappy a meal at McDonald's will make your body.\n\nPhoto: Everett Collection\n22. The Taylor-Made Physique\n\n\"I worked really hard to try and transform Jacob's body so I could portray him correctly for all of you guys. I hope you guys are pleased when you see the results.\" \u2014a not-yet-18-year-old Taylor Lautner, talking about his total-body metamorphosis to throngs of Twilight fans at Comic-Con 2009\n\nAbove: Taylor Lautner takes it off for Twilight Eclipse.\n\nPhoto: Courtesy of Summit Entertainment\n23. Male Necklines Take a Plunge\n\nAmerican Apparel launches the deep-V in 2003.\n\nPhoto: Splashnews.com\n24. Health Food Goes Mainstream\n\nIf the guy in the cubicle next to you is snacking on goji berries rather than Cheetos, the credit likely goes to John Mackey, whose Whole Foods empire (more than 300 U.S. locations and counting) took the drudgery and second-guessing out of waistline-friendly grocery shopping.\n\nPhoto: Corbis Images\n25. Crazy for Cleanses\n\n  Green Juice, BluePrintCleanse, Organic Avenue\u2014the name of the cleanse du jour changes often, but the philosophy doesn't: a diet of juice to purge toxins and trim waistlines. The trailblazer is the Master Cleanse, invented in the 1940s and endorsed by, among others, Beyonc\u00E9 and David Blaine. Which might explain why it's still the most popular liquid detox.\n\nPhoto: Stuart Tyson\n26. The Diet Fads: A Feeding Frenzy\n\n1972: The Atkins\n\n1995: The Zone\n\n1996: The Ornish\n\n1996: The Blood Type\n\n2003: The South Beach\n\n2004: The Abs\n\n2010: The Paleo\n\n2011: The Dukan\n27. The Quantifiable Man\n\nThe measure of a man? Body-mass index, VO2 max, metabolic rate, body fat. The ways we track and share that info are even more plentiful: digital calculators, workout sites, apps. We know more about our fitness levels than ever\u2014because we care more than ever.\n\nPhoto: Getty Images\n28. The Facebook Effect\n\nForget the reflecting pool\u2014nowadays, Narcissus could have overdosed on self-love just by staring at his computer. There you are on Facebook, looking dapper and trim at a wedding, but in the next picture you've developed love handles for all the world to see (remove tag!). Thanks to smartphones, your insecurities follow you wherever you go. \"Visual social media has increased anxiety in men about the way they look,\" says Dr. Roberto Olivardia, a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School. \"Some won't attend social events because they fear their photo will surface.\" There's no clinical term for the condition\u2014yet. Facebulimia? Tagorexia? The Zuckerberg Complex? Whatever you call it, it may be the male affliction of our time.\n\nPhoto: Corbis Images\n29-31. The Fat Funny Guys' Comically Extreme Slim-down\n\nJonah Hill: 40 pounds\n\nSeth Rogen: 30 pounds\n\nEntourage's Jerry Ferrara: 55 pounds\n\nPhotos: Getty Images\n32. Bend It Like Beckham\n\n\"I'm proud to see his penis about 25 foot tall. It's great. It's huge. It's enormous.\" \u2014Victoria Beckham, on husband David Beckham's iconic 2008 Emporio Armani underwear ads\n\nPhoto: The Advertising Archives\n33. Just Say No . . . to Carbs\n\nIn a world where partisan divisions rule, we agree on one thing: Carbohydrates are not just bad, not just a venial sin\u2014they're evil incarnate. Even long-distance runners who \"carbo-load\" before a marathon know the dangers of flour, rice, pasta, and sugars, which, when ingested, cause a spike in your blood-sugar level and then\u2014inevitably, insidiously\u2014make you fat. The first shot in the war against carbs was fired back in the 1960s with the Royal Canadian Air Force Diet, but the battle began to rage in the 1990s, when everything from beer to bread was de-carbed. To this day we try to stay away, but sometimes we're too weak to resist\u2014there's a Carbohydrate Addict's Diet with accompanying cookbooks, and support groups have sprung up nationwide. And your sweet tooth? It may be more than just a craving. In 2007, researchers at the University of Bordeaux, France, reported that when rats were allowed to choose between a sweetener and intravenous cocaine, 94 percent preferred the sugar fix. The scientists concluded that \"intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward.