Perspectives on the mediation of the quest for healthy masculinity: the case of the website Art of Manliness

Inspired by the phenomenological tradition of communication theory and research, this study applies frameworks relevant to the discourse on media, health, and society in a preliminary analysis of the Anglophone website Art of Manliness, which, without using the vocabulary of toxic or healthy masculinity, offers men actionable advice on personal development, in content that ranges from being generally about wellbeing to being almost medicalized. Toxic masculinity has been articulated, at the intersection of the social science and public health disciplines, as a gender issue and as a general social problem with implications on the health of communities. Movements for gender equality have inaugurated advocacies to curb this kind of masculinity, asserting that manhood can be expressed in healthier ways, especially in ways that honor women, but also in ways that respect the facticity of variety in how to live manhood. Missing from the literature is an examination of media cases exemplifying the search for healthy masculinity. I begin to close this gap by drawing from contemporary literature about toxic masculinity to enumerate a taxonomy of approaches to the problem. I also demonstrate the operationalizability of frameworks and concepts such as purity and danger, sociomaterialism, biovalue, and healthism in conjunction with textual analysis for future research about the mediation of healthy masculinity.