In Spite of Women: "Esquire" Magazine and the Construction of the Male Consumer

Breazeale, Kenon

doi:10.1086/494952

Cited by 89 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Therefore, the magazine appeared to craft its presentation not only around the communication of topical information, but also around the deliberate definition of a community of readers, complete with political causes to support their purportedly mutual interests. Kitch, Webb, and Frau-Meigs all demonstrate the phenomenon that Breazeale (1994) identifies in specialized magazines: the creation of "calculated packages of meaning whose aim is to transform the reader into an imaginary subject" (p. 9), or, in the Althusserian sense, to suggest that readers embody the appellation that is suggested for them.…”

Section: Magazines and Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“We Need a Showing of All Hands”

Sivek

2011

Journal of Communication Inquiry

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Make magazine is a quarterly publication focused on do-it-yourself projects involving technology and innovation. The magazine also sponsors a biannual event, the Maker Faire, that brings "makers" together to share their knowledge. As a strategy for building audience loyalty and identification with the magazine, the Make products are skillfully crafted. However, they also invoke ideals such as environmentalism and nationalism in a potent mix that not only engages readers, but also represents an additional cultural demonstration of the phenomenon of technological utopianism.Make magazine is one of a growing genre of magazines that provides practical information to readers on ways to improve their homes and communities while also connecting their projects to greater social and environmental goals. The magazine and its associated event, the Maker Faire, promote self-reliance, innovation, and individuality within a context of environmentalism and nationalism in ways that evoke longrecognized and widespread narratives of technological utopianism within American culture.This study examines how, through the Maker Faire and Make's unique blend of magazine content, the publishers of Make magazine effectively build and reinforce a collective identity for "makers" through the use of key themes of American ideology Articles

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Section: Magazines and Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“We Need a Showing of All Hands”

Sivek

2011

Journal of Communication Inquiry

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“…As Kenon Breazeale notes, 'Much of what the modern world deems appropriate sex roles is embedded in a nutshell dichotomy -men produce and women shop'. 6 Within this dichotomy, men are portrayed as untouched by consumer culture and untainted by its supposed superficialities. Early feminist scholarship accepted not only the accuracy of the dichotomy but the moral hierarchy it implied.…”

Section: Gender and Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Masculinity, Consumption and the Transformation of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the Turn‐of‐the‐Century United States

Clawson

2007

Gender & History

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Beat the drum; blow the horn; flash the sign; the degrees going cheap; 32 nd for a song; money's worth or money back. 1 During the 1890s, Scottish Rite Masons in the United States began to transform their elaborate initiation rituals into a fully staged theatrical spectacle. The changes -a shift from lodge room to auditorium, the constitution of initiates as an audience of spectators and the introduction of elaborate sets and lighting -transformed the ritual into an avowedly theatrical experience, located the Rite within the era's growing array of opportunities for commercial entertainment and consumer choice and produced an explosive growth in the hitherto floundering organisation. At the same time, as a drama performed by men and for men, the staged ritual seemed to challenge the era's cultivation of female audiences, emerging as a distinctive masculine entertainment genre within a culture that associated frivolous consumption with women.These changes also produced a round of trenchant criticism from traditionalists within the order, who decried what they saw as the commercialisation, feminisation and general dumbing-down of their treasured ritual. 'Greatest show on earth!' lamented William Knox. 'Were not the degrees sold to me, and, in the spirit of commercialism, shall I not sell the same?' Critics like Knox and Francis O'Donnell asserted the moral superiority of traditional practice which 'does the great work without stages and scenesettings, robes and regalias, electric lights or pipe organs', relying rather on 'assiduous devotion and attention', 'cultivation of analytic thought' and the 'almighty power of Reason' to produce 'a great Mason, otherwise a truly good man'. 2 The conflation of Masonry and manhood was central to this conflict. To the growing number of enthusiasts who flocked to the energised order, the staged ritual was an alluring blend of edification and entertainment, enacted in surroundings they experienced as luxurious, tasteful and manly. To the critics, the new mode of conferral represented a loss of both Masonic and masculine integrity, an unprecedented assimilation into a regime of empty commercialism. Identifying spectacle with femininity and childhood, with the 'lower orders' and the 'lower races' and with 'all those groups

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“…The image of the gay playboy, so successfully established in the Advocate by the late 1970s, was a distillation of an already wellestablished male trope, the free-spending, affluent, masculine man (Breazeale, 1994;Ehrenreich, 1983). Many lesbian feminists of the 1970s so effectively distanced themselves, however, from the consumption-driven requirements of femininity that they may have successfully dissuaded marketers from approaching them and largely ignored or resisted marketers' rare appeals.…”

Section: Consumption and Gay Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent theorists and historians of consumption have begun to problematize the notion that women are ideal consumers while men exist entirely outside the realm of consumption (Breazeale, 1994;Clark, 1993;de Grazia & Furlough, 1996). In relation to Advocate readers, the association of consumption with femininity poses two problems.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gay Readers, Consumers, and a Dominant Gay Habitus: 25 Years of the Advocate Magazine

Sender

2001

Journal of Communication

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This essay extends Bourdieu's analysis of taste, cultural capital, and habitus to address the identification of and appeal to gay consumers in the Advocate magazine between 1967 and 1992. From its humble beginnings as a local activist newspaper to its incarnation as a gay and lesbian, glossy, lifestyle magazine in the early 1990s, the Advocate consolidated the image of the ideal gay consumer, his (occasionally her) tastes, pleasures, and concerns, for readers and advertisers alike. The magazine thus helped to construct a dominant gay habitus that would increasingly characterize an openly gay, professional-managerial class. This process provides both opportunities and costs for a diverse gay citizenship and for a lively, heterogeneous, sex-positive gay politics.

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In Spite of Women: "Esquire" Magazine and the Construction of the Male Consumer

Cited by 89 publications

References 13 publications

“We Need a Showing of All Hands”

“We Need a Showing of All Hands”

Masculinity, Consumption and the Transformation of Scottish Rite Freemasonry in the Turn‐of‐the‐Century United States

Gay Readers, Consumers, and a Dominant Gay Habitus: 25 Years of the Advocate Magazine

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