Chinatown Black Tigers: Black Masculinity and Chinese Heroism in Frank Chin\u27s Gunga Din Highway

Images of ominous villains and asexual heroes in literature and mainstream American culture tend to relegate Asian American men to limited expressions of masculinity. These emasculating images deny Asian American men elements of traditional masculinity, including agency and strength. Many recognize the efforts of Frank Chin, a Chinese American novelist, to confront, expose, and revise such images by relying on a tradition of Chinese heroism. In Gunga Din Highway (1994), however, Chin creates an Asian American masculinity based on elements of both the Chinese heroic tradition and a distinct brand of African American masculinity manifested in the work of Ishmael Reed, an African American novelist and essayist known for his outspoken style.^1 Rather than transforming traditional masculinity to include Asian American manhood, Chin\u27s images of men represent an appropriation of elements from two ethnic sources that Chin uses to underscore those of Asian Americans. While deconstructing the reductive images advocated by the dominant culture, Chin critiques the very black masculinity he adopts. Ultimately he fails to envision modes of masculinity not based on dominance, yet Chin\u27s approach also can be read as the ultimate expression of Asian American individualism

How females perceive masculine advertising models? : Master of Business Study in Marketing at Albany Campus, Massey University, New Zealand

This research helps to discover: (1) relevant masculinity types for male advertising models in China; (2) Chinese female consumers’ reaction to different masculinity types of male advertising models; (3) different characteristics of Chinese females that are relevant for reactions to different types of male advertising models in China. Based on a online survey with 384 female respondents in China, we found that Stern and Sophisticated masculinity type would be the most welcomed one among female’s view. Our results also show the importance of fashion leaders who hold totally different opinions with fashion followers. Moreover, we do not find the significant differences between different age groups, gender identity or living environment. But we confirm that fashion leaders tend to be younger, more masculinity urban female in our survey. These results should be an innovative field to the existing literature and provide implications for future male model studies. Keywords: Male masculinity types; Fashion Leadership; Stern and Sophisticated; Hofstede’s cultural dimensions; Metrosexuality

Cross-cultural effects of color, but not morphological masculinity, on perceived attractiveness of men's faces

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 ElsevierMuch attractiveness research has focused on face shape. The role of masculinity (which for adults is thought to be a relatively stable shape cue to developmental testosterone levels) in male facial attractiveness has been examined, with mixed results. Recent work on the perception of skin color (a more variable cue to current health status) indicates that increased skin redness, yellowness, and lightness enhance apparent health. It has been suggested that stable cues such as masculinity may be less important to attractiveness judgments than short-term, more variable health cues. We examined associations between male facial attractiveness, masculinity, and skin color in African and Caucasian populations. Masculinity was not found to be associated with attractiveness in either ethnic group. However, skin color was found to be an important predictor of attractiveness judgments, particularly for own-ethnicity faces. Our results suggest that more plastic health cues, such as skin color, are more important than developmental cues such as masculinity. Further, unfamiliarity with natural skin color variation in other ethnic groups may limit observers' ability to utilize these color cues

‘So people know I'm a Sikh’: Narratives of Sikh masculinities in contemporary Britain

This article examines British-born Sikh men's identification to Sikhism. In particular, it focuses on the appropriation and use of Sikh symbols amongst men who define themselves as Sikh. This article suggests that whilst there are multiple ways of ‘being’ a Sikh man in contemporary post-colonial Britain, and marking belonging to the Sikh faith, there is also a collectively understood idea of what an ‘ideal’ Sikh man should be. Drawing upon Connell and Messerschmidt's discussion of locally specific hegemonic masculinities (2005. “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.” Gender and Society 19 (6): 829–859), it is suggested that an ideal Sikh masculine identity is partly informed by a Khalsa discourse, which informs a particular performance of Sikh male identity, whilst also encouraging the surveillance of young men's activities both by themselves and by others. These Sikh masculinities are complex and multiple, rotating to reaffirm, challenge and redefine contextualised notions of hegemonic masculinity within the Sikh diaspora in post-colonial Britain. Such localised Sikh masculinities may both assert male privilege and reap patriarchal dividends (Connell, W. 1995. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press), resulting in particular British Sikh hegemonic masculinities which seek to shape the performance of masculinity, yet in another context these very same performances of masculinity may also signify a more marginalised masculinity vis-à-vis other dominant hegemonic forms

The impact of brand gender on consumer-brand engagement and consumer-based brand equity on Facebook

