The Male Body, Beauty and Aesthetics in Modern British Culture

Abstract

This article examines the topics of the male body, beauty and beauty culture in nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century Britain. By exploring work ranging from the study of sport and physical culture to disability and disfigurement in the First World War and queer history, this piece argues that historians should place at the centre, not marginalize, examinations of physical appearance, aesthetics and the adornment and manipulation of the body. Such an approach, it is argued, will only serve to enhance the field of masculinity studies and enrich understandings of the British past.

Miners’ Bodies and Masculine Identity in Britain, C.1900-1950

“…Beauty is a vital element to consider in enquiries into the body and identity as Paul Deslandes has shown. 44 While few miners explicitly discussed bodies and beauty in the South Wales History Project interviews, and certainly were not questioned on this, through memoirs and recorded viewpoints in social surveys we are able to build a picture of standards of attractiveness and dress within mining communities. Working men shaped their bodies to construct a performance of masculinity within a specific time and place.…”