"Det viktiga är en maskulin touche!"

Maskulinitet som konsumtionsvara i frisörbranschen

Abstract

Masculinity is today commodified and used as a marketing concept in beauty business. Taking point of departure in a hair dressers show where masculinity is presented as a selling concept, it is argued that hairstyles, hairdressers' fashion shows, hairstyling magazines and hairdresser and barber salones can be seen as performative arenas and practices that produce men, masculinity, femininity and the gender dichotomy. Two common discourses in the male beauty business are highlighted in the article, "laddishness" and "gender bending". In the hair style magazine C-book a bourgeois and queer chic concept is offered, while in the magazines Hair styles and Hair Trends it is a chic middle classed working class masculinity that is sold. Constructions of sexuality and ethnicity in hair dressing and in hairdressers' magazines are also discussed. Finally it is argued that hair dressing, by the normalisation of certain hair styles, can be understood as cultural cloning and a construction of sameness that reproduce the social order.