Managing health and masculinities : negotiating identities over the life course

To date, very little research has been conducted into how men negotiate masculinities over the life course, and how health and ageing affect men's masculinities. This thesis considers the importance of gender to men's health issues and develops a theoretical model to analyse how men develop strategies to negotiate masculinities, health and ageing over the life course, and the importance of the body to men's identities. This thesis also considers men's health issues and men's masculinities across a broad range of ages. In Australian society, the smooth, lean, toned, youthful male body has come to represent the culturally dominant ideal that personifies hegemonic masculinity (e.g., strong, hard, powerful, virile, competent). As men's bodies' age and shift further from the ideal, little is known about how they come to negotiate masculinity. Furthermore, how this transition affects their health and wellbeing is currently under-explored. Health, in turn, may also be negotiated to protect a masculine identity. Little is understood as to how and why men negotiate masculinities over the life course or what this ultimately means to men's health more broadly. This thesis investigates these issues by engaging in empirical research involving in-depth interviews with men from around Tasmania, Australia, and analysing the results to understand what health and masculinity mean to men of different ages, and the ways in which each impinges on the other over the course of men's lives.