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Project summary
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In the cultural landscape of contemporary China, the rise of men’s magazines in recent years is an interesting and significant phenomenon, which has, however, received little scholarly attention as yet. Although men’s lifestyle magazines have a long history in Western countries, they have emerged in China only in the last decade. Since the first men’s lifestyle magazine appeared on the market in 1997, there has been a proliferation of titles. The period from 2002 to 2004 witnessed a particularly rapid development of the market with eight men’s magazines launched within two years. Currently, it is estimated that there are about 20 monthly men’s titles in China. Targeted at single, affluent and professional males in their late twenties to early forties, these new magazines have contributed to the construction of a new male image in contemporary China: a stylish new man with a hedonistic lifestyle.
The project treats these magazines as both representative site and mobilizing force of crucial cultural shifts in masculinity. It investigates the changes in representations of masculinity and men’s bodies in mass media and aims to shed light on the social, economic and cultural factors that have affected men and representations of men over the last two decades in China. A relationship is hypothesized between the rise of the middle-class in post-socialist Chinese society and the fashioning of a new consumerist masculine mode.
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