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This project explores the representation of white, American masculinity within the Hollywood bromantic comedy cycle. By analyzing three interrelated components (close homosociality, infantilization, and relationship to patriarchy) of the model of masculinity perpetuated by this cycle of films, this study reveals the hegemonic motives therein. Despite the representation of a masculinity nervously questioning its position within the romantic comedy narrative and the broader patriarchal structure, the results of this representation are, ultimately, regressive and reactionary. Cultural gains made concerning gender, sexuality, and race are doubled back upon in a cycle of films that appeal to regressive modes of misogyny, homophobia, and racism still present in Hollywood filmmaking, and the hegemony of white, patriarchal heteronormativity is rigorously maintained.

Problem definition and purpose: How do young men view the image of masculinity that is presented in the media, and what men or masculine characteristics do they look up to? Description: As men of a relatively young generation, most likely less influenced by the traditional alpha male ideal than our fathers were - while still being part of the male species at a time when it can be held responsible for many of the modern world’s problems, we have decided to peek into the world of male ideals and role models presented by the media, and try to understand what shape these ideals might take, how a coming generation of young men are affected by them and how they view them. Thus, this qualitative study aims to deepen understanding of correlations between young men’s view of their own masculinity and the way men are portrayed in culture and entertainment media. In order to investigate the matter, we have reached out to three schools at gymnasium level and conducted interviews with students in ages 15 to 19. From the interviews we have gathered information which has later on been used to distinguish four ideal types of masculinity; the Alpha Male, the Beta Male, the Humorist and the Activist. On the basis of these ideal types we have been able to make an analysis of the current media landscape, and more specifically what the young men perceive affects them in their own masculinity, what they believe affects young men in negative and damaging ways, and what kind of masculinities they feel are missing in today’s media outlet. In summary, we feel that the work might be able to help us and others understand something about what the next generation of men will be like - and why. Method and materials: Qualitative study conducted through interviews with men aged 15-19, analyzed in accordance to the ideal-type method. Main results: The interviewed young men identify different kinds of male characteristics given space in the media, which we have categorized into four ideal types - The Alpha Man, The Beta Man, The Humorist and The Activist. That these four types are visible indicates that the form of masculinity which has been the most common in the media, the hegemonic (Alpha) masculinity, characterized by dominant behavior, assertiveness and can be likened to a kind of macho masculinity - now face competition over the medial space. The competitors consist of men who are sensitive and intellectual (Beta Man) , funny and resourceful (Humorist), and a driving force in changing society and spreading goodness (Activist).

Masculinity has been widely regarded as a harmful cognition that may lead men to engage in risk behavior. The present study sought to examine the role of hyper masculine cognitions and behaviors on sexual health in a sample of gay and bisexual men. A sample of n=313 gay and bisexual men were sampled from the community. Results indicate significant effects of hyper masculine behaviors and hyper masculine cognitions on sexual health variables. Moreover, engaging in risky sexual situations fully mediated effects of hyper masculine behavior on high-risk sexual behavior. Results are discussed with a focus on ego depletion and hegemonic masculinity.

The purpose of this essayis to find out how masculinity, based in Raewyn Connells theoriesabout hegemonic,subordinated, complicitand marginalized masculinities,is constructed in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s alter ego, is the main object for the analysis.It becomesclear that there aretwomaintypes of hegemonic masculinity, one very strict and disciplined among the priests in the Jesuitschools Stephen attends to, and one of a more intellectualkind at the University.The strong influence from the Catholic church in Ireland is however noticeable in every context Stephen presentshimself. Also, there areseveral examples of subordination, complicity and marginalization among the men in the novel.

In this thesis I examine men's talk about food. I argue that many academic knowledges of food have adopted a realist epistemological stance that is problematic with regards to the functional and constructive nature of language. Consequently, I propose a focus upon how language is used to construct food in talk. I also argue that gender has been highlighted by much research as of significance in relation to food, but that men have been subject to very little in-depth study. I therefore propose a need to examine men's accounts of food. Employing a discursive action approach, I examine accounts produced by eight men. In talk about meat, I argue speakers reject the proposition that meat is essential, but also acknowledge its significance for health. I propose they downplay salad as a central feature of diet yet deny that it is objected to. I also suggest that respondents seem sensitive to a number of negative inferences relating to the consumption of sweets and biscuits. Additionally, speakers downplay the likelihood of buying slimming foods and characterise weight as un-problematic. However, they also stress that their weight is monitored. Similarly, respondents reject feeling guilty about food but demonstrate that their food consumption is not unregulated. In relation to cooking and shopping, I propose speakers deny that they are responsible for these tasks within the household. However, I also suggest that they display a sensitivity to potentially negative inferences, such as inequity, that may arise in connection with this state of affairs. Finally, I assert that participants deny eating at fast food restaurants and stress their variable explanations they produce. To conclude I highlight the complexity of food as a topic of study and consider the utility of a discourse analytic approach to men's accounts in this area.

