Cliché or truth?
“When is a man a man?” – A song under the microscope
Herbert Grönemeyer’s song “Männer” contains many truths. Or maybe not? photo
© Gerald Matzka/dpa
They’re smart, they smoke a pipe, they’re at risk of heart attacks and – perhaps worst of all – “thin hair.” Are the “men” clichés still true decades after the Grönemeyer song was released?
Next year, Herbert Grönemeyer’s hit “Men” 40 years old – a decisive age for (some) men. Some have their receding hairlines removed, others stop smoking. For World Men’s Day on November 19th, a closer look at some of the theses from “Men”.
“Men get thinning hair”
No matter whether Jürgen Klopp, Elon Musk or Christian Lindner: Men want to be beautiful and those with “thin hair” are having their hair transplanted more and more often.
According to figures from the German Society for Aesthetic-Plastic Surgery (DGÄPC), which are available to the German Press Agency in advance, hair transplants accounted for around 7.1 percent of all aesthetic-plastic treatments in this country this year. That was 5.3 percentage points more compared to the previous two years. The DGÄPC statistics for 2023 will be officially published on November 30th.
Accordingly, hair transplants for men climbed from the 15th most popular procedure in Germany to the 5th place – a record. A look at the different generations also shows that transplants are particularly popular with men up to 50.
The procedure was first described at the beginning of the 19th century by the German surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach, as the specialist in plastic, reconstructive and aesthetic surgery and President of the DGÄPC, Alexander Hilpert, says.
However, hair tutoring in Germany was associated with a lot of shame for a long time. It was only around ten years ago that football coach Jürgen Klopp was one of the first to take it easy: “Yes, it’s true, I underwent a hair transplant. And I think the result turned out really cool, right?” he said in 2013. In other countries, however, this hasn’t been a big issue for a long time, says Hilpert.
“Men are terribly smart”
Being smart can mean many things. If you look at the student statistics, for example, you can see: According to the Federal Statistical Office, there were more than 2.9 million students in Germany in the 2022/23 winter semester. Accordingly, slightly fewer men (49.8 percent) than women (50.2 percent) were enrolled.
When Grönemeyer’s song “Männer” came out in 1984, things looked completely different: in the winter semester of 1983/1984, almost 1.27 million students were enrolled in what was then West Germany, according to the Federal Statistical Office. At that time the proportion of men was more than 60 percent.
However, the figures show that over the years it has not been fewer men who have chosen an academic career, but rather more and more women, so that women have even overtaken men today.
“Men get heart attacks”
According to the Federal Statistical Office, around 45,000 people died of heart attacks in this country in 2021 – 60 percent of them men.
After World War II, the number of heart attacks in Western countries reached epidemic proportions. The World Health Organization (WHO) therefore decided to take action against it in the 1980s. Among other things, the monitoring of around 13 million affected people in 21 countries was intended to clarify whether heart attack prevention actually leads to lower death rates.
In fact, the death rate among men has declined somewhat in some of the countries studied, largely thanks to prevention, according to the WHO. “When you look at the data, you can see that the largest contribution to the decline in heart attack mortality in men comes from the reduction in smoking,” the study says. But medical progress also contributed to the decline.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, most people in Germany still die from cardiovascular diseases, which also include heart attacks. However, the chance of surviving a heart attack is higher than it was in the 1980s.
“Men smoke (pipe)”
In general, fewer people smoke today than 40 years ago. “The proportion of smokers in the adult population has been declining slightly since the 1980s,” says the Federal Ministry of Health. In Germany, 23.8 percent of adults smoke. At around 27 percent, men smoke more often than women, around 21 percent of whom smoke.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, the largest proportion of smokers in 2021 were in the 35 to 40 age group. Around 30 percent of this age group smoked.