Bridgerton's Bee Scene and Men's Mental Health Stigma

In many ways, Anthony Bridgerton looks like the traditional romantic hero. A classically handsome, white guy in his 20s-30s, controlling, assertive, dominant, sexually experienced, self-assured. But under that, there is so much more to Anthony Bridgerton, and that's why he made such an impression on me this season.

One of the biggest aspects of this is his vulnerability because of his trauma. This comes out slowly and is teased out through the season until he is able to grow and learn and live with it rather than fear it. But one scene in particular stands our for me, and that's the Bee scene. In the book, this is a mostly comedic moment, though it does absolutely reference Anthony's trauma. The show, however, makes it one of the most dramatic and poignant moments that begins to show the humanity, the cracks in the carefully constructed facade of our male lead.

While he’s arguing with Kate at his family home, a bee lands on her and soon, stings her, sending him right back to the traumatic memories of losing his father. More than that, of watching his father fight to draw his last breaths after being stung. Anthony has an anxiety attack as the fear and his trauma well up and overtake him. The man who is always in control loses the stranglehold he keeps over himself and succumbs. As a fellow control freak with anxiety, I related to this on every level.

But I'm a woman. Even today, about half as many men go to therapy as women, and a lot of that has to do with ideas of what men are supposed to do, how they're supposed to behave. It's things like "man up," behaving just like Anthony, who didn't cry when his dad died, who put up a wall to keep out emotion and love. But when we do that, it has to come out. For Anthony, and for many people, that manifests as anxiety and, in this case, acute anxiety in a panic attack.

He needs help and support, and my favorite thing about this is that it's not only shown as okay for him to experience this, but it's a moment that makes him more of a romantic hero. It is what brings Anthony and Kate to their first almost-kiss. It makes her interested in him when previously she'd just been content to write him off.

The point is that showing emotion, even showing issues in his mental health, did not make him less of a man, and in fact made him more of one.

There is always a chance, in moments like this, especially in romances, that it becomes the trope where a virginal girl saves a broken man. Bridgerton avoids that deftly. Kate absolutely helps him in this moment, but it's up to Anthony to face his own grief and his own fears. He has to grow on his own -- has to apologize for the pain he's caused and face his own role for the future with truth and courage. It's a pretty impressive journey for a man who expresses quite a few traits that at least border on the toxic masculinity line at the beginning of the season.

The stigmas around masculinity are so strong, and scenes like this are so important if we're going to dismantle those ideas. Fiction affects real life, and the more we normalize mental health needs and help for all of us, but especially for men, the better.

So bravo to Bridgerton. Bravo to Jonathan Bailey who brought to life such a compelling show of masculinity that is seeking to conform to impossible, damaging standards, and that finds freedom in the failure of that "perfect" ideal manhood. Keep it up, Bridgerton, and as an audience, we should keep supporting media that does good work like this.