The new man bland tyll och pärlhalsband: En studie av samtidens nya maskulinitet i modeartiklar

Sammanfattning: This essay focuses on the phenomenon of the new man and new masculinity and how it is used and described in fashion articles. The phenomenon points at something new but within a historical context we see that the new man goes back in history. The aim of this essay is to find what the new man and its new masculinity is today according to fashion journalism. The empirical data consists of ten fashion articles from various magazines. The data has thereafter been analyzed using a method of close reading where the focus has been to find themes about what the new man wears and how this masculinity is constructed. We found that the new man seems to have embraced almost the same creativity as the queer aesthetic where creativity and clothing that are norm-breaking become central. There is a general hierarchy between men. We have, in some of of the articles, found that there is a group within the new man who is elevated to a hegemonic status and who claims that men who are not interested in fashion and appearance should be ashamed. There is at the same time another group of the new man that shows greater inclusion among the masculine gender, which in return allows men to show greater individual expressions within the gender identity.