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Exploring Male Femininity in the

‘Crisis’: Men and Cosmetic Surgery

MICHAEL ATKINSON

Once exclusively interpreted as the embodiment of docile femininity, cosmetic

surgery is now inserted into the body modification practices of more Canadian
men. An inspection of the most common invasive (e.g. rhinoplasty, eyelid surgery,
liposuction, hair transplantation and breast reduction) and non-invasive (e.g.
chemical peels, hair removal, Botox and collagen injections, and microdermabra-
sion) cosmetic procedures highlights how men aesthetically modify their bodies
as veritable ‘masks of masculinity’ (Atkinson, 2006). In building on ethnographic,
interview and archival data gathered on men’s involvement in cosmetic surgery
in Canada in the past five years, this article discusses how shifts in post-
industrial work patterns, power relations between the genders, and ideologies
of technological-scientific consumption impact some men’s understandings of
acceptable corporeal performance. These men’s preferences for and sensibilities
about cosmetic surgery are contextualized within a perceived ‘crisis of mascu-
linity’ in Canada, and linked to Elias’s (2002) description of civilizing processes.
Narratives offered by the men indicate that cosmetic surgery is a response to a
collectively felt loss of established masculine hegemony in a range of figurational
contexts, and reconciled as civilized masculine practice.

Body & Society © 2008 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore),
Vol. 14(1): 67–87
DOI: 10.1177/1357034X07087531

www.sagepublications.com
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Cosmetic Surgery, Figurational Sociology

Since the year 2000, men’s cosmetic surgery practices in Canada have mushroomed.
Estimates suggest that over 10,000 Canadian men have received aesthetic surgery
in the past 10 years, with participation rates rising sharply in the past three years
alone – a 20 percent increase in participation (Medicard, 2004). The collective
willingness of men to experiment with surgical intervention in the pursuit of
more youthful, vibrant, attractive and healthy-looking bodies (especially around
the face) perhaps signifies that these men’s collective sensibilities, or habituses, are
shifting; stated differently, it may symbolize how men are presently negotiating
traditional parameters of ‘established’ (Elias and Scotson, 1965) masculine identity
performance to include cosmetic bodywork.
While there has been a reinvigorated interest in masculinity research (see
Pronger, 2002), there is a paucity of extended, standpoint investigations of men’s
experiences with aesthetics and body modification that do not attempt to theo-
retically dissect the practice from either feminist or pro-feminist viewpoints –
save, perhaps, for the literature on men and masculinity in the sociology of sport
(Young, 2003), or within the burgeoning literature on gay/metro masculinities
(Atkinson, 2003). The lack of theoretically innovative research symbolizes, as
Connell (2005) suggests, a general tendency to view masculinity as a singularly
constructed and unproblematic gender identity. Masculinity still tends to be
framed by gender researchers along very narrow conceptual lines, as Grogan and
Richards (2002) illustrate. Dominant constructions of masculinity are either inter-
preted as rigidly hegemonic/traditional (Garlick, 2004), or drastically alternative
and deeply marginalized (Hise, 2004). Neither of these polar positions accurately
captures how clusters of men often wrestle with and negotiate established con-
structions of masculinity in novel ways.
A cadre of sociologists have, however, juxtaposed and interrogated the perform-
ance of non-traditional male bodywork against a ‘crisis’ of established masculinity.
Horrocks (1994) and Whitehead (2002) contend that with the symbolic fracturing
of family, economic, political, educational, sport-leisure, technological-scientific
and media power bases, masculinity codes have been challenged within most social
settings. As such, men no longer possess exclusive ownership over the social roles
once held as bastions for establishing and performing hegemony. Hise (2004) and
Tiger (2000) suggest that with an increased presence of ‘femininities’ in (especially
middle-class) social institutions, a resulting masculine ‘anxiety’ has followed.
When such masculine anxiety is coupled with the proliferation of gender equity
movements, ideologies of political correctness and the spread of misandry in
popular media (Nathanson and Young, 2000), some men selectively perceive a

