Spornosexualitet : Män, maskulinitet och den manliga kroppen

Sammanfattning: During the last decade of the twentieth century both ’manhood’ and gender studies seems to have undergone changes. With the field of masculinity and the critical studies of men, added as ’subsections’ of broader gender studies, new knowledge has been produced to better grasp the production of gender and power relations of patriarchy. During the same decade as the ’metrosexual’ first appeared of the urban stage, acts of homophobia and attitudes towards ’manhood’ seems to have changed. The ’macho’ ideal from the eighties apparently gave way for a more inclusive and gentle masculinity and this ’softening’ of men resulted in ’the new man’ or ’new masculinity’. Brittish journalist and author Mark Simpson, who published the first ’obersvation’ of metrosexuality back in the nineties, now proposes that a new generation of metrosexual men have entered the international stage of masculinity. He calls them ’spornosexuals’. According to Simpson they are the heirs of the metrosexuals widened or feminized masculinity but instead of ’new man’ attitudes, fashion and grooming they focus their attention towards their own well chiseled, lean muscular and defined male bodies. This paper reviews academic texts on men, masculinity and the male body in an attempt to create a sociological understanding of the spornosexual expression and practice.