OPEN PLAYGIRL today and compare the centrefold model to the hunk featured 30 years ago and guess what? They're different! For lack of any other cultural standard of male beauty, researchers such as York kinesiology Professor Caroline Davis point to this as a sign that the ideal male physique has become visibly more muscular.

Weight-lifting males can become as obsessive/compulsive as female anorexics or bulimics about exercise and dieting. Researchers have even come up with a name - not official yet - for the disorder. It's called muscle dysmorphia.

Washboard abs and well defined traps and pecs, biceps and triceps take work. Lots of work. Playgirl centrefolds bulge so much they "have to be working out daily and excessively" to achieve that pumped-up look, says Davis' research assistant Tina Karvinen.

She's preparing questionnaires for a study Davis is doing on male body image. Compared to men today, males 30 years ago were less self-conscious about their appearance. "Thirty years ago, men didn't troop to the gym to work out. Now it seems to be the thing to do."

Anorexia and bulimia can have deadly consequences for young women struggling to achieve perfect thinness. But so can pumping iron four hours a day for young men. And the obsession with muscular bulk can lead to anabolic steroid use. (Even though steroids are illegal, an estimated 4 to 11 per cent of American males have tried them.) Steroid use can cause psychotic behaviour - hallucinations, delusions, aggression, mania - as well as heart attacks, strokes and prostate cancer.

So who might fall into such risky behaviour? That's what Davis and Karvinen hope to find out.

Photo: Lindsay Lozon