Critiquing Masculinity Myths: Rethinking Male Bodies, Obesity and Health in Context

摘要

Various myths or fabrications centre the problems of modern masculinity and malebodies while detracting attention from broader sociological dynamics. After lament-ing the general tendency to discredit groups of men and boys on the basis of nega-tive cultural stereotypes, this article is organized into two main sections. First,reference is made to critical writings on "the obesity myth" and the war on fat as agendered project. Second, it offers a lens on the broader social context which impactsupon people's life-chances, health and wellbeing regardless of their weight/fatnessand assumed aberrant behaviours. In so doing, connections are made with callswithin medical sociology and critical studies on men's health not to neglect embod-ied social structures and broader material conditions of existence. Such thinking,comprising efforts to theorize rising inequalities, serves as a point of contrast to a"narrowly logical" focus on "deficient" male bodies. Failure to think criticallyabout such matters, it will be argued, could result in the (unwitting) reproduction ofsocial inequity.