Manning Up: Modern Manhood, Rudimentary Pugilistic Capital, and Esquire Network’s White Collar Brawlers

Abstract

Debuting in 2013, Esquire Network’s first season of White Collar Brawlers features professional-class men with workplace conflicts looking to “settle the score in the ring.” In the show, white-collar men are portrayed as using boxing to reclaim ostensibly primal aspects of masculinity, which their professional lives do not provide, making them appear as better men and more productive constituents of a postindustrial service economy. Through this narrative process, White Collar Brawlers romanticizes a unique fusion of postindustrial white-collar employment and the blue-collar labors of the boxing gym. This construction, which Esquire calls “modern manhood,” simultaneously empowers professional-class men while limiting the social mobility of actual blue-collar workers. Based on a critical textual analysis that adopts provisional and rudimentary aspects of Wacquant’s conception of “pugilistic capital,” we contend that Esquire Network has created a show where men are exposed to and sold an image of “modern manhood” that reifies class-based differences and reaffirms the masculine hegemony of white-collar identities.

“‘No Tough Guys Here?’: Hybrid Masculinity in a Boxing Gym”

“…This gym was an example of the post-industrial white-collar boxing phenomena, where professional-class men sought out boxing training (Berg, Linden, and Schultz 2020; Satterlund 2012; Trimbur 2013). However, I soon learned that instead of promoting a traditional, physical masculinity, they advocated a different view.…”

“…The recent literature has emerged on the phenomenon of white-collar boxing, which became prominent during the 1980s (Trimbur 2011; Wright 2019). These gyms cater to a mostly middle-class clientele as a leisure activity, opportunity to learn self-defense, and status symbol (Berg, Linden, and Schultz 2020; Ribiero 2017; Satterrlund 2012; Trimbur 2013).…”