Challenging Myths of Masculinity: Understanding Physical Cultures

215 Pages·2014·1.03 MB·English

by  Lee F. Monaghan and Michael Atkinson

Challenging Myths of MasCulinity
Interactionist Currents
series editors:
Dennis Waskul, Minnesota state university, usa
Phillip Vannini, Royal Roads university, Canada
interactionist Currents publishes contemporary interactionist works of exceptional
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The Politics of Sorrow
Families, Victims, and the Micro-Organization of Youth Homicide
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The Drama of Social Life
A Dramaturgical Handbook
edited by
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Challenging Myths
of Masculinity
Understanding Physical Cultures
lee f. Monaghan
University of Limerick, Ireland
MiChael atkinson
University of Toronto, Canada
© lee f. Monaghan and Michael atkinson 2014
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
lee f. Monaghan and Michael atkinson have asserted their moral rights under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing Company
Wey Court east 110 Cherry street
union Road suite 3-1
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
a catalogue record for this book is available from the British library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Monaghan, lee f., 1972-
Challenging myths of masculinity : understanding physical cultures / by lee f. Monaghan and
Michael atkinson.
pages cm. -- (interactionist currents)
includes bibliographical references and index.
isBn 978-1-4094-3500-6 (hardback) -- isBn 978-1-4094-3501-3 (ebook) -- isBn 978-1-
4724-0099-4 (epub) 1. Masculinity--social aspects. 2. Men--Psychology. 3. Physical educa-
tion and training. 4. Physical fitness. I. Atkinson, Michael, 1971- II. Title.
hQ1090.M66 2014
305.31--dc23
2013043993
isBn: 978-1-4094-3500-6 (hbk)
isBn: 978-1-4094-3501-3 (ebk – PDf)
isBn: 978-1-4724-0099-4 (ebk – ePuB)
IV
Printed in the united kingdom by henry ling limited,
at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, Dt1 1hD
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: From Myths to Empirically Grounded Understandings:
Researching Men’s and Boys’ Physical Cultures 1
1 ‘Postmodern’ Muscle: The Embodied Pleasures of Vibrant
Physicality 15
2 Cosmetic Surgery: Men Who Walk/Erase the Gender Line 39
3 Burly ‘Bouncers’, Cardboard Cutouts and Physical Violence:
An Ethnography of Nightclub Security Work 55
4 Masculinity on the Menu: Body Slimming and Self-Starvation as
Physical Culture 81
5 Challenging the Obesity Myth: Men’s Critical Understandings of
the Body Mass Index 103
6 Schoolboys, Physical Education and Bullying: ‘Hey, Leave Those
Kids Alone!’ 133
Methodological Appendix 153
Bibliography 167
Index 185
This page has been left blank intentionally
Acknowledgements
Lee would like to acknowledge all of his ethnographic contacts, whom he spent
time with and learnt from over the years in groups ranging from bodybuilders
to men in a commercial weight-loss organization. It is through such contacts
that Lee was able to gain first-hand knowledge of the vicissitudes of manhood
and diverse body work in contemporary society. Lee’s chapters in this book
are significantly revised and updated versions of papers that were previously
published elsewhere. Chapter 1 is a rework of Monaghan, L.F. (2001) Looking
Good, Feeling Good: The Embodied Pleasures of Vibrant Physicality, Sociology
of Health & Illness 23 (3): 330–356; Chapter 3 is a revised version of Monaghan,
L.F. (2002) Hard Men, Shop Boys and Others: Embodying Competence in a
Masculinist Occupation, The Sociological Review 50 (3): 334–355; and, Chapter 5
is a revised version of Monaghan, L.F. (2007) Body Mass Index, Masculinities
and Moral Worth: Men’s Critical Talk about ‘Appropriate’ Weight-for-Height,
Sociology of Health & Illness 29 (4): 584–609. Funding for the research presented
in Chapters 1 and 5 was provided by the Economic and Social Research Council
(ESRC): bodybuilding and steroids (L210252008), and men and weight-related
issues (RES-000-22-0784). Lee would like to dedicate this book to his son,
Kian, who would not miss playing rugby on a Sunday morning for anything,
as well as the memory of his late and dearly loved mother, Maureen, a strong
minded woman who often saw through class biased fictions. Her spirit lives on
in a world where such fictions are increasingly consequential.
Michael would like to acknowledge all the boys and men across his
ethnographic research ventures who have made this book possible. Only
through the support and encouragement of people Michael meets in the field is
his research possible. Portions of Michael’s chapters in this book are extensions
and reconceptualizations of earlier published works. Chapter 4 is built out of
Atkinson, M. (2011) Male Athletes and the Culture of Thinness in Sport, Deviant
Behavior 32 (3): 224–256. Chapter 6 extends arguments from Atkinson, M. and
Kehler, M. (2012) Boys, Bullying and Biopedagogies in Physical Education,
THYMOS 6 (2): 166–187. Funding for the research presented in Chapter 2
and 6 was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada. Michael would like to dedicate this book to his two boys Eoghan
and Finnegan, who constantly remind him of our need to better understand
complex masculinities.
Finally, both Lee and Michael would like to thank Dennis Waskul and Phillip
Vannini for their separate invitations to write books for the Ashgate series,
ChAllenging Myths of MAsCulinity
Interactionist Currents. In the end we decided to pool our efforts. Neil Jordan also
deserves a special mention for his incredible patience on a project that took
much longer than anticipated to complete.
viii
Introduction
From Myths to Empirically
Grounded Understandings:
Researching Men’s and Boys’
Physical Cultures
Many myths surround men and boys who work on and with their bodies, or
perhaps resist such imperatives in contexts where ‘being physical’ is accepted
or expected. Bodybuilders, for instance, have been stereotyped as narcissistic,
steroid-abusing ‘muscle heads’ who suffer from large doses of insecurity,
whilst schoolboys who resist physical education are often labelled as lazy,
effeminate and unreasonably uncooperative. While unflattering stereotypes and
reality sometimes converge, the aforementioned depictions should be properly
regarded as culturally circulating myths that typically bear little or no relation
to empirical reality. Some social scientists within the field of physical education
are careful not to simply equate myths with ‘lies’ and dismiss them as necessarily
‘bad’ (Gard and Wright 2005: 188), but this should not be equated with an
abandonment of critical thinking either. The myths noted above are certainly
not the product of systematic sociological research undertaken over a prolonged
period of time among people who putatively suffer from the deficiencies of
modern masculinity. Nonetheless, there is an army of researchers from various
disciplines and professions (e.g. psychology, psychiatry, public health) who
unreflectively draw from and reproduce myths of masculinity in line with
‘what everyone’ apparently knows or wants to believe. In so doing, it is our
contention that they fail to understand diverse physical cultures as understood
and experienced by participants themselves in their contexts of everyday life.
This book challenges such myths by offering empirically grounded sociological
insights into diverse gendered bodily practices, physical cultures and corporeal
ways of being in the world. The qualitative research reported and analysed
herein explores the perspectives and meaning-making practices of the following
groups: bodybuilders dedicated to the cult of muscularity and who perhaps take
steroids, men undergoing cosmetic surgery amidst concerns about a crisis in
masculinity, ‘bouncers’ who privately police urban drinking venues, men who
emaciate their bodies in order to fulfil sporting requirements, men stigmatized