The dismissive nature of the phrase “boys will be boys” is often decried today. It is frequently brought up in relation to accountability for one’s actions. When young boys do something rowdy, raucous, and poorly behaved, the phrase “boys will be boys” often rears its head. Young women are held to an expectation of decorum that young men are not. Other problems with this phrase include its distinction between the behavior of boys and girls, as though there is something inherently different about the way children will act based on their gender. As adults, men are dismissed in different ways than as children. While they are held to a standard for public behavior, “locker room talk” and controversial remarks are marked up as being an activity all men do in private, or being a product of how they were raised. Women very rarely receive this same benefit of the doubt with regard to their behavior. Whereas the dismissal of men’s behavior works to their advantage, the same dismissive attitudes are detrimental to women. Women face this type of indifference when it comes to health matters. The lack of research regarding women’s health, gynecological, mental, and otherwise, gives many, even physicians, an excuse to write off many women’s health issues as unsolvable and not-diagnosable issues, to be solved with a pain prescription. After reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s piece “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the reader is left with many questions regarding the treatment of the mentally ill woman. Such a poor level of care is abhorrent to the modern reader. The points brought up in Veena Shatrugna’s academic article “Backpain, the Feminine Affliction” from Economical and Political Weekly and the points brought up in T. K. Sundari Ravindran’s academic article “Research on Women's Health: Some Methodological Issues” for Development in Practice help to significantly shape the readers understanding of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s piece “The Yellow Wallpaper” by giving insight into how physicians and society interpret women’s illness. 

In Shatrugna’s piece, “Backpain, the Feminine Affliction”, the dismissal of backpain is shown to be a result of its perception as being a women’s issue. The paper opens with the disclaimer that “a complaint like backpain may accompany almost every illness in women,” (Shatrugna WS-2). She asserts that this is an affliction escaped by few, not even “typists, clerks, teachers, nurses or housewives” (Shatrugna WS-2). She states that “most women’s experiences with health specialists have been frustrating—though women constantly complain of backpain doctors prefer to administer drugs for clinically well diagnosed diseases” and place backpain in the “nonspecific” category. After a few years of practice this complaint ceases to register in the minds of doctors,” (Shatrugna WS-2). Backpain is caused by misalignment of vertebrae, and Shatrugna states that this is caused by two factors: bone density and back muscle tone. These are common issues in women because women’s diets often are calcium lacking, leading to poor bone density, and women’s jobs require them to only use certain sets of their back muscles, leading to poor tone and atrophy in other sets. Tasks that lead to malignance of the back muscles include doing laundry, breastfeeding, cooking, and typing. All jobs that typically fall to women, historically. When looking through medical journals and individual cases, the reader is truly shocked at how often the pain of women is disregarded, leading to their detriment and even causing permanent damage. Likewise, T. K. Sundari Ravindran’s article “Research on Women's Health: Some Methodological Issues” is a plea for medical professionals to take women’s health issues more seriously and to perform more research on the topic. In this day and age of technological advancement, all the resources necessary for preforming this research and making useful findings are there, but it seems that the desire of medical professionals to venture into this field of research is absent. Ravindran asserts that “far less is known about even some of the most basic health problems of women, such as those relating to menstruation and various infections of the reproductive tract; not to mention psycho-social and mental health problems” (Ravindran 179). Ravindran sites as a factor in women’s health care her socio-economic status. Ravindran states that “a woman’s status affects her self-perception about whether she deserves to take care of herself or not. In some cultures, a woman is not expected to complain. A woman would feel she has failed as a woman if she cannot cope: ‘Everybody else seems to be doing it. What’s wrong with me?’,” (Ravindran 183). 

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s piece “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the dismissive attitude of the protagonist’s husband toward her illness is immediately illustrated. Phrases like “John laughs at me” (Gilman 299) and “he does not believe I am sick” (Gilman 299) stand out to the reader as being important to the story despite being less than half a page into it.  Gilman raises the issue of health care professionals dismissing health issues by showing its invalidating effect on the protagonist. She queries, “if a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?” (Gilman 300). She has been made to feel as though her illness is not serious, because her husband and caretaker “is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious! … John does not know how much I really suffer. He only knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him,” (Gilman 301).  John’s dismissal of her symptoms belies the seriousness of her illness. 

Shatrugna states that “medical practice does not find women’s diseases exciting—but if in addition women’s illnesses fail to fit into given categories and expectations, the illness is then delegitimized,” (Shatrugna WS-2). In the case of Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator has been delegitimized. All she knows is that she is suffering and that she has no reason to. Her husband and caretaker, John, has done what could be considered the bare minimum to properly care for his wife and then stopped caring for her, knowing that she has no “legitimate” reason to suffer. She is trapped by her husband’s status as a doctor, because she cannot obtain a second opinion. Her status as a woman transcends her socio-economic status as a barrier to receiving proper care. Because emotional issues are shoved aside as a woman’s issue (despite there being high occurrence in men as well), the seriousness of emotional issues are to this day doubted and stigmatized. Shatrugna asserts that back pain, and one could reasonably impose “mental illness” in its place, is a “symptom of a more fundamental problem, the social insult which is inflicted upon women’s bodies in a variety of ways throughout their lived” (Shatrugna WS-2). By denying the importance of tasks that are typically done by women, the health problems that accompany them are ignored, and women face not only the physical pain from symptoms of this degradation, but also the mental pain of low self-worth. 

The academic texts of Veena Shatrugna and T. K. Sundari Ravindran heavily shape the reader’s understanding of the literary text and inform their interpretation of it. While reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” the reader is struck by the lack of concern over a woman who is very apparently seriously ill. During the time period that this story is set in, it was common for women’s health concerns to be disregarded. The articles not only solidify the feelings of shock in the reader but they also give factual evidence that this is a real problem that women have faced and continue to face, regardless of socioeconomic status. Shatrugna’s and Ravindran’s articles help to furnish the reader’s understanding of the text with knowledge regarding women’s health issues, allowing the reader to have a more meaningful interpretation of the text. 
