Suited for Success? Suits, Status, and Hybrid Masculinity

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 positionsbody 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.Keywords: hybrid masculinity, embodiment, menswear, suits, sartorial biographies 2 IntroductionSociologist Tim Edwards (2011) tells us that "the suit is … the very essence of men's fashion and, indeed, of masculinity" (53). But what makes the suit masculine? And, moreover, what kinds of masculinities are expressed through the suit? Researchers on masculinity have tended to ignore clothing in their work, despite that fact that dress is one of the most immediate ways in which people read and express gender identity (Kaiser 2012). Fashion scholars have examined the shifting designs, practices and semiotics of suits at various historical and cultural moments. But they have often simply assumed that suits are masculine, without addressing how men's lived experiences of wearing them supports, challenges and nuances their claim. Research into the bodies that don suits is vital because dress, as Joanne Entwistle (2000) theorizes, is an embodied practice: it "operates on a phenomenal, moving body … that involves individual actions of attending to the body" (Entwistle 2000, 10-11). In this article, we explore the relationship between masculinity and suits through men's embodied experiences.We use the concept of embodiment to refer to how people's experiences of their body form the basis for their sense of self (Hewson 2013; Turner 1996). Specifically, we ask: what do men's embodied experiences of buying, choosing and wearing suits reveal about masculinity?To answer this question, we employed a sartorial biography methodology. Sartorial biographies combine life histories and object interviews to explore how clothing materializes identity (Woodward 2015, 1). Entering the wardrobes of four men, we examined their suits and interviewed them about these garments. This approach allowed us to uncover the ways in which the materiality of men's suits was intertwined with their embodied experiences of masculinity.What results is a rich description of the suit as material culture artefact through which overlapping subject positions are negotiated...

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