A quarter of a century after Susan Bordo. Ways of presenting masculinity and male bodily practices in selected Polish lifestyle magazines for men between 1990 and 2020

Abstract

The article discusses the representation of masculinity and male bodily practices in Polish lifestyle magazines for men in the thirty-year post-transition period (1990–2020). The analysis is based on empirical material from the project „Cultural practices related to the body in everyday life of four generations of Polish men. A sociological analysis” (NCN). It is aimed, among other things, at verifying the observation made by Susan Bordo, according to whom the male image is invariably accompanied by a context of power, money, the requirement to be physically strong, and a broadly understood ability to subdue and use violence. The process of qualitative content analysis encompassed 31 men’s magazine titles. It focused on three analytical categories: the types of masculinities promoted in the magazines, the representations of the male body, and the narratives surrounding the body, particularly about grooming, health, aesthetics, and identity practices. The analyses showed that post-1989 men’s lifestyle magazines played an important role in shaping patterns of masculinity, offering models of identity based on body aesthetics and success but rooted in traditional, hegemonic norms. In them, modern bodily practices were redefined as ‘masculine’ through rhetorics of strength, pain, and domination, allowing them to be integrated without violating the conservative gender order. Despite their apparent openness to new forms of masculinity, the magazines reproduce oppressive patterns by subordinating the male body to a consumerist logic, allowing us to conclude that Bordo’s observations remain valid.