Investigate the extent to which we can distinguish homosociality from homoeroticism in menswear ads for Abercrombie & Fitch.

Guidance

For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module, see the guidelines for writing essays and reports.

What Key Features Do I Look For? Familiarity with relevant texts Evidence - the stronger the better Argument - coherent and balanced Theoretical discussion - relation to relevant theories Understanding of relevant concepts Reflexivity - reflections on methodology Examples - insightfully analysed Style - readability and effective presentation

Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text (not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher. Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your text and number your pages.

Guidance for this assignment: Find several different definitions of homosociality and try to establish how it could be distinguished from homoeroticism. Is there any evidence of what I have called 'strategies of disavowal'? How does this relate to Abercrombie and Fitch's targeting strategies? Include some comparisons with other menswear ads targeted at a similar demographic. An investigation of audience responses (e.g. interviews) is expected: include both gay and straight males.

Note also that this is an assignment for which the inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is expected. Use these to illustrate particular points. Contrasting one with another can also be productive. Incorporate illustrations electronically into your text (e.g. by scanning or downloading from the Internet) rather than literally cutting and pasting. For guidance on capturing stills, click here.

Some suggested reading

• Ableman, Paul (1982) Anatomy of Nakedness. London: Orbis
• Alvarado, Manuel, Edward Buscombe & Richard Collins (Eds) (2001) Representation and Photography: A Screen Education Reader. Basingstoke: Palgrave
• Archer, Bert (1999) 'The New Calvinism' (excerpt from the book The End of Gay); [WWW document] URL http://www.endofgay.com/excerpts/calvinism.html
• Barthel, Diane (1992) 'When Men put on Appearances: Advertising and the Social Construction of Masculinity", in Craig op.cit.
• Berger, John (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: BBC/Penguin
• Berger, Joshua (2003) XXX: The Power of Sex in Contemporary Design. Gloucester, MA: Rockport
• Bordo, Susan (1999) The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Braham, Phil (2000) Naked Men. London: Serpent's Tail
• Breazeale, Kenon (1994) 'In Spite of Women: Esquire Magazine and the Construction of the Male Consumer', Signs 20(1):
• Chandler, Daniel (1998) 'Notes on "the Gaze"'. [WWW document] URL http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/media/Documents/gaze/gaze.html
  
