A few months ago, an orthopedic surgery resident told me a story I still think about. The worst patients to reset fractures on, she said, were men in their thirties. They scream, beg for anesthetic, and prolong the process as much as humanly possible. The best patients? Women in their sixties, who will sit unflinchingly still and remark in surprise when the process is 鈥渙ver already鈥�.
Anecdotal evidence should never be mistaken for data. Still, stories like this stick because they feel familiar. This winter, I鈥檓 constantly reminded of that conversation as the same cultural joke resurfaces: men get sick and suddenly behave as though they are on death鈥檚 door. A minor cold becomes a major medical event. 鈥淢an flu鈥� has become shorthand for this phenomenon.
The implication is obvious. Men, we are told, exaggerate illness. They adopt the patient role with enthusiasm, outsource basic functioning, and require a level of care wildly disproportionate to their symptoms.
From a gender-role perspective, the man flu narrative is more complicated than it first appears. Traditional masculinity leaves little room for visible vulnerability. Men are expected to be strong, stoic, and reliable. Illness, then, becomes one of the few socially acceptable contexts in which weakness is allowed. When being sick grants permission to rest, receive care, and openly express discomfort, it鈥檚 not hard to imagine why some men might lean into it.
But cultural narratives only get us so far. Beneath the jokes and stereotypes lies a more interesting question: is 鈥渕an flu鈥� simply performative, or is there something biological going on?
A 2017 review in the BMJ examined sex differences in immune responses to influenza. It found that and experience more side effects, suggesting a more robust immune activation. Higher levels of testosterone, on the other hand, where shown to be . Men with higher testosterone levels often show weaker vaccine responses, which could translate into more severe or prolonged illness. Taken together, this suggests that man flu may not be entirely performative.
However, not everyone agrees with this prior statement. A bluntly titled 鈥淢an flu is not a thing鈥� analyzed symptom severity and recovery in acute rhinosinusitis using both clinician-rated scores and patient self-reports. To support the man flu hypothesis, men would need to report worse symptoms than women while showing similar objective signs of illness.
That didn鈥檛 happen. Women actually reported higher symptom severity at baseline, but recovered faster. Clinician-rated symptoms were largely similar between sexes, with women again showing quicker improvement. The only consistent gender difference appeared in emotional symptoms, where women reported more distress early on but also faster remission.
The authors concluded that while men may recover slightly more slowly, the idea of male hypersensitivity isn鈥檛 supported by the data. More importantly, they cautioned against stigmatizing symptom distress. Pop-cultural jokes about man flu may discourage men from seeking care, while women, paradoxically, are still more likely to have their symptoms underestimated or diagnosed later.
Maybe the difference isn鈥檛 who feels more pain, but who feels allowed to show it. The orthopedic resident might still have her theories, but the data suggest the truth is messier and a lot less funny than the meme.
Sophie Tseng Pellar recently graduated from 黑料网爆吃瓜 with a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in the physiology program. She is continuing her graduate studies in the surgical and interventional sciences program at 黑料网爆吃瓜. Her research interests include exercise physiology, biomechanics and sports nutrition.
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