Masculinities and Mental Health

Masculinities and Mental Health explores literary texts, images, and performances which engage with the under-explored topic of eating disorders in men. Eating reflects prevailing cultural norms that prescribe or condemn who eats when, what and how much. Underpinning these norms are highly gendered ideas regarding which body weight, shape and size is deemed appropriate for men and women, boys and girls. Eating disorders are psychiatric illnesses commonly associated with females only and expressed through extreme eating behaviour, excessive exercise or food avoidance. The fact that men can suffer from anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder and other types of eating disorders too, presents a challenge not only to healthcare disciplines but also to public and cultural perceptions. Exploring these thematic and formal themes, this volume scrutinizes standardised concepts of masculinity and male mental health in contemporary discourse. This book includes literary writings, graphic novels, art, photography, performance, film, and ego-documents on social-media from North America and central Europe from the 1970s to the present, as well as textual and non-textual sources from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan. Masculinities and Mental Health also explores a global dimension of the topic by examining eating disorders and broader concepts of masculinity as Western cultural imports.