• Chandler, Daniel (2002) 'Levi Strauss Launderette (1985) [Notes]' [WWW document] URL http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/media/Modules/MC30820/launderette.html [for references to the male body in advertising generally]
• Chapman, Rowena & Jonathan Rutherford (Eds) (1996) Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity. London: Lawrence & Wishart
• Churcher, Sharon & Steven S. Gaines (1994) Obsession: The Lives and Times of Calvin Klein. New York: Carol Publishing Group
• Coad, David (2008) The Metrosexual: Gender, Sexuality, and Sport. Albany, NY: SUNY
• Cooper, Emmanuel (1986) The Sexual Perspective: Homosexuality and Art in the Last 100 Years in the West. London: Routledge
• Cooper, Emmanuel (1995) Fully Exposed: The Male Nude in Photography. London: Routledge
• Cooper, Emmanuel (2004) Male Bodies: A Photographic History of the Nude. Munich: Prestel
• Craig, Steve (1991) 'Images of Men and Masculinity in the Mass Media: A Selected Research Bibliography' [WWW document] URL http://www.rtvf.unt.edu/people/craig/imagbibl.htm
• Craig, Steve (Ed.) (1992) Men, Masculinity and the Media. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
• Culbertson, Philip (1998) 'Designing Men: Reading the Male Body as Text' Textual Reasoning 7; [WWW document] URL http://www.bu.edu/mzank/Textual_Reasoning/tr-archive/tr7/Culbertson1.html
• Davis, Melody D. (1991) The Male Nude in Contemporary Photography. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
• de Louville, Francois & Edward Lucie-Smith (1985) The Male Nude: A Modern View. Oxford: Phaidon
• Dotson, Edisol Wayne (1999) Behold the Man: The Hype and Selling of Male Beauty in Media and Culture. New York: Harrington Park Press
• Dutton, Kenneth R. (1995) The Perfectible Body: The Western Ideal of Physical Development. London: Cassell
• Dyer, Richard (1993) The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation. London: Routledge
• Edwards, Tim (1997) Men in the Mirror: Men's Fashion, Masculinity and Consumer Society. London: Cassell
• Ellenzweig, Allen & George Stambolian (1992) The Homoerotic Photograph. New York: Columbia University Press
• Flood, Michael (1992) 'The Men's Bibliography' [WWW document] URL http://mensbiblio.xyonline.net/
• Gochenour, Phil (nd) 'Calvin Klein's "Pornographic Gaze"' [WWW document] URL http://www.cc.emory.edu/ALTJNL/Editorials/Klein_index.html
• Goldman, Jason (2004) ‘Erotic and Pornographic Art’. In Claude J. Summers (Ed) (2004) The Queer Encyclopedia of the Visual Arts. San Francisco, CA: Cleis Press
• Greer, Germaine (2003) The Boy. London: Thames & Hudson
• Heller, Steven (Ed) (2000) Sex Appeal: The Art of Allure in Graphic and Advertising Design. New York: Allworth Press
• Hooven III, F. Valentine (2002) Beefcake: The Muscle Magazines of America 1950-1970. Köln: Taschen
• Horrocks, Roger (1995) Male Myths and Icons: Masculinity in Popular Culture. London: Macmillan
• Jackson, Earl (1995) Strategies of Deviance: Studies in Gay Male Representation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
• Jackson, Stevi (1999) Heterosexuality in Question. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
• Jeffords, Susan (1993) Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinities in the Reagan Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press
• Jobling, Paul (1999) Fashion Spreads: Word and Image in Fashion Photography since 1980. Oxford: Berg
• Juan-Carlos, Ricardo (1983) Photographing the Male. London: New Burlington
• Kaye, Richard (2000) 'The Masculine Mystique' (review of Susan Bordo's The Male Body) [WWW document] URL http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.900/11.1.r_kaye.txt
• Kervin, Denise (1987) 'Gender Coding in Magazine Advertisements', Journal of Visual/Verbal Languaging 7:1: 52-9
• Kervin, Denise (1990) 'Advertising Masculinity: The Representation of Males in Esquire Advertisements', Journal of Communication Inquiry 14(1): 51-69
• Kibby, Marj (nd) 'Representing Masculinity' [WWW document] URL http://www.newcastle.edu.au/department/so/represen.htm
• Kibby, Marj (1997) 'Bibliography: Masculinity and Representation' [WWW document] URL http://www.newcastle.edu.au/department/so/biblio.htm
• Kleinhans, Chuck (1996) 'Studying Sexual Images' [WWW document] URL http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite/res/journals/jc/JC40-SpecialSection.html
• Kühnst, Peter (2004) Physique: Classic Photographs of Naked Athletes. London: Thames & Hudson
• Lang, Robert (2002) Masculine Interests: Homoerotics in Hollywood Film. New York: Columbia University Press
• Leddick, David (1997) Naked Men: Pioneering Male Nudes 1935-1955. New York?: Universe Books
• Leddick, David (2000) George Platt Lynes, 1907-1955. Köln: Taschen
• Leddick, David (2001) Male Nudes. Cologne: Taschen
• Lehman, Peter (1995) Running Scared: Masculinity and the Representation of the Male Body. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press
