Context Masculinities: Media Consumption, Physical Education, and Youth Identities

This article reports findings from a qualitative case study undertaken at a Vancouver high school designed to examine the role of media and physical education (PE) in shaping how young males (n = 36) understand and practice gender. The authors were specifically concerned with developing a nuanced un...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American behavioral scientist (Beverly Hills) 2010-07, Vol.53 (11), p.1669-1688
Main Authors: Millington, Brad, Wilson, Brian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Audience
Canada
Case studies
Consumption
Coping
Coping strategies
Criticism
Education
Gender
Gender roles
Hegemony
Heterosexuality
Identity
Males
Masculinity
Mass media effects
Mass Media Images
Media
Media coverage
Men
Narratives
Physical Education
Qualitative research
Radicalism
Secondary schools
Self concept
Sex
Social environment
Social inequality
Social representations
Students
Young men
Youth
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article reports findings from a qualitative case study undertaken at a Vancouver high school designed to examine the role of media and physical education (PE) in shaping how young males (n = 36) understand and practice gender. The authors were specifically concerned with developing a nuanced understanding of how interpretations of masculinity relate to performances of masculinity and how interpretations and performances vary depending on social context and according to a youth’s social positioning. Findings revealed how participants criticized media portrayals of “hegemonic masculinities” (i.e., muscular, aggressive, and hyper-heterosexual masculinities) while simultaneously celebrating these same gender identities in PE. The authors used these findings as a foundation for arguing that (a) youth are flexible in their interpretations/performances of masculinity according to context; (b) the participants, in critiquing portrayals of hypermasculinity in media and supporting less radical versions of hegemonic masculinity in PE, were creating personal narratives around masculinity as a potential strategy for coping with feelings of disembodiment and disembeddedness; and (c) students’ critiques of gender portrayals, although offering symbolic challenges to the contemporary gender order, are nonetheless limited by structures that normalize hegemonic masculinities.
ISSN:0002-7642
1552-3381
DOI:10.1177/0002764210368091