Identity and Masculinity

Introduction
According to Melanie Le Tourneau, many of us do not know ourselves as well as we think, and far from being stable and enduring, our identities undergo constant reconstruction (Le Tourneau, 2000). Social feedback, comparisons with others and society’s perception of our behaviour act to challenge us to redefine ourselves. Our social identity is made up of many characteristics including gender or our name; but also such things as vocations, political or religious affiliations. Important to our social identity is our self-concept, which is an organised set of beliefs and perceptions about ourselves (Baron & Byrne, 2002). Edwards (1994) spoke of ‘scripts’ that follow a natural progression – from how the world is, through how it is perceived, to how it is described. Using this model Antaki, Condor and Levine (1996) describe social identity as “a description available for people to invoke and deploy in mundane interaction” (p474). Using this model therefore agrees with Tajfel’s emphasis on social identity being a process and not a ‘thing’ (1981). So how does this process work? Self-schemas are cognitive generalisations about the self that form a component of the self-concept.

These schemas are organised around specific traits or features we feel, are central and important to our own self-image (Pennington & Hill, 1999). Schematic traits will be discussed further in this study when analysing the interview. Self-concepts do not remain fixed throughout an individual’s life. They may undergo several changes resulting from such things as a change of occupation or perhaps less dramatic events. Changes in self-concept can occur during the most ordinary interactions (Baron & Byrne, 2002).

Identities inevitably involve concepts of masculinity and femininity along with perceptions of how men and women should appear and behave (Whannel, 2002). In questioning how cultural forces shape identities, David Abbott (2000) argues changes have occurred in gender relations and identity, in particular, changing cultural norms regarding masculinity. For Abbott, changes in male-specific advertisements in the 1980s led to a wide spread belief that it could be “‘cool’ and acceptable for men to take the same amount of care over their personal appearance and clothes as women do” (Abbott, 2000 p5). Early studies on the ‘new man’ pointed to a ‘sexualisation’ of the male body. Through changes in male identity in contemporary culture, the male body came to be seen and used in an explicitly sexual way (Abbott, 2000). Nixon (1996) notes that although there were several types of ‘new man’, different shop displays were using more sexualised and narcissistic images of men. This may indeed be the case as questions put to the participant in this interview, reflected these changes when asked about such things as appearance. It is not only advertising that has contributed to the new male identity as Gary Whannel notes:

“Pictures of David Beckham have both expressed and challenged some of the dominant assumptions of masculinity and identity…his experiments with fashion and his posing with wife Victoria Adams for fashion shoots are taken by some as an affront to the conventions of masculine behaviour” (Whannel, 2002 p2)