The Meaning of Headlines: 'wimp' - science

An article published on 6 September 2016 appeared in the Science section of Fox News with the headline: Men think going green will make them seem like wimps. What does ‘wimps’ mean? What does ‘going green’ mean?

The Oxford Dictionaries defines ‘wimp’ as ‘a weak and cowardly or unadventurous person’ – used as a verb, wimped, it means to ‘fail to do or complete something as a result of fear or lack of confidence.’

Dictionary Central says ‘wimp’ is a well-established term, appearing from the mid-1970s, although its exact origin is unclear. It may have originated from the British word ‘whimper’ used by undergraduates at universities, meaning girl – which has been obsolete since the 1930s. Wimpy was also a character in the Elzie Crisler Segar cartoons created in 1929 about Popeye the sailor who ate spinach for strength. Wimpy, whose full name was J Wellington Wimpy, unlike the strong spinach-eating Popeye, was a hamburger-eating, soft-spoken coward.  

‘Going green’ is ‘advocacy for, or work toward, protecting the environment from destruction or pollution’ according to the Free Dictionary – going environmental.

Why would men feel cowardly or unadventurous if they went environmental?

The article begins by mentioning that ‘women tend to be more environmentally conscious than men on all kinds of levels, from energy use to concern about climate change, reports The Washington Post.’

Business professor, James Wilkie, at the Notre Dame University in Indiana, conducted seven experiments to determine whether men ‘avoid or even oppose green behaviors in order to safeguard their gender identity.’ Reported in the Journal of Consumer Research (4 August 2016) the results were yes – being ‘green’ is equated with ‘being feminine, and men tend to shy away from it.’

The article continued that ‘male traits tend to conflict with this idea of maintaining a nice environment for other people’ and ‘men were more likely to donate to eco-friendly groups with more masculine logos’ says Wilkie in the article.

The Scorecard for the Fox News headline is 70%. It was a brief article, directing readers to the fuller article in The Washington Post. However, in the Fox News article, while it mentioned ‘shy’ and ‘protecting their identity’ it did not mention ‘coward’ or ‘unadventurous’ or ‘weak.’ The article mentioned that there was the assumption that men would appear to be ‘girly’ if they ‘went green.’  The word ‘wimp’ did not appear at all in the article.

The researcher Wilkie – not to be confused with Wimpy – is not cowardly about saying that ‘femininity and greenness are cognitively linked’ and that there are stereotypes about being an environmentalist. One of the stereotypes is that men may not be adventurous enough to go green because it may give other people an incorrect impression about their masculinity. All the very green men – such as Sir David Attenborough, Jean-Michel Cousteau, Sunderlal Bahuguna, John Wamsley, and the Incredible Hulk – will say that there is nothing wimpy about going green.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/09/06/men-think-going-green-will-make-them-seem-like-wimps.html

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).