Abstract
The office has played a vital role in the construction of masculinity. But the recession alongside the shift toward automation, downsizing, and outsourcing has made full-time employment less formal and predictable. Through the theoretically captivating yet academically sidelined lens of men’s engagement with clothes, Erynn Masi de Casanova explores the influence of this new corporate reality on men and masculinity. The popular image is that men don drab and dull attire for work because they are restricted by office clothing regulations; however, Casanova explains that uncertainty in the corporation has led to the flexibility of dress codes. She charts the move to more causal dress in the office that has been exemplified by the introduction of “casual fridays” and the consumerist discourse of fashion as a tool to build one’s “personal brand.” As a result of this less formal dress culture, Casanova expected that men would be creative in the ways in which they perform masculinity through their clothing. Instead, she found the opposite.
Casanova argues that white-collar men intentionally wear conservative clothes to work in order to access the privileges associated with being a man who is a member of the middle or upper class. Rather than being forced to wear certain clothes or unthinkingly following their peers, men engage in what Casanova calls the “strategic embrace of conformity” (p. 3) when they select their office attire because doing so enables them to maintain power over women and gay men in the corporate realm. Casanova’s argument is based on interviews with seventy-one “white-collar men” of diverse race, ethnic, and sexual identities, who occupied a range of positions across industries and who lived in Cincinnati, New York City, or San Francisco. Although she interviewed men from diverse social locations, all of her participants had a degree of social and economic power. The loosening of office dress codes made them anxious about choosing clothes, in which they would stand out instead aligning with the codes of white, middle-class, and heterosexual masculine embodiment.
In the seven chapters, Casanova explores topics ranging from men’s dress socialization to their perceptions about the role of dress in office hierarchies. In early chapters on their childhood, she argues that men’s fathers taught them to associate work clothes with white, middle-class norms. She also asserts that men’s experiences with school uniforms trained their bodies to dress for rigid gendered identities. As men began office careers, they continued to conform to masculine dress codes—despite not formally having to do so—because dressing in ways that disrupted them would result in gossip and jeopardize their gender identity. In later chapters on men’s perceptions of fashion, gender, and sexuality, Casanova finds that her interviewees reject fashion because they see it as feminine and the domain of women and gay men. Accordingly, she argues that the metrosexual discourse has not challenged the gender hierarchy by enabling men to freely play with fashion; instead, it has expanded traditional performances of masculinity by placing another set of rigid pressures on men: to conform to a thin and fit body ideal.
While Buttoned Up wears its theory lightly, it is layered with rich empirical insights and colorful vignettes between chapters. The strength of Casanova’s analysis is her rigor in unpacking the nuances of data. She explores how the local dress cultures of the regions, cities, and neighborhoods where men live influence their dress decisions. Casanova also analyzes how men’s class, ethnicity, and sexual identities impact their engagement with clothes. Black participants were less dismissive of fashion than nonblack men because there is greater value placed on style in black culture. Additionally, they have less to lose than white men by engaging in the feminine arena of fashion because their racial identity already denies them access to privileged masculine status. However, the most important contribution of Buttoned Up is its unbuttoning of a new research context to uncover fresh insights about men and masculinity. Casanova herself admits that she was struck by how clothes function as powerful medium to teach men about masculinity and engage them in dialogue about it. This book will inspire scholars to ask how they can incorporate the study of men’s clothes into their work to more fully understand men and masculinities.