In this research, we investigate how two distinct and universal dimensions of brand personality - brand masculinity and brand femininity - which constitute the two dimensions of brand gender (Grohmann 2009) influence consumer-brand engagement on Facebook. Another critical aim is to investigate the relationship between brand masculinity and brand femininity perceptions and consumer-based brand equity, on Facebook

Inclusive Masculinity and Facebook Photographs Among Early Emerging Adults at a British University

Central to debates about the construction of masculinity in sociology is the influence of culture and what constitutes acceptable displays of masculinity. This article adopts a novel approach in examining this question. It adopts a summative content analysis, combined with a semiotic analysis, of 1,100 Facebook photographs, in order to explore the underlying meanings within the photos and the performances of masculinity. Facebook photographs from 44, straight, White, male, early emerging adults attending the same university are used as a representation of an individual’s ideal self. These are then analyzed in order to determine the behaviors endorsed by peer culture. It was found that the sample overwhelmingly adopted inclusive behaviors (including homosocial tactility, dancing, and kissing each other), and inclusive masculinity theory was utilized to contextualize participants’ constructions of masculinity. Thus, this research shows that emerging adult males at this university construct their masculine identities away from previous orthodox archetypes. It is argued that the reducing importance of gendered behavior patterns may represent an adoption of what are perceived as wider cultural norms and act as a symbol of adulthood to these early emerging adults

Doing gender locally: The importance of ‘place’ in understanding marginalised masculinities and young men’s transitions to ‘safe’ and successful futures

Observable anxieties have been developing about the position of boys and young men in contemporary society in recent years. This is expressed as a crisis of masculinity, in which place is often implicitly implicated, but is rarely considered for its role in the shaping of young men’s practices, trajectories and aspirations. Drawing on research conducted with young people who accessed a range of social care support services, this article argues that transition means different things for young men in different locales and that local definitions of masculinity are required to better understand young men’s lives and the opportunities available to them. The authors argue that home life, street life, individual neighbourhoods, regions and nations all shaped the young men’s identities and the practices they (and the staff working with them) drew on in order to create successful futures and ‘safe’ forms of masculinity. It is suggested that this place-based approach has the potential to re-shape the ‘crisis’ discourse surrounding masculinity and the anxieties associated with young men

Never the twain shall meet: a critical appraisal of the combination of discourse and psychoanalytic theory in studies of men and masculinity

In recent years there has been a number of attempts by different researchers to study men and masculinity using a combination of discourse theory and psychoanalysis. The main reason for this development is the sense that, on its own, discourse theory provides an incomplete account of masculine subjectivity. Psychoanalysis is thought to be able to fill those gaps. In this paper I want to begin by reviewing these arguments. I will provide an outline of the alleged deficiencies in discursive approaches to men and masculinity before going on to examine some of the work that has attempted the above synthesis. What I aim to show is that, for a number of reasons, such attempts are bound to fail. Instead, I will argue that better progress can be made in studies of masculinity by remaining within the theoretical boundaries of Discursive Psychology

Prime beef cuts : culinary images for thinking 'men'

The paper contributes to scholarship theorising the sociality of the brand in terms of subject positions it makes possible through drawing upon the generative context of circulating discourses, in this case of masculinity, cuisine and celebrity. Specifically, it discusses masculinity as a socially constructed gender practice (Bristor and Fischer, 1993), examining materialisations of such practice in the form of visualisations of social relations as resources for 'thinking gender' or 'doing gender'. The transformative potential of the visualisations is illuminated by exploring the narrative content choreographed within a series of photographic images positioning the market appeal of a celebrity chef through the medium of a contemporary lifestyle cookery book. We consider how images of men 'doing masculinity'are not only channelled into reproducing existing gender hierarchy and compulsory heterosexuality in the service of commercial ends, but also into disrupting such enduring stereotyping through subtle reframing. We acknowledge that masculinity is already inscribed within conventionalised representations of culinary culture. In this case we consider how traces of masculinity are exploited and reinscribed through contemporary images that generate resources for rethinking masculine roles and identities, especially when viewed through the lens of stereotypically feminised pursuits such as shopping, food preparation, cooking, and the communal intimacy of food sharing. We identify unsettling tensions within the compositions, arguing that they relate to discursive spaces between the gendered positions written into the images and the popular imagination they feed off. Set against landscapes of culinary culture, we argue that the images invoke a brand of naively roughish "laddishness" or "blokishness", rendering it in domesticated form not only as benign and containable, but fashionable, pliable and, importantly, desirable. We conclude that although the images draw on stereotypical premeditated notions of a feral, boisterous and untamed heterosexual masculinity, they also set in motion gender-blending narratives