The starting point of this study is the claim, often expressed in research on men’s health, that the traditional models of masculinity, or hegemonic masculinity, conflict with healthy lifestyles and taking care of one’s own health. In health research, the assumed conflict has been used as an explanation for men’s unhealthier behaviours and lower life-expectancy. Thus, masculinity has been conceptualised as a system of norms and attitudes leading men to risk-taking activities and trivialising of health information. In recent years several, mostly European, researchers have questioned the one-dimensional view of masculinity and health, emphasising two major changes in their interrelations. First, the studies have referred to the changing ideals and flexibility of masculinities in contemporary men’s gender-identification. The current cultural models of manhood involve contradictory elements which, according to several empirical studies, lead to negotiations between ‘old’ and ‘new’ masculinities for the contextual definitions of maleness. A second major change has been the growing valuation of health. Qualitative studies have shown that modern men are increasingly interested in health issues and enter into negotiations over gendered meanings related to health in diverse interactive situations. The traditional image of men resisting health awareness and healthy lifestyles may thus no longer be a central component of ‘hegemonic masculinity’. The potential conflict between masculinity and health-awareness may be conceptualised as an ideological dilemma (Billig et al. 1988). Both masculinity and healthiness of lifestyle are seen as normative and ideological expectations guiding individual action. This study approaches the apparent conflict between masculinity and healthiness from a critical, discursive and research material-based perspective by exploring constructions of masculinity and healthiness as well as their interrelations via thematic interviews with Finnish paper mill workers. Both healthiness and masculinity are understood as sets of discourses, involving conflicting and contrary themes and reproduced and challenged in interaction as part of participants’ contextual identity work. The general aim of this study is to analyse the contrary and conflicting themes contained in situational constructions of gender and healthiness in men’s interview talk: how the potential tensions, conflicts and dilemmas are presented, negotiated and resolved in interactive situations. The empirical material of the study consists of 14 personal interviews and six focus groups with 23 male, mostly blue collar workers from the paper industry. The interviews are approached from the discourse analytic perspective and, methodologically, the study draws from the tradition of discursive psychology. The theoretical and methodological approaches of the study are presented in Chapters 1-3. The empirical section begins from Chapter 4 with analysis of the argumentation used by the interviewees to justify their self-ratings of health. The chapter explores the ways in which men define health in the interview context, interpret the causalities of health and illness, and discuss the potential conflicts involved in assessing their personal health. Chapter 5 examines how health information is discussed in men’s interviews, with special attention on how critique is expressed towards health information. It analyses the ways in which the contents and role of health information are interpreted in relation to healthy lifestyle choices, as well as the ideological and contrary themes incorporated in these interpretations. Furthermore, the chapter explores how gendered discourses emerge in health information related discussions. Chapter 6 approaches men’s health from a non-individual perspective: the focus of the chapter is on how the gender gap in life-expectancy is explained and, accordingly, on which premises ‘men’s health’ as a social phenomenon is constructed in the interviews. Chapter 7 analyses how healthiness and gendered features are discussed when considering the four central health-related behaviours: physical exercise, diet, alcohol and smoking. Chapter 8 examines how the interviewees evaluate their health-related behaviours as a whole, and how they justify the healthiness of their lifestyle despite certain unhealthy ‘transgressions’. In addition, guarding of the ‘masculine self’ is explored in talk about healthy lifestyles. Chapter 9 summarises the results and presents the conclusions made. The central characteristics of this interview material turned out to be the men’s attempts to present their own lifestyles as healthy, i.e. asserting certain lifestyle compliance, and the aspiration to present themselves as rational, health-aware and responsible citizens. The essential discursive practice was to emphasise moderation as the guiding principle of healthy choices. The discourse of healthiness was dominant particularly in those interview contexts where the participants’ own personal lives, health and health-related choices were discussed. Other kinds of health-related interpretations, e.g. critical views on health promotion, were most frequently expressed in non-personal contexts. Traditional descriptions of men, including gender relationships and differences, were similarly mainly brought forward in contexts where the accounts were not directly linked to the speaker himself. Both the critical views on health promotion and the gendered interpretations of health were, however, often softened. In my interpretation, this reflects the central position of healthiness and egalitarianism in the Finnish society: it seems inappropriate to express strict views on either theme, particularly to an outside interviewer. In the analyses of the interview materials, systematic differences were also found between the personal interviews and the focus group discussions: the personal interviews were characterised by emphasis of the healthiness of one’s own lifestyles and caution in gender-related descriptions, whereas in focus groups there emerged more critical views on e.g. health education but also more traditional conceptions of the relationship between gender and health. Detailed analysis of the interview materials demonstrated the interview talk about health and gender to incorporate several kinds of contrary interpretations, and that negotiation of these interpretations is a profound element of men’s health-related thinking. On the basis of this study it may also be concluded that these working class men have adopted the central messages and discourses of health promotion and health education. The discourse of healthiness dominated the interviews over ‘Real Man’ interpretations. Thus the idea of conflict between masculinity and healthy lifestyle turns out to be a black-and-white interpretation, which fails to reach the diversity and contextual variability of men’s health-related thinking. The study rather gives reason to believe that health-awareness is gradually becoming one of the central ideals of masculinity and thus a component of today’s hegemonic masculinity.