• Lehman, Peter (Ed) (2001) Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture. New York: Routledge
• Lucie-Smith, Edward (1991) Sexuality in Western Art. London: Thames & Hudson
• Lucie-Smith, Edward (1998) Adam: The Male Figure in Art. London: Weidenfeld Nicolson
• Lucie-Smith, Edward (1998) Ars Erotica. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Mackinnon, Kenneth (1997) Uneasy Pleasures: The Male as an Erotic Object. London: Cygnus
• Mapplethorpe, Robert (2001) Autoportrait. Santa Fe: Arena Editions
• Mistry, Reena (nd) 'From "Hearth and Home" to a Queer Chic: A Critical Analysis of Progressive Depictions of Gender in Advertising' [WWW document] URL http://www.theory.org.uk/mistry.htm
• Morris, Desmond (1985) Bodywatching: A Field Guide to the Human Species. London: Jonathan Cape
• Morris, Desmond (2002) People Watching: The Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language. London: Vintage [formerly, Manwatching]
• Morris, Desmond (2009) The Naked Man. New York: Vintage
• Mort, Frank (1988) 'Boy's Own? Masculinity, Style and Popular Culture'. In R. Chapman & J Rutherford (Eds): Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity. London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 193-224
• Mort, Frank (1996) Cultures of Consumption. New York: Routledge
• Mosse, George L. (1996) The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Nardi, Peter (Ed) (2000) Gay Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
• Nixon, Sean (1996) Hard Looks: Masculinities, Spectatorship and Contemporary Consumption. New York: St Martin's Press
• Pronger, Brian (1990) The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex. New York: St Martin’s Press
• Pultz, John (1995) Photography and the Body. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Reed, Christopher (2011) Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Reichert, Tom (2005) Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media and Marketing. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
• Reichert, Tom & Jacqueline Lambiase (Eds) (2003) Sex in Advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum
• Richardson, Diane (1996) 'Heterosexuality and Social Theory'. In Diane Richardson (Ed) Theorizing Heterosexuality: Telling it Straight. Buckingham: Open University Press, pp. 1-20
• Riedel, Brian (1996) 'Reading the Gay Male Body' [WWW document] URL http://www.ibiblio.org/grendel/malebody/abstract.html
• Robinson, Julian (1988) Body Packaging: A Guide to Human Sexual Display. Sydney: Watermark Press
• Rohlinger, Deana A. (2002) 'Eroticising men: Cultural influences on advertising and male objectification' [WWW document] URL http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m2294/2002_Feb/90888979/p1/article.jhtml?term=participant+observation+audience+research
• Saslow, James M. (1999) Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts. New York: Viking
• Saunders, Dave (1996) Best Ads: Sex in Advertising. London: Batsford
• Schehr, Lawrence R. (1997) Parts of an Andrology: On Representations of Men's Bodies. Stanford: Stanford University Press
• Schuckmann, Patrick (1998) 'Masculinity, the Male Spectator and the Homoerotic Gaze' Amerikastudien/American Studies 43(4): 671-80
• Simpson, Mark (1996) 'Levi's'. In It's a Queer World. London: Vintage, pp. 229-233
• Smicker, Josh (nd) 'The Androgynous Mystique: CK One, Heroin, and The Fluidity of the Self' [WWW document] URL http://www.angelfire.com/geek/shunyatazero/
• Smith, Jeremiah (nd) 'From Johnson to Nixon: Narrative Shifts in Gay Male Pornography' [WWW document] URL http://www.reconstruction.ws/011/Fj/fromjohnson.htm
• Solomon-Godeau, Abigail (1997) Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation. London: Thames & Hudson
• Spicuzza, Mary (2000) 'Beef Cake Blues' (from Metro) [WWW document] URL http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/07.06.00/cover/bodyobsession1-0027.html
• Sprigle, David (Ed) (1999) Male of the Species: Four Decades of Photography by Arthur Tress. Santa Monica, CA: Foto Factory Press
• Thomas, Calvin (1998) Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press
• Walters, Margaret (1978) The Nude Male: A New Perspective. London: Paddington Press
• Waugh, Thomas (1996) Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Erotics in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall. New York: Columbia University Press
• Webb, Peter (1978) The Erotic Arts. London: Secker & Warburg
• Weinberg, Jonathan (2005) Male Desire: The Homoerotic in American Art. New York: Abrams
• Wernick, Andrew (1987) 'From Voyeur to Narcissist: Imaging Men in Contemporary Advertising'. In Michael Kaufman (Ed) Beyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power and Change. Toronto: Oxford University Press, pp. 277-97
• White, Philip G. & James Gillett (1994) 'Reading the Muscular Body: A Critical Decoding of Advertisements in Flex magazine', Sociology of Sport Journal 11(1)