Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

in the form of fantasies and imagined “new” selves. This leads to the conclusion that a
genre study can be based entirely on how women’s magazines are read and that it does
not need to address the (narrative) structure or content of the text itself at all’ (146).
Against more celebratory accounts of women and consumption, Hermes’s investigation
of the role of repertoires makes her reluctant to see in the practices of women
reading magazines an unproblematical form of empowerment. Instead, she argues, we
should think of the consumption of women’s magazines as providing only temporary
‘moments of empowerment’ (51).
Men’s studies and masculinities
Men’s studies and masculinities 159
Feminism has brought into being many things, but one that some feminists have
already disowned is men’s studies. Despite Peter Schwenger’s concern that for a man
‘to think about masculinity is to become less masculine oneself. . . . The real man
thinks about practical matters rather than abstract ones and certainly does not brood
upon himself or the nature of his sexuality’ (quoted in Showalter, 1990: 7), many men
have thought, spoken and written about masculinity. As Antony Easthope 33 (1986)
writes in What a Man’s Gotta Do, ‘It is time to try to speak about masculinity, about
what it is and how it works’ (1). Easthope’s focus is on what he calls dominant masculinity
(the myth of heterosexual masculinity as something essential and self-evident
which is tough, masterful, self-possessed, knowing, always in control, etc.). He begins
from the proposition that masculinity is a cultural construct; that is, it is not ‘natural’,
‘normal’ or ‘universal’. He argues that dominant masculinity operates as a gender
norm, and that it is against this norm that the many other different types of ‘lived masculinities’
(including gay masculinities) are invited to measure themselves. As part of
this argument, he analyses the way dominant masculinity is represented across a range
of popular cultural texts: pop songs, popular fiction, films, television and newspapers,
and concludes:
Clearly men do not passively live out the masculine myth imposed by the stories
and images of the dominant culture. But neither can they live completely outside
the myth, since it pervades the culture. Its coercive power is active everywhere – not
just on screens, hoardings and paper, but inside our own heads (167).
From a similar perspective, Sean Nixon’s (1996) examination of ‘new man’ masculinity
explores it as ‘a regime of representation’, focusing on ‘four key sites of cultural
circulation: television advertising, press advertising, menswear shops and popular
magazines for men’ (4).
Although it is true that feminists have always encouraged men to examine their masculinity,
many feminists are less than impressed with men’s studies, as Joyce Canaan
and Christine Griffin (1990) make clear: