Abstract
Metrosexual: made-up word, marketing gimmick, or juvenile insult? Defining metrosexuality as contemporary men’s “fascination with their appearance,” social psychologist Matthew Hall argues that this new label merits scholarly consideration. We lack research on men who identify as metrosexual and on the larger cultural phenomenon. Having lamented this gap in the literature, I rejoiced upon receiving this book, with its catchy, straightforward title, and gorgeous full-color cover.
The book is composed of twelve brief chapters: an introduction, four chapters of literature review, followed by six empirical chapters and a conclusion. Hall uses discursive analysis of online comments (letting “people speak for themselves”) to define metrosexuality in relation to other social categories. Unlike other scholars, Hall is not shy about listing practices that are considered metrosexual, such as “manscaping” (shaving body hair below the neck) and cosmetics use. This is a useful contribution, as is the glossary of key terms (p. 159–60). The argument that metrosexuality still uses “traditional” or “hegemonic” masculinity as a reference point is important. The effort to include men’s voices—albeit via anonymous online comments—is admirable.
However, the book suffers from flaws in research methodology, writing, and organization. These flaws limit the rigor, clarity, and thus, the potential contribution of Metrosexual Masculinities.
The biggest methodological misstep lies in the selection of texts to analyze. In a qualitative study of discourse, the small n (number of cases) is not automatically a disadvantage. However, the explanations offered for how and why particular online comments were chosen for close reading are insufficient. There is no sense of how typical or representative these selected texts are of the larger body of online comments. For example, chapter 10 analyzes seven comments posted by viewers of a men’s makeup tutorial on Youtube.com. Readers are told that “more than 400 written comments” were posted in response to this video. Taking a sample of seven individual comments from among 400 seems arbitrary and underwhelming. These seven texts (brief online comments) were chosen because they were “particularly interesting” and employed “typical masculine markers,” that is, references to traditional masculine ideals (p. 120). Does this mean the texts are atypical or typical? Absent any discussion of the patterns in the body of 400 comments—again, on a single YouTube video clip—we cannot know how representative the seven responses are. Similarly perplexing text selections form the basis of the other empirical chapters about: definitions of metrosexual on the Canada-based website AskMen.com; posts about manscaping on the Men’s Health magazine website; responses to an instructional video on pubic shaving by Gillette; and testimonials for men’s cosmetics lines. Each chapter focuses on a small number of texts selected without a convincing rationale. Zooming in on particular comments in this way, and subjecting them to line-by-line analysis, gives us a close-up view of the bark on several trees, but no real sense of the forest in which they grow. Thus, the textual examples are not able to provide enough evidence for the claims made in the book, however reasonable these claims may seem.
The book’s organization lacks coherence. The author seems to be aware of this, referring to “six studies” rather than “the study.” The conclusion mentions two primary research questions. The first, how self-identified metrosexuals “achieve their identity” (p. 153), does not seem answerable using only a textual analysis method, but rather, calls for supplemental data collection through interviews or observation. The second, whether metrosexuality is a new type of masculinity, remains unanswered: Hall claims that “it is too early to say” (p. 156). Perhaps it would be easier to answer this question if a larger swath of texts had been analyzed in depth or if the research had employed methods that could connect the micro to the macro level—something the author says “is not possible” (p. 152). Yet isn’t this the job of social researchers?
The book’s writing is unpolished and repetitive; here the publisher bears some responsibility as well (full disclosure: I have published with Palgrave Macmillan in the United States, though this book is from its UK division). Ungrammatical sentence structures and misspellings should have been corrected early in the editing process.
I enjoyed reading the colorful Internet comments, some by self-identified metrosexuals. There is a real gap in the literature on contemporary masculinity when it comes to men’s viewpoints and embodied experiences; despite this gap, I would not assign Metrosexual Masculinities to my students. Although it addresses an understudied phenomenon, the book does not present the type of rigorous, exhaustive research we need to situate isolated instances of online “talk” within larger dialogues about what it means to be a (metrosexual) man.