White Heterosexual Men, Athletic Bodies, and the Pleasure of Unruly Racialization

Abstract

In recent times, the semi-naked male athletic body has become central to the cultural imagination of late modern societies, in turn, inviting comment from social scientists of different shades on the changing gazes of heterosexual men. Interestingly, and despite frequently appearing in sport and leisure media, the racialized aspects of this change are yet to be explored fully. This article, therefore, considers how white heterosexual men (de)construct and (re)attach gendered and sexualized meanings to those male athletic bodies they struggle to define “racially.” Borrowing Gilroy’s use of the term “unruly,” which he employs to capture those moments of multiculture that are hard to “home” culturally or geographically, I refer to this struggle as a process of unruly racialization. After analyzing interviews with twenty-two self-identifying white, British, heterosexual men, this article argues that male bodies racialized as unruly are marked with varying degrees of intrigue, jealously, admiration, and fear. I conclude by reflecting on the extent to which this cultural shift can be read as a move toward a future beyond “race.”

The Costs of Grooming: Bodily Scrutiny and White-collar Masculinities in Japan

“…Men’s grooming products “are often marketed by way of ‘action hero’ euphemisms” (Bordo 1999, 196), while men talk about grooming for the heterosexual imperative of attracting girlfriends (Tso 2022). The reproduction of hierarchical relations among men along lines including sexuality, race, and class also becomes clear through narratives on grooming (e.g., Lawrence 2020; Slevin and Linnemann 2010). Gill, Henwood, and Mclean’s (2005) interviews on British men’s bodywork included “homophobic exchanges, designed to disavow any homoerotic desire in the speaker and to cast aspersions on the others’ (heterosexual) manhood” (59), thereby demonstrating a privileging of straight masculinity over homosexuality.…”

“…Cultural representations and discourses of bodily grooming tend to validate conventionally masculine attributes such as physical strength and professional competence (Schirato and Yell 1999; Luciano 2001). Similarly, research has highlighted hierarchical differences among bodies that intersect with ideals of youth, race, sexuality, and the repudiation of femininity (e.g., Gough, Hall, and Seymour-Smith 2014; Hurd and Mahal 2021; Lawrence 2020). More recently, scholarship has explored work masculinities, finding that white-collar men understand hair styling and clothing in terms of their socio-economically privileged, heterosexual, and racially white positions (Barber 2016; de Casanova 2015).…”