Erkek Dergilerinde Sağlıklı Erkek Neden İdeal Erkektir? Men’s Health Dergisi'nde Hegemonik Erkeklik ve Popüler Sağlık Söylemi

Abstract

Why healthy male is ideal male in men’s magazines? Hegemonic masculinity and popular health discourse in Men’s Health magazineResearches on men’s health discourse, especially within popular media representations, have questioned some of the assumptions presented concerning masculinity and men’s health, and have predominantly focused on the connections between hegemonic masculinity and unhealthy practices. Men’s magazines as a popular media sphere, construct a discourse presenting advices about gathering health, well-being, perfectible or perfect male body and warning about threatening health risks. Men’s Health magazine represent a media sphere where the discourse of hegemonic masculinity and popular health have been constructed. In this magazine, neo-liberal models of health are generally emphasized and men are presented as active and entrepreneurial individuals who are able to maintain their own health within contexts appropriate to discourse of hegemonic masculinity and through the ‘rational management of risk’. In this study, texts in the magazines have been examined, which are representing healthy male who is willing to maintain his own health and able to take responsibility for his own health. Three issues of Men’s Health magazine (June-July-August 2012) –Turkey editions– have been analyzed through critical discourse analysis in order to highlight the neo-liberal models of health which are represented as the grounds of the advices presented in the texts. Findings reveal that Men’s Health has given health advices both promoting neo-liberal models of health and reproducing a type of hegemonic masculinity associated with negative health attitudes and behaviours.