Introduction
Tyler Wood
Senior Essay Intro
Gender and mental health represent two related concepts in everyday life and culture in America. Gendered ideals and conceptions of identity pervade the public consciousness as a result of many interacting social forces, not the least of which being the mass media and advertising. Since the beginning of advertising and the consumer and commodity-driven culture it gave rise to, advertisers have sought to align products with gendered ideals of identity in an effort to persuade consumers to purchase their products. As Sut Jhalley aptly states in his examination of advertising and image-based culture, “the marketplace (and its major ideological tool, advertising) is the major structuring institution of contemporary consumer society” (Jhalley, 1995). Thus, advertising epitomizes a central ‘puppeteer’ role in dictating, however explicit or subtle, the ‘does and don’ts’ of consumer behaviors through the representations of products – and by extension provides a rubric of ideal social behavior for the consumer. Gender, one of the most visible and largely accepted categories of identity in popular culture, unsurprisingly occupies a principal position in the advertising industry’s repertoire of instruments to sell all kinds of products.
Along with its significant place in advertising, gender represents a key point in conceptions of individual difference in a host of other domains – notably in ideas pertaining to mental health and mental health expression and behavior. Various psychological literatures have noted differences in mental health patterns between males and females, though none present conclusive data to indicate an essential distinction between male and female mental health expressions and behaviors. Despite such inconclusiveness, the idea of essential differences often colors the public’s perceptions of males and females in relation to the mental health sphere. The ubiquity of gendered dictates of expressions and behaviors in popular media, such as advertising, serve to reinforce such dichotomous views. However, as some researchers note, the reality of the relationship between gender (a socially constructed concept of identity) and mental health reveals a complex web of other factors that cause the seeming contrast between male and female expressions and behaviors as they relate to mental health (Brooks, 2013). Gender socialization accounts for numerous differences in navigating everyday life for male and female individuals. From a mental health perspective, these gender socialized expressions and behaviors can contribute to the apparent division between expected male and female manifestations of mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety disorders (Lynch et al, 2013). Current statistics cite that women are diagnosed with depression around twice as often as men in the United States, but that male suicide rates reach up to four times higher than female suicide rates (Lynch et al, 2013). Statistics like these delineate disconnections in the recorded prevalence of certain mental health problems when examined through the lens of gender.
In an age of declining magazine publications, those that still flourish constitute useful sites of exploring how the deployment of gendered ideals reinforce gendered behavior and expressions. From a mental health standpoint, gendered expression and behavior result in different presentations and outcomes of mental problems for males and females respectively. These gender differences represent problematic points of discrepancy because they might account for under-diagnosing certain mental health issues – especially for males. Traditional masculinity often promotes ideals that conflict with the behavioral and expressive standards necessary to properly identify a given mental health condition, whereas dominant femininity often invokes ideals that correspond to accepted and productive approaches to addressing and dealing with mental health. Men’s Health and Women’s Health, two hugely popular and widely circulated men and women’s lifestyle magazines today, present advertisements to consumers that reinforce these gendered attitudes and behaviors and thus contribute to divergent approaches to recognizing and dealing with mental health problems.