ABSTRACT
In this chapter the authors consider the concept of healthy masculinity and how it relates to language use, looking at labels like metrosexual and soft jock and asking whether they offer possible alternatives to toxic masculinity. The authors examine a corpus of news articles about healthy masculinity to identify how the term has been defined – what features characterise it, and is there agreement on what these are? They then consider language use in contexts which might involve healthier forms of masculinity, such as nursing and veganism, and they look at some of the ways that healthy masculinity has been encouraged through language, such as by calling out toxic forms, for example, through coinages like mansplaining, the notion of being an ally and rewriting narratives. The chapter ends by considering the extent to which healthy masculinity might represent a disavowal of masculinity, per se, and what the over-arching consequences of the term might be for how we conceive of gender.
