I recently ran across an article which was titled “Study: Macho men die younger” (on the USA Today website) and another article based on the same study which was titled “Study: Machismo Cuts Men’s Lives Short” (on the LiveScience website).
These two had me rolling my eyes in spots thanks to their superficiality.
For example, they indicated that male life expectancy was 75 and female life expectancy was 80, which is true … so far, so good.
But, in science, “what” is a lot easier to determine than “why” and that’s where they hit the slippery slope.
They attribute much of the difference to men being less likely “to seek such preventive health care as physicals, prostate exams and flu shots”. And they claim that macho men are less likely than non-macho men to emulate women’s health care patterns.
How do they know a guy is “macho” or not? They ask sophomoric questions designed to elicit “manly” opinions … so, in effect, if you buy into feminist rhetoric then you pass the test (i.e. you’re not one of those dreadful “macho men”) whereas if you do not parrot back the approved answer, then you’re “macho”.
Yikes!
Let’s think about this for a moment.
For example, males at every age have a higher death rate than do females of that same age. Does the fact that a two-year-old boy is more likely than a two-year-old girl to die that year result from the male toddler being “too macho” to go get a prostate exam? Hardly.
For that matter, the rates of spontaneous abortions (miscarriages) are higher for male fetuses than for female fetuses. What macho beliefs do those fetuses have that make it more likely for the prospective mother to miscarry?
Some of the explanations that they came up with were enough to make me gag. For example, the second of the two articles included this gem:
“For instance, men in high-status jobs ‘do not want to feel emasculated by placing themselves in the subordinate position of patient,’ the researchers note. Perhaps such men avoid the doctor because they have the resources to remedy any resulting health problems. In addition, men with high-status jobs practice more autonomy and freedom to disagree with authority opinions and so, in the same way, they may just ignore health recommendations, the researchers suggest.”
Sounds like “pop psychology” to me (what I’d expect a first-year psychology major to say, me having been one once). But having spent most of my work career as a senior executive, I observed exactly the opposite happen.
Companies take good care of their senior executives. And it isn’t just the big salaries, the obscene bonuses and larding on the stock options. Executives also get far better health care (all paid for by the company, of course).
And the executives won’t be allowed to opt out … the company’s Human Resources Department schedules executive physicals and monitors the results of each. Fact is, the company has a lot of money invested in their senior executives and there’s no way they would be cavalier about then keeping those “key assets” in good health.
Here’s the proof …
If you don’t think so, call up any hospital or doctors’ group and ask them to explain the difference between a regular physical and an “executive physical”. The first difference is the cost … executive physicals cost several times as much as a regular physical.
Why so expensive? Because they’re far more comprehensive … your prostate will be just one of many dozens of body parts that will undergo state-of-the-art testing.
You won’t find many men who undergo more diagnostic and preventative health care than senior executives. And many of those senior executives will have what the studies label “macho beliefs”.
The fact is that men with traditional beliefs tend to rise higher on the corporate ladder and to make more money on average than other men who have been tamed.
I suspect the reason why the study got that item wrong was because of another of their observations:
“In fact, men with low-status, stereotypically macho jobs, such as machine operators, truck drivers and construction workers, were more likely than other participants to head to the doctor.”
Of course guys in those sorts of jobs are more likely to go to the doctor … those are all jobs with high on-the-job injury rates! They’re a lot more dangerous than being a senior executive … and they’re not the sorts of jobs women gravitate toward. They may have more total doctor visits but it will mainly be to patch them up after workplace mishaps, and not “preventive maintenance”.
As studies go, this one seemed lamer to me than most.
Stay tuned,
Mack Doppler
Hi Mack,
excellent points about the connection of science and is the “study” really a study or not.
I would imagine that a more “macho” man is one who is also more stressed and certainly more prone to early death.
Did the USA TODAY article cite a definition for what they mean by “Macho?”
Happy dating and relationships, man
April Braswell
Hi April
The definition of “macho” that was given was pretty vague: “a stereotypical, old-school, John Wayne- and Sylvester Stallone-style approach to life”.
Whatever that means … she seems to be assuming that Hollywood movies are in fact an accurate reflection on how people actually live and behave. And that’s probably very far from the case, as why would people pay lots of money to go and see a movie that just replicates what they see around themselves (for free) every day? Escapism works only if you escape to a different way of living and behaving.
As for whether a more macho man (however defined) is one who is also more stressed and certainly more prone to early death, that also doesn’t necessarily follow. There was a time when the “Type A” personality (which is probably a more specific version of what “macho” might be) was supposed to correlate with heart disease. As I recall, though, the subsequent research on “Type A” personalities narrowed the negative effect down to just one aspect, that being “bitterness”. Hard-charging “Type A” guys who were not bitter at the world did just fine.
And that fits with what I’ve observed over the years. The hardest-charging “Type A” guys that I’ve known have been CEOs, and they tended to be (and to stay) in excellent health.
The “Type A” guys who were bitter were not the guys at the top of the pyramid (what is there to be bitter about if you made $40 million last year?). It was guys at lower rungs of the executive pecking order who had been passed over. There used to be a saying among CEOs to the effect that “I don’t GET stress … I GIVE stress!”
And there’s much truth to that … stress in a man reflects NOT being in control of his environment. If your wife pushes you around at home and your boss pushes you around at work, then you’ll be the kind of guy who will experience much stress as a result, will be likelier to neglect your health and in time will probably come down with life-shortening health issues.
I suspect that it isn’t “being a macho man” that causes health problems for guys, it’s “being an unsuccessful man”. So rather than “getting in touch with their feminine side”, it might make more sense for men to “get back in touch with their masculine side”.
Thanks very much for commenting and have a great day.
Mack Doppler