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Facemasks have become requisite amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore facemasking behaviors, preferences, and attitudes among emerging adults, a “distinct period demographically” within the lifespan. Public opinion polls conducted in May 2020 found that emerging adults were the least compliant when compared to other demographic groups. To understand why, we developed a survey instrument that was administered to a demographically representative quota sample of 1,005 participants. Demographic comparisons revealed that behaviors and attitudes differed significantly by political beliefs, gender, living situation, and race. An exploratory factor analysis revealed six underlying variables: (a) facemask avoidance; (b) concerned adherence (c) vexed faultfinding; (d) statement making; (e) fashion enthusiasm; and (f) hygiene adherence. All factors varied significantly by political affiliation, and in some cases by gender, race, living situation, location, and work/education status. Significant correlations were present between all factors except fashion enthusiasm and vexed faultfinding.

This article examines how identities are negotiated and performed through costuming within the furry fandom community. Using ethnographic research methods, including participant observation augmented by demographic surveys and in-depth interviews at two fur conventions, we explore how individuals’ gender, sexual and anthropomorphic identities are produced through costuming at fur conventions. The findings reveal a vast spectrum of identities within the fandom; costuming and ‘dressing-up’ enable individuals, particularly men, opportunities to explore and express aspects of identities through animal performance. The body, as Judith Butler has argued, is a ‘variable boundary’ with a permeable surface – making it a site where gender is repeatedly performed. Costuming and manipulating the body is a material interpretation of gender – that is, a repeated action of the body within clothes. The effect of gender is produced through the ‘stylization of the body’ and percolates through material and embodied gesture and habitus. While gender non-conformists in North America may experience limitations with regard to their visible expression in everyday society (both perceived and in ‘policing’ behaviours), the furry fandom community is an accepting and tolerant space for negotiation and experimentation with gender through costuming and body modification. Furries perform gender and negotiate ambivalences about these identities through the costume.

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This article examines how, in the latter aughts, men from the United States thought about their style, favourite clothing, masculine style(s) and the ways they imagined masculinity as articulated through everyday practices of fashioning the body. The body is a site of identity production, situated within broader cultural expectations, commitments and ideals. This study explores men’s relationships to masculine ideals while dressing the body. We ask: how do men think about masculinity in relation to dress? How do they define ‘masculine style’? In this article we examine individual responses about everyday appearance decisions, as well as larger trends. The study is a cross-section from a particular moment in time (May 2008) and uses demographically balanced open-ended survey responses to gauge men’s relationships to masculine ideals while dressing the body. We use descriptive statistics to illustrate how men in the United States – at a particularly transitional moment in time – articulated their perspectives on favourite clothes and masculine style.

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