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cultural war against men/masculinity in countries like Canada. In the midst of

the perceived crisis, certain men refuse to acknowledge or embrace new masculin-
ities – despite popular discourses regarding metrosexuality or ubersexuality –
and retrench into traditional, essentialized and hegemonic masculine images and
embodied performances. Yet others, however, are discovering innovative ways
to reframe their bodies/selves as socially powerful in ‘newly masculine’, or even
what we may call ‘male-feminine’, ways.
Crisis-inspired research has been challenged along empirical and theoretical
axes. Gill et al. (2005) raise doubts about the presence of a masculinity crisis at
all, suggesting that crisis-inspired analyses are theoretically ‘lazy’, part of a
cultural backlash against feminism(s), unreflective of social-structural conditions
largely underpinned by a masculine hegemony, a product of media amplification,
and generally unreflective of men’s experiences with gender and the micro-
politics of body representation. These scholars rightfully point out that any
identified social trend like a ‘crisis of masculinity’ is of course a discursive
construction, and subject to deconstruction. Gill et al. (2005) prefer to ascribe
doubts about the body, its construction and representation as part of a general
ontological instability in postmodern cultures and the dissolution of tradition/
truth, where neo-liberal discourses of self-improvement and reflexive indi-
vidualism reign supreme. Yet in doing so we may, and one might argue ‘lazily’,
disavow the ontological stability of hegemonic masculinity per se and the ways
in which male body modification is dialogical with shifting power balances
between men and women. Stated differently, one must caution against a blanket
empirical assumption that male body modification is a late-modern and hyper-
individualistic/consumption-oriented practice divorced from sociogenic trans-
formations in the structural and cultural relationships between men and women;
or that forms of body modification are merely communicative gestures shared
among men to reconfirm a collectively extolled brand of normative masculinity
(see Pope et al., 2000).
While there has been, despite important theoretical and empirical opposition,
a reinvigorated interest in masculinity through crisis-inspired analyses, there is a
noticeable dearth of empirical investigations of men’s experiences with aesthetic
body modification (Davis, 2002). Few have studied, for instance, how ‘everyday’
men engage bodywork in order to appear ‘regular’, or have responded to broader
cultural fluctuations in masculine hegemony with scripted body ritual. Fewer
still have inspected how men play with innovative forms of aesthetic masculin-
ity (i.e. beyond the context of ‘gym work’, tattooing or other stereotypically
masculine body projects) to bolster their self-perceived social power in a context
of felt crisis.

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70 ■ Body & Society Vol. 14 No. 1

To explore how selected men in Canada fashion cosmetic surgery as a tech-

nique of bodywork, Elias’s (1978) figurational analysis of social power balances
and control mechanisms serves as a departure point.
In What is Sociology? (1978), Elias outlined three basic social controls that are
interwoven into figurational power dynamics. For Elias (1978, 2002), members
of social figurations enact power and control:
(1) over nature through technological advancements
(2) over groups of individuals through institutional processes
(3) over drives and desires through learned mechanisms of self-restraint
Elias argues in The Civilising Process (2002) that the collective history of Western
nations reveals a common tendency for complex groups of densely interdepen-
dent agents (what he referred to as figurations) to rely upon the third source of
social control over the long term. That is, while court-centred monarchies and
then nation-states relied upon the threat of force as a main tool of control over
citizenries, the course of civilizing processes paved the way (although uninten-
tionally) for the development of self-restraint as the dominant social control
mechanism. Of course, as a full range of gender theorists point out, the social
groups responsible for dominating others first by force and later via codes of
mannered conduct have been, over time, controlled by men.
Figurational sociologists have argued that a central task in civilizing processes
has been to ‘tame’ masculinity (Dunning, 1999). Indeed, the history of social
discipline and punishment illustrates how aggressiveness and psychological/
affective orientations (typically described as ‘masculine’ or attributed as essential
characteristics of men) were transformed as complex social institutions took
form. In such a theoretical meta-narrative, struggles for power and control in
figurational life progress from hand-to-hand combat to symbolic power plays
between men for knowledge, authority and physical distinction enacted across
institutional fields (Elias, 1978, 1996, 2002). Elias illustrates, for example, in The
Germans (1996) that as physical violence becomes less pervasive in social life and
inner restraint increases in importance as a means of revealing one’s distinction
(qua power) to others, the institutional control of productive forces and knowl-
edge dissemination became more central. As Brinkgreve (2004) argues, these
mechanisms of control tend to be dominated by men in Western figurations.
The emerging literature on contemporary masculine politics in Western nations
like Canada suggests that the institutional sources of men’s social control have
been fractured, both materially and symbolically, by ongoing structural and
cultural change (or what Elias, [2002] called ‘sociogenesis’; see also Mosse, 1996).
Horrocks (1994) outlines how movements toward gender equality in families,

