Forget Shah Rukh Khan’s six-pack abs in his latest Bollywood flick Om Shanti Om; the ability of men to attain and maintain even normal body structure is increasingly affecting their performance in bed.

A first-of-its-kind study that looked into the role of body image in relationships shows that like women, men too feel a heightened sense of body shame during physical intimacy. And this is leading to decreased sexual pleasure and sexual satisfaction among them, says Diana Sanchez, a psychology professor at Rutgers University, US, and lead author of the study. The findings are reported in the latest issue of the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.

“I believe body image has a huge impact on interpersonal relationships. Moreover, the role of body image from the point of view of men is a subject that has been understudied,” Sanchez observes.

A mounting obesity epidemic fuelled by a junk food culture and sedentary lifestyles is already affecting the quality of sex life of many across the world. A study by researchers at Duke University in the US a couple of years ago found that obese people are up to 25 times more likely to report sexual problems such as lack of desire, decreased enjoyment, avoidance of sex and performance difficulty. About a third of the adult population of the US suffers from obesity, according to data available with the International Obesity Task Force, a London-based non governmental organisation.

However, psychologists in India are divided over how body shame would affect Indian men. While a section of them feels the balance of power in marital relationships in largely conservative societies such as ours is heavily tilted towards the male, and men are thus least bothered about such concerns, others think that the tension is more than obvious in the higher strata.

Past theories have elaborated on how women are concerned about their physical appearance. For instance, in a 1997 study, US psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Tomi-Ann Roberts detailed how body concerns were impairing sexual functioning and satisfaction among women. In her celebrated work The Beauty Myth (1990), feminist writer Naomi Wolf attacks the legacy of the West that seems to make women feel that their bodies are inferior to those of men. While one in 10 men feels “strongly dissatisfied” by his body, one third of women are “strongly dissatisfied” by theirs, wrote Wolf.

But things seem to have changed since then, if the study by Sanchez and her University of California, San Francisco, collaborator Amy Kiefer is to be believed. “Body dissatisfaction has risen among both men and women in the last 10 years,” Sanchez told KnowHow.

According to the latest work, in the US, men’s use of Botox (a chemical injected into facial muscles to reverse signs of ageing) increased by 88 per cent in 2003 compared with the position in 2002. During the same period, the number of men undergoing rhinoplasty (a cosmetic surgical procedure to improve the appearance of the nose) shot up by 47 per cent.

The scientists chose 320 volunteers (122 men and 198 women) between 17 and 71 years. All of them were heterosexuals with previous sexual experience. Subsequently, they analysed their body shame and sexual self-consciousness quotients by making them answer on a scale of 1 (strongly agree) to 7 (strongly disagree) a number of questions on the body, fitness and sexual intimacy. The volunteers were asked to respond to statements such as: “When I cannot control my weight, I feel something must be wrong with me”, “The worst part of having sex is being nude in front of another person”, and so on.

Once their body shame index was assessed, they were asked to rate their sexual arousability, difficulty in reaching orgasm and sexual pleasure.

The study found that both the female and male volunteers were affected by body shame and sexual self consciousness, but the degree of concern expressed by the former was a tad higher. Body image concerns, although on the rise among men, remain still higher among women, the scientists feel.

Such concerns can adversely affect one’s ability to forge and maintain healthy and enjoyable sexual relationships. Clinical interventions such as “couples therapy” might then be needed to improve body image, Sanchez feels.

“It is too western a concept and is hardly applicable to our context,” observes Rajat Mitra, director of Sanchetan Society for Mental Health, New Delhi. In the US and Europe, there is greater awareness about sexual equality, thanks to the feminist movements of the Sixties and the ensuing decades. But in societies like India, male dominance is everywhere, extending to the bedroom as well. “When survival is of higher priority for women, where is the question of seeking pleasure,” asks Mitra.

And sex, for most people, is still an act of mere procreation. “Someone may be a globe-trotting IT professional, but his approach to sex would hardly be different from that of his grandfather or great grandfather,” Mitra says.

Also, people do not quite air their feelings of sexual displeasure or dissatisfaction in public, it being a taboo topic. Mitra, however, feels that the contrary may be just a couple of generations away and our society may soon enjoy sexual equality like in the West.

Yet other psychologists feel that concerns of body shame and sexual dissatisfaction are more common than ever today. Rajendra Barve, president of the Bombay Psychiatric Society, says that many patients come to him with such complaints. “A few years ago, men were worried only about penile length when it came to the ability to satisfy their partners. But nowadays, anxiety about physical appearance is much more,” Barve points out.

“An increasing number of people in heterosexual and same-sex relationships are concerned about their pot-belliness, hairiness and obesity and complain that these are marring their enjoyment of sex,” observes Barve, who runs a private clinic in India’s commercial capital.