
Body Beautiful
Young Australian men are traveling to Thailand to buy steroids they cannot legally get at home, part of a wider push to build the perfect physique. This Al Jazeera 101 East episode follows men who spend hours daily in the gym and months on strict diets before turning to what they call "stacking," combining veterinary drugs and fertility medication into cocktails meant to accelerate muscle growth. Australia has some of the strictest anti-steroid laws in the world, so those unwilling to risk prosecution at home fly to countries with looser regulation instead. Health experts interviewed describe the physical toll: heart and liver damage, baldness, infertility, on top of the psychological condition psychologists call body dysmorphia. The film sets this alongside interviews with the men themselves about why the risk feels worth it, pointing to social pressure and social media as drivers of an obsession with size and definition. Its central question is blunt: how far will someone go, and what will they take, to look a certain way.