The Cost of a Superhero Body

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that it takes a lot of work (nutrition, exercise, weight lifting, etc) to have muscles like Thor or Captain America or really any male superhero, who are chiefly admired for intimidating strength. It’s not enough that they have superpowers… they have to look like they have superpowers.

Which is why Kumail Nanjiani, perhaps best known as a nerdy programmer on Silicon Valley, undertook the intense work of changing his body for his new role in Marvel’s Eternals.

This is the Kumail Nanjiani we are all familiar with:

Kumail before…

And this is Eternals Kumail:

Kumail after… (Source: https://www.instagram.com/kumailn/)

Why am I writing about this? Well, for a couple of reasons. One of them is the caption that Nanjiani posted on Instagram along with this photo. Most of the time, when we are being sold some kind of diet or exercise plan this kind of transformation is meant to look like it was easy. That it only took 6 or 8 weeks. Or that the person was able to keep eating exactly as they had before. Nanjiani puts a stake in all of those: “I found out a year ago I was going to be in Marvel’s Eternals and decided I wanted to transform how I looked. I would not have been able to do this if I didn’t have a full year with the best trainers and nutritionists paid for by the biggest studio in the world. I’m glad I look like this, but I also understand why I never did before. It would have been impossible without these resources and time. [emphasis mine]” He goes on to thank all of his trainers, the people who made his meals, and his wife for putting up with all his complaining and never-ending diet talk, promising “I’ll be interesting again some day.”

This is the truth we never hear from the diet industry. It took someone a FULL YEAR of doing nothing but training and changing how he ate to have this body. Also, Marvel was footing the bill for all of this. Nanjiani is fairly successful on his own, having been on a hit HBO show for many years as well as having been nominated for an Oscar for his work. But it took the resources of a powerhouse like Marvel for him to be able to afford to do this.

Another reason for this post is because I learned that the kind of muscle definition we expect to see from our superheros comes from severe dehydration. I first read about it on a reposted Tumblr thread on Facebook, which made me look deeper into it. A quick Google got me to this article from 2017 about people actually trying to follow Hugh Jackman’s “impossible dehydration diet” for Logan. Jackman said during the press tour for that movie that he would “chug four gallons of water a day, every day — then cut all liquids for the final 36 hours.” The article quotes Robert Herbst, a personal trainer and 19-time World Champion powerlifter, as saying that bodybuilders do this kind “water cutting” to “strategically lose the water between their muscles and skin.” It increases the visual muscle definition but comes with a lot of potentially severe side effects including low blood pressure, rapid heart rate, seizure, shock, or coma. Bodybuilders have fainted on stage or died from cardiac arrest from dehydration.

Also, there’s the impact of these unrealistic physical standards, which includes (perhaps not surprisingly) eating disorders. We hear a lot about women who suffer from eating disorders because they are afraid of being fat or looking fat, such as with anorexia. But what we don’t hear about is men who suffer from muscle dysmorphia. People with muscle dysmorphia obsess over the perception that they are too small, underdeveloped, or frail. According to ANRED, a website for lay people to learn more about anorexia and other eating disorders, more men than women suffer from muscle dysmorphia because “…the culturally defined ideal male is big and strong…” To fix their perceived smallness, sufferers might exercise compulsively or take steroids or other muscle-building drugs.

The start of the original Tumblr post essentially says that these superhero bodies look the way they do for the female gaze. That it’s the fantasies of women that are driving the need for men to dehydrate themselves and over exercise to achieve a desired look. And while I think there is maybe some truth to that, I think we can’t forget that Hollywood is pushing this look as the ideal look for men, and it’s just as unrealistic as the stick thin, large breast and butt look that Hollywood says is the ideal look for women. It’s further trying to define the exclusionary, narrow norm of people’s bodies. One of my favorite parts of that Tumblr thread is the person who wrote that Chris Hemsworth, “a absolute god of a man,” goes through the same kind of dehydration that Jackman did for his shirtless scenes in the Thor movies. “That’s the benchmark,” they wrote, “look at Chris Hemsworth and process that he is told he isn’t suitable for a shirtless scene without prepping for three days and nearly fainting.” If Chris Hemsworth, just as he is on a regular day, isn’t good enough to go around without his shirt on, I don’t know who is.

In the end, it’s not about male gaze or female gaze… it’s people trying to control other people’s bodies and dictate what is “ideal.” And somewhere in society, we have decided that ideal is the same thing as normal. But ideal is something that is generally supposed to be greater than the norm, something to strive for and often never achieve. It is literally the opposite of real. Which leaves the rest of us way, way out in the field.