From Type A man to the hardy man: masculinity and health

This article describes the transition in American ‘stress’ literature from a focus on ‘Type A man’ to the ‘hardy man’. These two diagnostic categories were constructed in medical discourse and entailed certain notions of masculinity, class and health. The constructs explained the rise of unhealthy (coronary‐prone) American middle‐class white men in the 1950s and the emergence of healthy men in the same class, race and gender order in the 1970s. I show that the construction of Type A man rested on the medicalisation of the core values of traditional masculinity, while the term ‘hardy man’ demedicalised and legitimised these values.