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Menswear, Masculinity and Consumption in Six Online Communities

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Menswear, Masculinity and Consumption in Six Online Communities THE NOT-SO-SECRET VICE: MENSWEAR, MASCULINITY AND CONSUMPTION IN SIX ONLINE COMMUNITIES NATHANIEL WEINER A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO August 2019 © Nathaniel Weiner, 2019 ii Abstract Online menswear communities are online discussion forums dedicated to the discussion of men’s clothing topics such as raw denim, streetwear, suits and Ivy style. This dissertation reports findings from an online ethnography of six of these communities and fifty in-depth interviews with American, British and Canadian men who participate in them. Because fashion and consumption have historically been gendered as female or gay, the dissertation asks whether the participation of predominantly heterosexual men in these communities is representative of a shift in norms governing masculinity. It also asks what the role of consumption is in shaping the identities of these men. The researcher found that online menswear communities were organised around the consumption of clothing commodities. Consumption shaped the respondents’ experience of both online and offline spaces, while bestowing them with “fashion capital” (Rocamora, 2012) within their communities. Respondents’ ties to online menswear communities were not strong or deep enough for them to be considered subcultures, but they nonetheless acted as resources for identities; identities articulated not in terms of group-belonging, but in terms of shared preferences for “craft consumption” (Campbell, 2005). The temporary coming together of men with shared lifestyles online made online menswear communities akin to “neo-tribes” (Maffesoli, 1996). The researcher also discovered that while the respondents were not embarrassed by their engagement with clothing and shopping, they made a rhetorical distinction between the masculine pursuit of style, and the feminine following of fashion. They upheld fashion’s gendering by rejecting it as manipulated and frivolous, contrasting it with style, which was approached as a rational, rule-governed system that one could succeed it at with sufficient practice and study. This was just one among many strategies deployed to avoid fashion’s perceived femininity. So, while online menswear community members’ openness to enjoying the narcissism and homosocial gaze of menswear communities reflected declining “homohysteria” (Anderson, 2009), the moves they made to masculinise fashion consumption demonstrated the persistence of ideals associated with “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell, 1995). This, along with online menswear community members’ deployment of the aesthetics of “pastiche hegemony” (Atkinson, 2011), made their masculinity an example of “hybrid masculinity” (Bridges & Pascoe, 2014). iii Dedication To the memory of my dear friend Christopher Beck - Wirral lad, Everton fan, music fanatic and sharp dresser who we lost from this world far too soon. And, to my partner Cara Akass, for moving to Toronto with me and putting up with all the late nights of me tapping away on the computer when we should have been watching telly. iv Acknowledgements I would firstly like to thank my committee: Markus Reisenleitner, Anne MacLennan and Stephen Muzzatti. Markus, when you introduced yourself at the Communication & Culture orientation as the person to speak to about British cultural studies I knew who my supervisor was going to be. From the ‘Theoretical Approaches to Communication and Culture’ seminars in the windowless basement of the engineering building to our chats about fashion theory in your office during the directed reading course, you have shaped this dissertation from the outset. Anne, as my professor in ‘Advance Research Methods’, my employer on ‘Seeing and Selling Radio’ and my Graduate Program Director you gave me so much guidance on research and academe. Stephen, your support through these years has been hugely appreciated. Thanks are also due to Steve Bailey, chair of the Communication & Culture Graduate Program Director at both the start and end of this process, for chairing my dissertation defense. Finally, thank you to my external examiner Shaun Cole and my internal examiner Gail Vanstone for your constructive feedback at the defense. I would like to thank the scholars at York University and Ryerson University who I had the privilege of learning from either as their student, teaching assistant or research assistant: Ben Barry, Jean Bruce, Natalie Coulter, Nicole Neverson, Wade Rowland and David Skinner. I would also like to thank the fashion scholars who encouraged me to submit to journals or offered sage advice on the field of fashion studies: Jacque Lynn Foltyn, Susan Ingram, Agnès Rocamora and Elena Siemens. This dissertation is the product of a long engagement with cultural studies and I am indebted to my MA supervisor Angela McRobbie, who got me to take clothing seriously as an object of academic study and look beyond subculture to questions of masculinity. I am also grateful to Robert MacKay at the University of Toronto, whose ‘Sociology of Cultural Studies’ course and supervision of my undergraduate independent research project got me interested in cultural studies in the first place. I am grateful for the support of my colleagues at Central Saint Martins: Victoria Kelley, Elizabeth Kutesko, Royce Mahawatte, Nicola McCartney and Jane Tynan. And for the support of the research community at the University of Hertfordshire: Steven Adams, Kim Akass, Shaun Borstock and Silvio Carta. Thank you to everyone else I worked with in Communication Studies at York University and Liberal Studies at Humber College. Special thanks to Greg Narbey, who inspired me to go to graduate school in the first places and years later introduced me to post- secondary teaching. I owe so much to friendship. Thank you to the friends who shared the graduate school experience with me, for swapping stories and advice: Lai-Tze Fan, Katie Franklin, Norah Franklin, Rebecca Halliday, Guy Hoskins and Schem Rogerson. Thank you to all my old friends for everything we have shared over the years: Kai Boysen, Tara Bursey, Guy Butterworth, Joanna Coates, Pat Daintith, Matt Draimin, Luke Forster, Alex Gatien, Casey Johnson, Liam Musgrave, Ben Needham, Steph Nitsos, Ivan Roberts-Davies, Sarah Wayne, Rhys Weed and v Johnny White. Thanks also to my friends in Big Ben’s Madras Prison for style discussion and inspiration: Jonah Falco, Marcus Giles and Nicholas Sarnella. Lastly, thank you to my parents Barbara and Andrew. Dad, you inspired my love of music and gave me Dick Hebdige. Mum, you inspired my love of clothes and gave me Guy Debord. This research was made possible through the support of the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program, St. George's Society of Toronto Endowment and York University’s Research Cost Fund. vi Table of Contents Abstract....................................................................................................................................... ii Dedication .................................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................... vi Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 “It’s Raining Menswear” .................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Research Design .............................................................................................................. 4 1.2.1 Research Methods ..................................................................................................... 4 1.2.2 Research Philosophy and Theoretical Perspective ..................................................... 8 1.2.3 Research Questions ................................................................................................... 9 1.3 The Online Communities .................................................................................................10 1.3.1 Style Typology ..........................................................................................................10 1.3.2 An Introduction to the Online Communities ...............................................................15 1.4 Structure of the Dissertation ............................................................................................18 Chapter 2: Review of Literature .................................................................................................21 2.1 Masculinity .......................................................................................................................21 2.1.1 The Social Construction of Masculinity ......................................................................22 2.1.2 Hegemonic Masculinity .............................................................................................22 2.1.3 Post-structuralist Masculinity Studies ........................................................................24 2.2 Consumer Culture ...........................................................................................................27 2.2.1 Reflexive Modernisation,
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