Unintentional Injuries: Media for Men

     As I move down the list of the biggest killers of American men according to the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/men/lcod/2008/index.htm) the next item will be a little trickier than the first two (Heart Disease and Cancer). The third leading cause of deaths in American males is the unintentional injury. I bought two magazines to review: the November issue of Men's Journal and the December issue of Men's Health.

     Both magazines covered ways to avoid small injuries while exercising. However, neither magazine featured articles about how to avoid fatality through unintentional injuries. What both magazines did were to feature articles and advertisements that promoted risky behavior.

    Most articles and advertisements in Men's Journal that are promoting physical activity revolve around sports such as mountain hiking, mountain climbing, skiing, surfing, and one article about a man who crossed the Arctic in a rowboat. All of these involve inherit dangers; particularly the last one. Men's Health similarly has an article about winter sports (skiing and snowboarding) to improve health and features a watch advertisement for Armitron depicting a man rock climbing while using lines such as, "Make Time for Adventure" and, "Defying Gravity 1:38" as a man hangs horizontal from the face of a cliff. The short article about skiing and snowboarding depicts ways to avoid minor injuries. Most of the articles and advertisements in Men's Health are focused on fashion, mental/emotional health, and exercising indoors.
     These advertisements and articles show a trend in the media to portray males as risk takers, one might even say danger seekers. Television commercials come to mind as well. Commercials with men playing football, riding dolphins, jumping from planes, violent video games, climbing mountain sides for a cold Coors Light, and the list goes on and on all involve men doing dangerous stunts.  I watch less than five hours of television a week and came up with that list, so obviously there are many more out there.
     To explore the dangerous, the deadly, is a boost to the male ego. This no doubt reflects or is a reflection of unintentional injuries being the third largest killer of men in the United States. However,  an important question arises here: are the magazine companies/television companies reflecting males' natural tendency to explore the dangerous, or are they creating a social stereotype for men to fit that is endangering the health of the male population by feeding on its testosterone?

Cancer and Media

     This week I took a look at the coverage of cancer (second on the list of the CDC'S causes of American male deaths) on both Men's Health and MSN's websites. It is worth noting that on MSN's main health page men are fairly represented. Most articles (there were six lead stories), some were about children, were unisex. They concerned health topics such as diet cola and cancer in a way that included all people not just women or just men. Because this blog concerns men's health exclusively I dug a little deeper. It is a little harder to find MSN's men's health page than that of Men's Health obviously, but MSN is designed to appeal to a wider audience.
     Of the articles on MSN's health page not one covered cancer. Now, this might not be entirely fair to MSN. They might rotate their articles on a very regular basis and have many less articles when compared to Men's Health, but the fact remains that as pertaining to strictly men their information flow of male cancer was nonexistent. Their featured articles were, "How to eat like a (cave)man" (this articles subheading was, "Did cavemen have abs"), "10 ways to find more energy", and "7 foods for better sex". The focus on MSN's page, like that of the majority of Men's Health, is to promote a sexy approach to being healthy, and not to address major health concerns. Apparently sex sells. Who knew?
     In contrast to MSN, Men's Health health news section held 204 stories on hand. The first article for the second biggest killer of US men was sixty-three articles into the list. Sixty-Three. The title of the article was, "How Exercise can Help Cure Cancer". The article didn't make any claims that exercise could cure cancer alone or use extreme sources, but it was, and you'll have to excuse me, sixty-third on the list. It wasn't about how to prevent cancer, or about what might cause cancer that you could avoid, but that exercise might boost your system enough to help fight cancer. It was actually a good article, but I asked myself, "Self, how far down the list is an article that actually promotes not getting cancer through being informed?"
     I delved on and got bored at story One hundred and twenty and searched their site. Seriously, who even goes that far on their site? The first story was titled "Cancer-Proof Your Body". The article was based on the research of Gary Stoner, Ph.D from THE Ohio State University medical center. The basis of the information was this, don't go to smoking establishments (second hand smoke is bad for you), and eat/drink a lot of fruit. This information was well informed and well represented. Steve Mazzucchi gave tips about how to apply the research to the common man's life as well. The fact hangs though, that Men's cancer is a very underrepresented subject in men's health news, as these two sources go at least.