We've come a long way from the Brawny man, created in 1974 to sell paper towels. With his flannel shirt and crossed arms, he looks like a nonchalant lumberjack. He looks like a real man.

But times have changed (as has the Brawny man) since 1974. Modern male...

They do it because they want to help. The husbands, partners -- even children -- of women with eating disorders are performing striking feats of "support." ("We love you, mom!") But are they really that?

An eye-catching story comes from Tom Cramer, whose wife Meg slipped into the grip...

Julie Goodman also contributed to this article.

When Barack Obama takes office next week, he will make history as the first African American president. Race notwithstanding, this past election season was rife with discussions of sticky issues, including gender and age. But what about height?

At 6'1", Obama towers over...

It was almost a medical mystery. Last week, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published a provocative case study: a 19-year-old man staggered into the emergency room of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, complaining of abdominal pain.
Beyond bloating and nausea, the man suffered at a...

They do it because they read it on the Internet. I'm talking about the latest trends in medical advice or "therapy" that people learn online.

Take chewing and spitting, the latest trend in eating disorders, in which a person puts food in his or her mouth, tastes it,...

They do it because they're desperate. People are engaging in secret, shameful behaviors all for the sake of getting or staying thin. 

Shortly after giving birth, Lauren, 35, would tell her husband that she was going to the grocery store late at night. There, she would buy bags of junk...

They don't do it -- because they've had enough. Some women in midlife are not coloring their hair, dieting religiously, and struggling to achieve unrealistic standards of physical beauty. While the statistics continue to startle us -- $8.2 billion worth of beauty products sold in 2006, a $55.4 billion annual...

They do it for shock value.

The fashion moguls are playing the "shock and awe" game again. This time with an ad campaign for Nolita, featuring an emaciated nude woman.

Not just thin a la Kate Moss. Not heroin addict chic, heroin chic...

They do it because their brains are wired to. Girls with anorexia nervosa starve due to neural processing problems -- much like those associated with Asperger's disorder, a mild form of autism.

That's the latest theory of eating disorders, proffered in The Times (U.K.) by Janet...

They do it even in remote island villages.

In my last blog, several people who posed comments asked if the U.S. was the only country suffering eating disorders.

Here's my answer:

In Sigatoka, Fiji, eating disorders have emerged from, literally, nothing.

According to anthropologist Anne Becker,...

They do it even in their 90s.

Adult women starve, binge, and purge. Eating disorders, once thought to be the province of misguided teens who twist the cultural thinness imperative into ravaged bodies, are now rampant in the aging, health-conscious, baby boomer population. And beyond.

That's the news, according to...

They do it because they want to be fat.

Women in Mauritania, on the northwest coast of Africa, stuff themselves and their daughters to torturous discomfort, even death, because obesity is their ideal of female beauty.

Across the ocean, Americans may gasp at the details: In a recent