What Happens When Men Don’t Conform to Masculine Clothing Norms at Work? Every morning, men make a seemingly mundane yet crucial decision: what to wear to work.
Most pull out some variation of the charcoal, navy, or black suit from their closet. Some might add their own twist: a polka-dot pocket square or colorful socks. This probably isn’t surprising. In Britain and North America, the suit is the most culturally accepted form of office wear for men. But what do we make of the men who reject the solid-color suit and opt for, say, an embellished jacket and sequined leggings? Over the past three years, I conducted a research project on men, masculinity, and fashion. These choices are what performance studies scholar Madison Moore calls “fabulousness” — a way of dressing and styling the body that not only disrupts gender codes but also introduces new forms of identity into the world. The sidebar “Inside the Work Wardrobes of Five Fabulous Men” contains vignettes of several participants from my research (using pseudonyms to protect their anonymity).
The Descent of Man by Grayson Perry review – a man’s man is yesterday’s hero. It is a strangely embarrassing time to be a man.
You only have to watch the news, or log on to Twitter, or just open your eyes, and you will see a man doing something atrocious. Very often the man we see is Donald Trump, but Trump is just the most visible example of the toxic masculinity on offer. It is there, in some form or other, all over our virtual and actual reality. Of course, men have always done terrible things. You could pinpoint any moment in history and men would have been doing something despicable. And, away from the big names, as Grayson Perry puts it in his new book on masculinity, “most violent people, rapists, criminals, killers, tax avoiders, corrupt politicians, planet despoilers, sex abusers and dinner-party bores, do tend to be, well… men”. For decades now, female writers and theorists have been dismantling their biological gender from the perceived feminine roles that can restrict or harm their lives.
Life as performance is not a new idea. Grayson Perry: 'What's gone wrong with men?' Masculinité hégémonique. Quand on parle du genre, au singulier, on l’envisage à la fois comme une construction sociale, comme un processus relationnel et comme un rapport de pouvoir imbriqué dans d’autres rapports de pouvoir.
Pour comprendre ce qui suit, il faut notamment bien comprendre cette idée de processus relationnel. Le genre crée de la division et de la binarité : il produit deux groupes, sur le mode de l’opposition, le groupe des « hommes » et celui des « femmes ». La « différence des sexes » est donc toujours aussi une opposition : on apprend les caractéristiques de son genre par opposition à celles de l’autre genre. Mais les recherches sur les masculinités montrent que cette opposition entre « le masculin » et « le féminin » n’est pas qu’une opposition entre hommes et femmes: elle fonctionne aussi au sein de ces deux groupes.
Il faut également garder à l’esprit que le genre est conçu comme un rapport de pouvoir. Tony Porter: A call to men.