Maskulinitet och mode som genusvetenskaplig och etnografisk utmaning

Abstract

Fashion is a topic that deserves to be taken seriously, and our contribution sets out to explore the vitalizing possibilities of combining critical men´s studies/gender studies and queer with new impulses in fashion, consumer and visual studies, not only in terms of theory, but also in terms of grounding this work empirically in new ethnography. Through ethnographical observation we have followed masculinity being groomed and performed through different aesthetical practices, in particular we have focused on the pleasure culture of the hair studio and the business suit in the context of annual meetings. Our approach seeks to span the large scale movements of the fashion system and local practices. We discuss the problematic relationship between feminism and fashion studies and argue that RW Connell´s hugely successful conceptualisation of hegemonic masculinity prevents a more dynamic and differentiated understanding of competing masculinities, performed through varying, although largely unacknowledged aesthetic practices – a neglected field of study we think is highly promising. On the other hand, we also suggest that fashion studies today suffers from limitations that could be overcome by taking seriously the challenge of the new conceptualisations of gender and sexuality, not as given macro systems or discourses, but in butlerian terms as ongoing embodied iterations. It is a curious paradox that fashion studies often seems marginalise itself, making clothes and hair simply mirror other cultural and social entities, not as important discursive forces in themselves. We call for more traffic between gender – and fashion studies, in terms of theory, but without neglecting the necessity to ground with careful ethnographic work in ”writing bodies in movement”.