Gender, Health, and Popular Culture: Historical Perspectives

Introduction

Introduction Cheryl Krasnick Warsh H ealth is a gendered concept in Western cultures.1 The healthy man is strong, assertive, tolerant, moderate in his appetites, hard-working, adventurous, responsible, and wise. The healthy woman is attractive, youthful -looking, self-sacrificing, empathetic, consciously limiting her appetites, hard-working, careful, mindful of the needs of her loved ones and others in her social orbit, and constantly seeking the wise advice of others to improve the appearance and health of herself and her family. This advice—wise or otherwise—has been liberally offered for at least 150 years by traditional sources like older family members and friends, professional channels such as physicians and other “experts,” and newer venues, including newspapers, advertisements, magazines, exhibits, lectures, websites, and other mass media. This collection investigates the presentation and reception of gendered concepts of health from two perspectives. In both perspectives, concepts of health and gender are viewed through the lens of popular culture. The first section concerns the transmission of health information to women for their own consumption and in their customary role as family healers. This information was usually offered by public health officials, physicians, governments, and other authority figures, but also by corporations and advertisers to sell products as well as to promote healthy lifestyles. The second section is more theoretical in nature: gendered concepts of health were transmitted through visual representations of the ideal female and male bodies.Theseidealbodiesreflecteddominantsocio-economicandgeopolitical ideologies: they were overwhelmingly white, young, slim, prosperous, and free of disabilities. The prevailing discourse, therefore, assumed a racialized vii Introduction viii whiteness, and the Others, if cited at all, were presented in opposition to and confirmation of the dominant/healthy ideal. A persistent bombardment of similar images through a variety of media—fine art, advertising, movies, billboards, television, and magazines—resulted in the absorption of universal standards of beauty and health, and in generalized desires to achieve them. Both sections have been influenced by the theoretical perspectives that have fallen under the rubric of cultural studies, perspectives that have, since the 1980s,castagiantshadownotonlyuponliterarystudies,sociologyandcultural anthropology,and social history but also upon the study of women and gender, and, more recently, the study of the socio-cultural and historical determinants of health. As will be shown in these chapters, expert advice concerning health is proffered within an ideological framework. Ideology is a concept that has been employed in explaining the maintenance of power relations beyond class. Feminist theorists describe patriarchal ideology as a tool in the concealment and distortion of gender relations. Studies in popular culture outline various “ideological forms,” such as television programming, fiction, or popular music, as texts that “always present a particular image of the world.”2 Two influential definitions of ideology stress the way in which we unconsciously experience it. Roland Barthes considered “myth” (ideology) to operate at “the level of connotations … that texts and practices carry.” Barthes’s insight, which is especially relevant to these chapters, was that myth is “the attempt to make universal and legitimate what is in fact partial and particular: an attempt to pass off that which is cultural (i.e. humanly made) as something which is natural (i.e. just existing).”3 Post-structural theorists, such as Ernesto Laclau and Jacques Derrida, introduced the concept of discourse;4 all texts and actions are seen by post-structuralists as not having inherent meaning but a meaning that is “articulated” within a certain set of circumstances and power relationships. Derrida emphasizes the power relationships that underlie binary oppositions such as black and white, sickness and health, female and male, in that these oppositions are never equal but reflect the domination of one over the other.5 Finally, the work of Michel Foucault has been extremely influential in interpretations of how the production, transmission, and acceptance of knowledge—through courts, medical schools, academic institutions, and the media—is subject to the operation of power structures. Within the context of these chapters, medical discourses concerning what is “healthful” behaviour for women and men are underwritten by what is considered“acceptable”behaviour.Sexuality and reproduction are highlighted because, as Foucault noted, the Victorian discourse over sexuality re-invented sexuality as a construct with its binary Introduction ix oppositions of what constitutes male and female, normal and abnormal sexual expression, and created the corresponding regulatory experts and agencies, such as asylums and reformatories, to deal with the transgressors.6 To be beautiful is to be healthy: this...