What happened to testosterone?

The biological mystery

Stories about the end of the Western man always arrive fully dressed: soft jawline, civilisation in collapse. The data, less elegantly, end up arguing among themselves.

In 2025, a meta-regression brought together 1,256 papers, 1,504 study groups and 1,064,891 participants. More recent papers reported lower average levels even after the available adjustments for sample size, age, body mass index and method. This is not, however, a film shot with the same men over fifty years. The figures are aggregated and exposed to differences in selection, sampling and laboratory practice.

When the authors narrow the field to measurements made by mass spectrometry, the decline is not confirmed; only five of the 117 papers in that subgroup predate 2000. A comparison of two large US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey cycles likewise finds no significant difference in total or free testosterone after adjustment. Obesity, medication, sleep and the environment remain plausible hypotheses, not a single explanation already proved.

You cannot see testosterone

Testosterone enjoys a rare privilege: everyone believes they can recognise it. In a beard, a pair of shoulders, the way someone sits with his knees too far apart; even in the choice of a shirt. A photograph, unfortunately, shows muscle, clothes, pose and a variable amount of vanity. Genetics, age and development do the rest; for aggression, the average association found by studies is very small and depends on context.

Fifty years of men, all in the same present

Every era claims to have invented a new man and immediately buys him a jacket. Martin P. Levine places gay macho in the 1970s; Susan Jeffords read the “hard body” of Reagan-era cinema as a political body before it was a workout plan. The yuppie adds class, consumption and a tie expensive enough to look restrained. In 1994, Mark Simpson coins “metrosexual”; in the 2000s, the male bathroom finally acquires more than one shelf.

When testosterone becomes an answer

Every anxiety widespread enough eventually finds someone willing to put it on subscription. The commercial “Low T” frame takes fatigue, desire, age and performance, arranges them under the same bathroom light, and offers sex, muscle, energy and rank. In a 2022 audit, six of seven direct-to-consumer platforms offered testosterone to an undercover 34-year-old customer with normal levels who wanted to preserve his fertility. It is a small sample, so it documents a practice, not its prevalence. Meanwhile, the page had already asked for his card details.

Fitness marketing sells performance and muscle; the manosphere uses the hormone as a ranking system; supplements promise to raise it, although a review of 27 substances or formulations found that most do not reliably increase total testosterone. Replacement therapy for selected patients belongs to the clinic. The booster with a lightning bolt on the bottle belongs to the aisle where male insecurity meets graphic design.

A qualitative analysis published in 2026 of Instagram and TikTok content from testosterone platforms identified four recurring frames: a crisis of masculinity, younger men and fitness, self-optimisation, and the opposition between the “real” man and femininity. It describes the messages in circulation; it does not measure how many people believe them.

Jordan-Young and Karkazis reconstruct the history that turns testosterone into the scalable essence of masculinity. Hooven offers a different, evolutionary account. The disagreement is not about whether the hormone exists, but about how many human things it can be made to explain.