Within popular culture we have recently witnessed a proliferation of male dancers. This has been spear-headed by the success of the BBC television program Strictly Come Dancing. The current cultural fascination with dance provides a stark contrast to traditional discourses in England that position dance as a female activity, with men’s participation frequently associated with homophobic stigma. We therefore have a context in which multiple and contradictory discourses on masculinity are available for men to make sense of themselves. This thesis explores how young men negotiate these discourses when learning to dance. The research is based upon an ethnographic study of capoeira and Latin and ballroom dance classes in South West England. The core methods included 1) four years of embodied fieldwork in the form of the researcher learning to dance, 2) writing field-notes and collecting multi-media artefacts, 3) interviewing dancers, and 4) photographing dancers in action. The researcher also drew upon a diverse range of subsidiary methods that included producing a dance wall of collected images and artefacts, cataloguing relevant dance websites and YouTube videos, and extensive use of Facebook for publishing photographs, sharing resources and negotiating ongoing informed consent. The findings of this PhD identify how learning capoeira and Latin and ballroom dance produces embodied, visual and discursive transitions in male dancers’ performances of masculine identities. The analysis focuses on three sets of practices that work to support or problematise the transitions in masculine identities in dance classes. These practices include 1) dancing with women in ballroom dancing, 2) performing awesome moves in capoeira, and 3) men’s experiences of stiff hips. In examining transitions across these three processes the thesis documents the changing possibilities and constraints on embodied masculinities in dance.

There has long been a critical consensus that the presiding mood of America in the late sixties and early seventies was one of pervasive social upheaval, with perpetual ‘crisis’ seeming in many ways the narrative rule. Contemporaneous critics such as Erich Fromm, David Riesman, and William Whyte, together with late-twentieth century writers, Michael Kimmel, Sally Robinson, and David Savran, congruently agree that the post-war American epoch connoted one of expeditious adjustment for white, middle-class men in particular. The specific aim of this thesis is, thus, to elucidate the ways in which the literary fiction of this period by authors John Cheever, James Dickey, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, and new journalist, Michael Herr, reflects a significantly increased concern for such alterations in the values and attitudes of contemporary cultural life through representations of modern American masculinities. Multiple liberation struggles, including Civil Rights, Feminism, and sexual politics, converged with core economic shifts that transformed the US from an industrial based to a consumerist model. For hegemonic masculinity, this is a transferal from ‘masculine’ industrial labour and the physically expressive body to ‘feminine’ consumerism. This study will first of all underline the extent to which fiction in this period registers those changes through the lens of a fraying of what was once a fortified fabric from which white, patriarchal power was normatively fashioned. What is most disrupted by the paradigm shifts of the era will appear, then, to be a monolithic, coherently bounded American masculinity. However, by way of an interrelated interpretation of contemporaneous feminist and Marxist theory, my research will subsequently show that, rather than being negated, the fabric of that dominant masculinity regenerated and reasserted itself, primarily through the fraught revival of a violent and mythologized hypermasculinity in mainstream US culture. Whether it is through the suburban maladjustment of Eliot Nailles and Paul Hammer, the fraudulent frontier ethic of Ed Gentry and Lewis Medlock, or the more perverse pugnacity of Lester Ballard and internalised racism of Cholly Breedlove, this thesis argues that, by the mid-seventies, numerous American novelists had sought to artistically magnify the ways in which fundamental changes in the patterns of national life were occurring – changes which are represented more often than not as damaging to the normative model of masculinity and the experiential consciousness of men.

Hundreds of research articles have been published about variables related to bystander helping behavior. Although significant gender differences have been found in bystander intervention research, the results have been incongruent with little explanation about the relationship between gender and bystander interventions. This study assessed the relationship between conformity to masculine role norms and bystander intervention behavior. In this study, 200 college students completed the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory-46 (CMNI-46) to determine the relationship between conformity to masculine norms and the level of bystander intervention selected on the Bystander Intervention Measure (BIM). It was hypothesized that a significant main effect would exist between conformity to masculine norms and the types of bystander interventions selected. Participants also completed surveys on bystander self-efficacy, bystander intervention decision making, and prosocial tendencies (Prosocial Tendencies Measure). Four hypotheses were developed for this study. It was hypothesized that there would be a statistically significant difference in scores on the five CMNI-46 subscales of winning, emotional control, risk-taking, violence, and self-reliance and the degree of involvement and immediacy of bystander interventions the four subscales of the Bystander Intervention Measure (BIM); that the five CMNI-46 subscales will still account for more variance regarding the degree of involvement and immediacy of bystander interventions even after controlling for prosocial tendencies from the PTM subscales; that there would be a statistically significant difference in scores on the five CMNI-46 subscales and the six PTM subscales, and that the five CMNI-46 subscales would predict bystander self-efficacy and decision making scores.

Although The Tragically Hips <i>Fully Completely</i> is an unorthodox historical text, in-depth exploration of the landmark album prompts us to reconsider the role of musical experience in the production of gender in late twentieth-century Canada. This thesis frames gender as a reiterative performative-discursive production consisting of four interrelated elements: cultural symbol-systems; normative concepts; the politics of social institutions and organizations; and subjective identity. These elements operate symbiotically in a field of multiple, mobile, and routinely unequal relations. In order to further trace the construction of masculinity in Canada during the early 1990s, this thesis outlines the interacting historical contexts The Tragically Hip navigated through while writing, recording, and producing Fully Completely. Careful interdisciplinary consideration of the songs <i>Looking For A Place To Happen</i> and <i>Fifty-Mission Cap</i>provide specific examples of the performative-discursive formation of masculinity in the best-selling recording. This thesis concludes that <i>Fully Completely</i> functioned as an important platform for the constitution of gender in Canada. The album deployed and formed multiple comparative and contrasting masculinities as part of the compulsory maintenance of sexual difference as gender. This study of English-Canadian rock music urges scholars to continue exploring the role of musical experience in the production of gender identities.