The last thing I was expecting when watching Sylvester Stallone, a man whose body in movies like “Rocky” had made him the ultimate image of masculinity, was to hear him say in his New York Times interview about his recently released memoir "The Steps" that he had struggled with bulimia. 

His confession took me back to something that happened last spring when I did an author event at a middle school to speak about body image issues.

One of the school administrators pulled me aside.

"Could you make sure to talk about boys as well as girls?" she asked. "We have a boy at school that’s struggling with an eating disorder.” 

“Of course,” I said, trying not to show my surprise.

I knew boys also had this mental health issue. But even I, who’d lived with bulimia, and had researched and written about eating disorders in numerous publications, still thought it was mostly a female issue.

Body dissatisfaction looks different in boys. It can be just as damaging

National Institute of Mental Health data has found that out of kids ages 13 to 18, 1.5% of boys had experienced an eating disorder. Even though the percentage is not as high as the 3.8% of girls, it shows an important statistic, that boys are also struggling with this complex mental illness that can be just as severe and life threatening. 

Stallone's story is especially meaningful because his eating disorder........

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