\"\n\nPhoto: Zachary Zavislak\n34. Christian Bale: The Yo-Yo Man\n\nThe Academy Awards might have to create a new category. Something snappy, like Actor in a Leading Role That Required a Holy-Crap, Totally Extreme, Balls-to-the-Wall Transformation. If you're counting, Christian Bale would have snagged three or four by now. In the past 10 years, the 37-year-old Brit has yo-yoed his physique in a way that gives hope to every man who is looking to re-engineer his body. Think of how Bale sculpted his six-foot, 185-pound frame for his iconic portrayal of Patrick Bateman in 2000's American Psycho. Three years later, he shed 63 pounds (daily diet: apples and coffee) to play a tortured factory worker in The Machinist. \"I do like, very much, the notion of seeing how far you can push yourself,\" Bale said. No shit. Within five months he had packed on 100 pounds of muscle for Batman Begins. Then along came The Fighter: Subtract 30 pounds, Mr. Bale. No problem. For that performance, Hollywood did reward him, with an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Gregory Joujon-Roche, founder of L.A.'s Holistic Fitness and a celebrity trainer, says that Bale's results require \"incredible commitment\u2014a complete manipulation of diet and training.\" Forget Method acting\u2014this is metamorphic acting.\n\nClockwise from top: American Psycho (2000); The Machinist (2004); Batman Begins (2005); The Fighter (2010)\n\nPhotos: The Kobal Collection; Everett Collection\n35. Yoga Grows a Pair\n\nHere's what happened to the willowy guy with the yoga mat. He buffed up. Why? Because Ashtanga is ass-kicking. Maha: macho. Bikram: badass. And he got company\u2014NFL cornerbacks, hockey players, Navy SEALs. And now . . . yoga has been integrated into army training programs.\n\nPhoto: Getty Images\n36. Gay Is the New Normal\n\nIt is a truth universally acknowledged that the straight-male-body ideal runs five years behind the gay one. \"It starts in gay porn, moves to gay gyms, underwear ads, and then the mainstream,\" says David Barton, owner of the eponymous gyms in New York, Miami, and, soon, Los Angeles. In the eighties, when gay men jacked their bodies to ward off suspicions that they were AIDS victims, the typical straight guy was soft and shlubby. By Y2K, after a decade defined by South Beach gym culture and Calvin Klein underwear hunks, he had transformed into a gym-going body-dysmorphic dude with tribal tattoos encircling over-pumped biceps. Sensing that their cartoon-superhero look had gone mainstream\u2014and turned on by Fight Club's Brad Pitt, whose taut muscles looked more serrated than inflated\u2014gay men pared back, on a new wave of swimming, yoga, and Pilates. \"I got a lot of requests for Keith Richards\u2013type bodies that looked like they happened from playing guitar in a bar all night,\" Barton says. The triumph of lean, mean muscle was cemented in 2005, when pictures appeared online of Ricky Martin and a friend playing beach games and executing yoga moves in tiny swim trunks in St. Barts. Their muscles were sensual, their bodies slim. Six years later, trend-attuned straight men in New York and L.A. walk around weekend mornings toting yoga mats, not weight-lifting belts.\n\nPhoto: X17Online.com\n37. A New Form of Physical Abuse\n\nSteroids. HGH. Body-dysmorphic disorder. Manorexia. Do you really doubt that the male-body obsession has a dark side?\n\nPhoto: Greg Broom\n38. The Subtle Art of Sexting\n\nIt never occurred to New York congressman Anthony Weiner that taking a shot of his sculpted torso and SMS-ing it to \"supporters\" would come back to haunt him. That's the beauty of sexting: You can capture your body in a perfect light and impress your friends in a convenient and safe way. What harm could possibly come from that?\n\nPhoto: Splashnews.com\n39. The Fang-Banging Orgies of True Blood\n\nWhen True Blood premiered on HBO in 2008, vampires\u2014previously wan, sensual, and a little fey\u2014became hulking sex machines, like Alexander Skarsg\u00E5rd's Eric Northman, who proved that spending 1,000 years as an undead Viking gives you plenty of time to develop perfect lats. Premium cable has always had soft-core porn, but not until True Blood were the bodies this hard.\n\nLeft: Alexander Skarsg\u00E5rd and Stephen Moyer in True Blood\n\nPhoto: Courtesy of HBO\n40. The Gospel According to The Situation\n\n\"If I didn't do my GTL and take care of myself, I don't know what I'd look like. If you don't go to the gym, you don't look good; if you don't tan, you're pale; and if you don't do laundry, you ain't got no clothes.\" \u2014The Situation, a.k.a. Mike Sorrentino, Jersey Shore (Season 1, Episode 3)\n\nPhoto: Terry Richardson/Art Partner\n41. Ryan Gosling's Crazy, Stupid Body\n\n\"Seriously?!\" Emma Stone shrieks upon seeing Ryan Gosling's ripped torso in the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid, Love. \"It's like you're Photoshopped!\" He was soon getting the same enthusiastic response from theatergoers: \"Holyshit\n\nRyanGosling'sbodyholyshit!\" Not a bad review\u2014even if you can't put it on a poster. For Gosling, it was a watershed moment: The guy who'd made his name in controversial indies playing a Jewish neo-Nazi, a crack-addicted teacher, and a misfit in love with a sex doll finally got to show his range\u2014as a big, beautiful piece of meat.\n\nPhotos: From Crazy, Stupid, Love"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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