Men, Machismo & Masks

 

“Preventing disease is like fishing. Only you never actually catch anything.” 

From one of a series of “wear a mask in public” ads appealing to male machismo.

We know that men, particularly as the get older – per my recent Man, Oh Man, Is that Virus Bad?! blog – are more likely than women to have a more serious infection/long-term impairments from COVID-19. The number doubles after age 60. Yet men tend to wear coronavirus masks less than women. Even when they “wear” masks, many sort of don’t. In New York City, for example, “Men were also considerably more likely than women to be wearing their masks in a kinda-sorta way — nostrils peeking over, mask under chin, mask dangling from one ear strap.

“Setting aside these partial mask-wearers, and those holding masks in hand — all of whom arguably deserve some credit if they mask up fully when approaching a crowd — the numbers boiled down to this: Nearly one in three men were walking around unmasked, while only about one in six women were.” New York Times, August 20th. These characteristics are more about the American experience than what is happening in Europe, for example. American pioneer spirit? That many American men do not respond well to authority? Or “risk” is just what a man’s man “does”?

“Much debate and speculation over why some men just won’t wear masks has focused on past research, which shows that men who identify with a certain brand of traditional masculinity tend to engage in expressly unhealthy behavior like eating junk food or avoiding annual doctor’s visits. A more recent survey from June found men were more likely than women to think masks were uncool or signaled weakness.

“Preliminary research from Boston College Developmental Educational Psychology professor James Mahalik and doctoral students Michael Di Bianca and Michael Harris confirms the concept that men who identify with certain macho qualities are less likely to wear a mask. More specifically, their work suggests that a penchant for individualism and skepticism towards science may more directly correlate to one’s decision to don a mask. If the findings hold true, they could provide deeper insight into how to get more men to protect themselves and others against COVID-19.

“To understand why some men don’t wear masks, Mahalik surveyed 596 men across 49 states, the vast majority of whom identify as heterosexual. The survey went out to men across a spectrum of ages and incomes, the latter of which varied from less than $10,000 a year to over $200,000 a year. Roughly a third of the participants were men of color. The survey asked men to rate whether they identified with certain masculine norms and indicate what they thought about the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for mitigating the spread of COVID-19. On whole, respondents felt positively about the guidelines around COVID-19 and said they complied with them (because this is self-reported data, researchers cannot confirm that men were actually or consistently wearing masks). Unsurprisingly, men who felt negatively about public health recommendations like social distancing and mask wearing, also held traditional masculine ideals around emotional self-control, self-reliance, dominance, winning, power over women, and heterosexual self presentation. But what was more interesting to Mahalik, was a separate finding:

“‘What we found was that more traditional masculine men found fewer benefits to following the CDC guidelines,’ Mahalik says. ‘They saw more barriers in their way to following those guidelines. They had less confidence in science and they had less empathy towards people who are vulnerable or in high risk categories.’ Mahalik and his colleagues posited these other prevalent ideas seem to be more directly related to men not wearing masks than traditional masculinity itself.

“Up until this point, research seemed to indicate that a particular brand of hypermasculinity was closely related to whether men chose to lead healthy lives. It is well established that men who prize traditional masculine norms like toughness engage in more risky behavior and use preventative health services less. But this research suggests that these ancillary ideas around science and community may be more responsible for how traditionally masculine men think about wearing a mask. That finding has implications for how public health officials can appeal to these men. Rather than trying to convince uber-masculine men to change core elements of their identity, public health officials could instead focus on dismantling certain beliefs that may be leading them to be less healthy. In the case of COVID-19, public health officials might consider chipping away at the individualism that may keep men from wearing a mask by focusing on the more pro-social aspects of traditional masculinity.

“‘Instead of this notion of being dominant and controlling your emotions and being self-reliant, how about being a guardian, being a protector? Those are very traditional masculine messages,’ Mahalik says. Rather than a total rebranding of what it means to be masculine, this approach suggests refocusing the lens around traditional masculinity’s more positive aspects. A protector wears a mask, because they care about their community and their families; a guardian wants people to be safe.” FastCompany.com, September 2nd. On the other hand, you can ask women why they think men resist wearing masks. You just might get a vocabulary lesson.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and when you ask yourself why American men “sew their wild oats” and why “boys will be boys” – while women still don’t get that “free pass” in what is supposed to be an egalitarian society, you get