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“Drugs, Sports, Body Image, and G.I. Joe” / 5-Column Vocabulary ChartWord / TextDefinition as taken from ContextDenotative / Dictionary DefinitionSynonymsVisual / Sketch Which classic American doll has been a staple of childhood from the boomer babies onward, has won iconic, if politically freighted, status in our culture, and possesses a waist so small and hemispheric projections so pronounced that no real adult could approach them without the help of potentially dangerous body enhancement therapies? (1) carried? to load or be burdened withfilled withBarbie? Well, yes. But Barbie has a male companion in the land of the outlandish physique, and his name is not Ken (2). Instead, we must look to a recent model of that old trooper, G.I. Joe, to see a match for Barbie's cartoon anatomy, and to find a doll that may be as insidious a role model for boys as Ms. Triple-D top, Size-2 bottom is for girls (2)....even as doctors and sports officials struggle to emphasize that such drugs are not only risky, illegal and unsporting, but, in many cases, worthless in enhancing performance (3). His biceps bulge so much that they are larger around than his waist, and, if ratcheted up to human size, they would be larger than even the arms of the grotesquely muscular Mr. Olympias of today, said Dr. Pope (5). Given the ubiquitous images of muscularity, as well as the mounting demands on young athletes to sprint faster, vault higher, lift heavier and otherwise impress cadres of easily disgruntled sports fans…(10). …experts say it is not surprising that the use of muscle-enhancing drugs has reached pandemic proportions…(10). Yet experts acknowledge that it is not enough to harangue athletes about the risks to their health (13).According to many researchers, the paradoxical element in the seemingly unstoppable epidemic of doping, or using performance enhancing drugs, is that most of the drugs do not work nearly as well as billed (17). ''Patients with acromegaly, who naturally overproduce growth hormone, often have muscle hypertrophy,'' he said. ''But their muscles are weak'' (18). ''I'm afraid I'm very cynical,'' Dr. Pope said. ''From my research, I've seen that the use of steroids and other drugs has infiltrated deeper into sports than the vast majority of the public realizes. It's like asking, how can we turn back from nuclear weapons? The technology is there. The genie is out of the bottle'' (23). Word / TextDefinition as taken from ContextDenotative / Dictionary DefinitionSynonymsVisual / Sketch ................
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