Secondary Source Report on Chelsea Barnett’s article “Man’s man: representations of Australian post-war masculinity in Man magazine
By Blake Rathie
Complete citation:
Chelsea Barnett (2015) Man's man: representations of Australian post-war masculinity in Man magazine, Journal of Australian Studies, 39:2, 151-169, DOI: 10.1080/14443058.2014.1001422
Image:
Image citation:
Chelsea Barnett (2015) Man's man: representations of Australian post-war masculinity in Man magazine, Journal of Australian Studies, 39:2, 151-169, DOI: 10.1080/14443058.2014.1001422
Key Words:
Masculinity, Post-war Australia, men’s magazine, suburban life
Brief Overview:
Barnett’s article analyses the men’s magazine Man and its representation of masculinity in post-war Australia. Deconstruction of this magazine expresses a new angle on what was seen as the “sleepy 1950s,” which was believed to be a time of social conservatism and gender stability, as this magazine emphasises some close to misogynistic views.
Summary of Key Points:
-unable to compete with niche interest magazines
-close to misogynistic in its opinions
-imagined reader portrayed as deeply unhappy and frustrated by marriage and suburban life
-celebrated harmful masculine traits while restricting women’s choices and presenting feminism as a threat
Important Quotations:
“Far from simply functioning as a platform for middle-class conformity, Man revealed a middle-class world of masculinist unease.”
“Readers were reminded that “weakness is never desirable, that it is never safe, that it should not exist”; any suggestion of femininity in this space was thus disparaged”
“Man told a story of desperately unhappy men, frustrated with the model of responsibility central to Prime Minister Robert Menzies’s civilised world of comfortable suburban life. However, while questioning Menzies’s vision of familial, satisfied masculinity, Man clung to rigidly “traditional” ideals of femininity that limited women’s agency.”
“Man’s representations of frustration and resentment about male responsibilities were overt, as was the articulation of the desire to be liberated from these burdens. However, the magazine also acknowledged that fulfilling these desires was virtually impossible”
“These years ‘bear a heavy metaphorical weight of contemporary sentiments about gender, intolerance and national identity’; all too frequently, the 1950s are depicted as the period of gender rigidity “before” the transformations of the 1960s and 1970s”
Usefulness to Group Topic or Individual Project:
This could be helpful towards an individual project, as I have been considering the possibility of writing an individual project on the gendered distinctions between men’s and women’s magazines in the past and present, and an article such as this by Barnett would be very helpful in giving information to how men’s magazines in post-war Australia presented masculinity.
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