David Mitchell (the comedian, not the novelist) argues that men and women have different attitudes towards their own health, which is a reasonable thing to say. He suggests that men model their health in a binary manner of ‘well’ / ‘not well’ whereas women see their health as a continuum from perfect health to death. Nice idea, but not really borne out by the literature. He proffers the explanation that men are only capable of losing their lives, whereas women are capable of producing more lives as well as dying. This is comedy, but there may be a grain of truth there. Like most of the material Mitchell puts online, the comments are almost as good as the content. Just goes to show, you can’t be too careful.
- Dom
