Is bigorexia also behind the murder of Maria Campai?

Maria Campai was killed with her bare hands, perhaps for fun. “I wanted to know what it felt like to kill a person,” confessed the 17-year-old murderer. We are facing another heinous crime committed by a little boy for trivial reasons. The narcissistic society is becoming more and more ruthless, selfish and dehumanizing: the other person becomes a puppet who can be manipulated, exploited and used for one's own interests without any compassion. People even kill for pleasure, and this motive is far more common than one would think. But let's try to dig a little deeper to understand the particular dynamics of this particular crime.

The glorification of femicide

Among the various clues left by the young executioner online, in his social media posts and in his research, two elements particularly stood out to me: the idealization of Filippo Turetta and the obsession with muscles. “Turetta, good boy” and again: “You will always be a hero,” he wrote online. Understanding, justifying, and glorifying femicide is an unfortunately common dynamic in the “incel” world (i.e., the “involuntary celibates,” heterosexual men who are frustrated by their inability to have sexual and sentimental relationships to build up women). In fact, the 17-year-old has clearly displayed misogynistic, sexist and chauvinistic attitudes on social media, which he also apparently attributes to a lack of female appreciation. “Having been thin all my life, I thought about putting an end to it. I couldn't find a girlfriend (and still can't, and I've lost confidence). But the day I discovered the gym and started training and building muscle, I kept going and now I've been going to the gym for a year. I regret a lot of things I’ve done, but going to the gym isn’t one of them,” he said.

What is bigorexia?

This facial expression, combined with the countless photos and videos in which he proudly shows off his voluminous muscles, suggests that the young man also suffered from bigorexia, that is, an obsessive-compulsive disorder related to the size of his muscles, which are never visible big enough be. The bigorexic has usually experienced direct or indirect pressure (social models) on his body and therefore tends to perceive it as too thin. This leads him to abuse weight lifting as well as muscle mass increasing products, from nutritional supplements to anabolic steroids. It is a rapidly growing mental disorder that appears to affect almost exclusively men.

An offensive weapon

These extremely voluminous muscles are often used only for aesthetic purposes and sexual attraction, but in some cases they can also become an offensive weapon that you want to test in everyday life. For example, consider the White Brothers, who also had a passion for wrestling. Personally, I find overlapping dynamics between Willy Monteiro's crime and the murder of Maria Campai: machismo, the glorification of violence and brute force. What makes matters worse is that this is not a fight, but a clear and relaxed context. Just like the murderer, who after committing the crime seems to have continued his life as if nothing had happened until the day of his capture.

Article updated with new details on Saturday, October 5th