Suited for Success? Suits, Status, and Hybrid Masculinity

Ben Barry · Nathaniel Weiner

43 citations0/0 files storedMen and Masculinities

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Fashion and Cultural Textiles Gender and Feminist Studies Gender Roles and Identity Studies

Abstract

This article analyzes the sartorial biographies of four Canadian men to explore how the suit is understood and embodied in everyday life. Each of these men varied in their subject positions—body shape, ethnicity, age, and gender identity—which allowed us to look at the influence of men’s intersectional identities on their relationship with their suits. The men in our research all understood the suit according to its most common representation in popular culture: a symbol of hegemonic masculinity. While they wore the suit to embody hegemonic masculine configurations of practice—power, status, and rationality—most of these men were simultaneously marginalized by the gender hierarchy. We explain this disjuncture by using the concept of hybrid masculinity and illustrate that changes in the style of hegemonic masculinity leave its substance intact. Our findings expand thinking about hybrid masculinity by revealing the ways subordinated masculinities appropriate and reinforce hegemonic masculinity.

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References

2000The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory 2009Slaves to Fashion 2021Fashion and Cultural Studies 1984The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare 2019The Three-Piece Suit and Modern Masculinity 1997New Raiments of Self 2014You Are What You Wear: How Plus-Size Fashion Figures in Fat Identity Formation 2020Slaves to Fashion

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