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- Volume 3, Issue 2, 2016
Critical Studies in Men's Fashion - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2016
Volume 3, Issue 2, 2016
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Collared: Celluloid, masculinity and class
By Julia PetrovAbstractModern discussions of nineteenth-century-male fashion claim that this was the period when male dress was standardized into a uniform of acceptable respectability. Indeed, to twenty-first-century eyes, the prevailing image of the Victorian male seems to be a homogenous mass of black suits, bowler hats and stiff collars. Contemporary observers were able to instantly size up a man’s character, class and professional ambitions by a mere glance at their clothing. The collar, whether paper, linen or celluloid, became the locus of social distinction, and is therefore the best example of the nuanced associations attached to male clothing during the late nineteenth century. Taking a material culture approach, with additional support from popular literature and visual sources, may help historians to better understand and interpret the strict hierarchy of Victorian men and the uniforms that prescribed their social existence. Questions of sincerity, aspiration and moral uprightness are also inextricably linked to this topic, and the conclusions drawn may have additional implications for how scholars and historians understand the corresponding feminine sphere during this period.
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Tinker, soldier, sailor, thief: The visual representations and appropriations of the male sexual outlaw as a gay fantasy figure in the Arts and in fashion imagery
By Itai DoronAbstractThis article examines the subject and visual representation of the gay fantasy figure, with specific reference to the male sexual outlaw character and its embodiment in the archetypes of the sailor and male hustler, and their fantasmatic performance in fashion editorials and advertising campaigns. It will focus on themes of homoeroticism, narratives of sexual danger, duality and adornment (with specific reference to tattooed bodies), and will provide an overview of the fascination with the rough trade type that gay artists and audiences share, and the dichotomy of ‘good and evil’ and ‘tragic and comic’ in these artists’ subversive rendition of homo-hetero desire. The starting points for this article are two seminal works on the Male Sexual Outlaw as a central focal point for their audiences’ desire: Jean Genet’s novel Querelle de Brest (1947, illustrated by Jean Cocteau) and Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s series of photographs titled Hustlers (1990–1992). By focusing on the figures of the professional mariner and the male prostitute, and incorporating underlying references to the male-dominated shady underworlds they supposedly inhabit and a life lived on the margins of society, the work investigates the representation and desire for a sexually dominant man from within the canon of western white gay male art.
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The rough riders: An exploration of theatricality, masculinity, identities and voyeurism in Canadian football
More LessAbstractThis article explores the notions of performance and performativity through the activities of the male fan base of the Canadian football team, the Saskatchewan Roughriders (CFL /Regina Saskatchewan). It considers the carnivalization of fandom through the lens of the theatrical event and examines how normative gender identities are simultaneously constructed and reconstructed on the field and in the stands. Saskatchewan’s football team, The Roughriders, has the biggest fan base within the Canadian Football League. Male fans practice orthodox masculinity by cheering the team with cultish fervor fuelled by alcohol, chants and, paradoxically, by costuming their bodies in forms of high camp drag. This action transforms the traditional football field into a spectacle in which inverted forms of gender display and voyeurism form no small part. Green body make-up, wigs, masks, watermelon helmets and fake breasts queer fans’ bodies through performative gestures that temporarily reconstruct genders. Finally, the article considers these actions in relation to the celebration of the hyper-masculinized body of the athletes positioning the football stadium as a highly theatricalized third space in which two representations of masculinity are performed simultaneously.
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Negotiating identities in the furry fandom through costuming
Authors: Emily Satinsky and Denise Nicole GreenAbstractThis article examines how identities are negotiated and performed through costuming within the furry fandom community. Using ethnographic research methods, including participant observation augmented by demographic surveys and in-depth interviews at two fur conventions, we explore how individuals’ gender, sexual and anthropomorphic identities are produced through costuming at fur conventions. The findings reveal a vast spectrum of identities within the fandom; costuming and ‘dressing-up’ enable individuals, particularly men, opportunities to explore and express aspects of identities through animal performance. The body, as Judith Butler has argued, is a ‘variable boundary’ with a permeable surface – making it a site where gender is repeatedly performed. Costuming and manipulating the body is a material interpretation of gender – that is, a repeated action of the body within clothes. The effect of gender is produced through the ‘stylization of the body’ and percolates through material and embodied gesture and habitus. While gender non-conformists in North America may experience limitations with regard to their visible expression in everyday society (both perceived and in ‘policing’ behaviours), the furry fandom community is an accepting and tolerant space for negotiation and experimentation with gender through costuming and body modification. Furries perform gender and negotiate ambivalences about these identities through the costume.
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Men, masculinity and style in 2008: A study of men’s clothing considerations in the latter aughts
Authors: Denise Nicole Green and Susan B. KaiserAbstractThis article examines how, in the latter aughts, men from the United States thought about their style, favourite clothing, masculine style(s) and the ways they imagined masculinity as articulated through everyday practices of fashioning the body. The body is a site of identity production, situated within broader cultural expectations, commitments and ideals. This study explores men’s relationships to masculine ideals while dressing the body. We ask: how do men think about masculinity in relation to dress? How do they define ‘masculine style’? In this article we examine individual responses about everyday appearance decisions, as well as larger trends. The study is a cross-section from a particular moment in time (May 2008) and uses demographically balanced open-ended survey responses to gauge men’s relationships to masculine ideals while dressing the body. We use descriptive statistics to illustrate how men in the United States – at a particularly transitional moment in time – articulated their perspectives on favourite clothes and masculine style.
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Reviews
Authors: José Blanco F., Rachel Hart, Holly Lentz-Schiller and Christina LindholmAbstractPrecious Cufflinks: From Pablo Picasso to James Bond, Walter Grasser, Franz Hemmerle and Alexander von Württemberg (2016) Munich: Hirmer, 128 pp., ISBN: 9783777424231, h/bk, $49.95
Sneakers: Fashion, Gender, and Subculture, Yuniya Kawamura (2016) London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 147 pp., ISBN: 9780857857330, p/bk, $29.95
The Superhero Costume: Identity and Disguise in Fact and Fiction, Barbara Brownie and Danny Graydon (2016) London: Bloomsbury, 175 pp., ISBN: 9781472595904, p/bk, $29.95
Hair, Scott Lowe (2016) New York and London: Bloomsbury, 132 pp., ISBN: 9781628922868, p/bk, $16.95
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