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educational sites, workplaces, religious institutions and a full host of other insti-
tutional sites calls into question the very basis of masculine hegemony. As an
extension of what Elias (2002) referred to as the ‘parliamentarisation of conflict’,
gender stratification and related power imbalances have been systematically
disputed through highly institutionalized, formal and rationalized rule systems.
The splintering and redistribution of masculine control across institutional land-
scapes has spurred on a ‘crisis of masculinity’, in that men are no longer certain
about what constitutes men’s roles and statuses, or how to enact properly
gendered masculine identities (Whitehead, 2002).
To further contextualize how the crisis of masculinity and turn to cosmetic
surgery is perhaps spurned by a vast array of women’s (perceived or real)
‘boundary crossings’ into masculine social territories and powerscapes, we need
to understand how and why boundary crossing is a hallmark of post-industrial
cultures. Hardt and Negri (2004) argue that, with the ongoing transition from
modern industrialism to post-industrialism – or, what they dub as the ‘informa-
tisation of production’ – most cultural forms and formations in the West have
been reconfigured. With the production of knowledge, the consumption of
commodities (and, more often, commodity images), and the de-centring of
material production as markers of contemporary post-industrialism, Western
cultural practices, such as those pertaining to body modification, have shifted
dramatically.
From Jameson (1991), Lyotard (1979) and Borgmann (1993), post-structuralists
have drawn attention to how the sociogenic fragmentation of work and the
economy, education, religion, health and medicine, the arts, the media and other
institutional spheres produces a zeitgeist of distrust for any culturally overarching
‘truth claim’, such as those pertaining to gender and embodied representation in
everyday life. The splintering of cultural knowledge production, representation
and dissemination into a billion pieces leads to what Lull (2001) refers to as the
contemporary ‘looseness of [cultural] meaning’. Anderson’s (1991) historiography
of the emergence of imagined communities equally captures the ways in which
symbolic representations of spatially re-contextualized ‘We’ cultural identities
boundaries of practice are tactically formed by actors in highly fragmented post-
industrial nations like Canada to (at least attempt to) create ontological order
and meaning.
Chaney (1994) has argued that the global reformation of culture as increas-
ingly post-industrial or postmodern veritably ‘opens up’ cultural representation
and practice for widespread bricolage. Chaney (1994) contends that stark divisions
between hierarchically organized ‘taste groups’ within societies are not nearly as
pronounced as those found in the modern era.

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Logics of multiculturalism, (mass) market consumption and reflexive repre-

sentation extolled in such Western nations, respectively de-stabilize notions of
dominant or authentic cultural identity in any space (Andrews, 2006; Hannerz,
1996). As groups mix and match cultural objects, images and practices as part of
‘doing’ unfettered reflexive identity, established-outsider cultural practices
bound in (definitive) space and time are replaced by the practice of situated repre-
sentation and the ‘aesthetics of everyday life’ (Featherstone, 1991). Spivak (1993)
argues that the de-centring of dominant cultural identities (like hegemonic
masculine identities) and the exploration of polymorphous or subaltern cultures,
allows for a vast array of representational practices to be deployed within insti-
tutional landscapes. More directly in the study of cosmetic surgery, as meta-
narratives decline and as bricolage proliferates, heretofore gender-bound practices
like cosmetic surgery may be poached and given new cultural meanings. In many
ways, the so-called crisis of masculinity in Canada and elsewhere is a logical but
unanticipated outcome in cultures beset with ideologies and practices of cultural
boundary crossings. Men’s growing interest in cosmetic surgery might empiri-
cally hint toward the emergence of a late modern ‘male femininity’; a gender
status that at once draws on and seeks to reaffirm traditional images of men and
the power bases men hold, but also tactically poaches and re-signifies stereotyp-
ically feminine symbols and practices in order for their male deployers to appear
as progressive, neo-liberal and socially sensitive.
From the above perspectives, and others not included, the politics of gender
representation and play through body modification may be nothing short of
the commodity-fetishized spectacle Debord (1967) describes, or the simulacra
Baudrillard (1995) outlines. Muggleton (2000) describes the contemporary cultural
milieu in Western nations as a ‘supermarket’ of commodity and ideological style,
where identities are not anchored in stable cultural images and systems of practice,
but are attached to transitory, fleeting and polysemic texts, languages and images.
Straw (1991) describes the cultural movement toward reflexive identity construc-
tion and boundary disruption as a sociogenesis into ‘taste culture’ lifestyles. In a
world perhaps over-saturated by global commodities and cultural flows, one
must thus question whether stable, intersubjective understandings of culture – as
a system of problem solving, meaning making and collective representation – are
possible (Lash, 1999). In this cultural milieu it is understandable, then, why some
men experience a ‘crisis’ of masculinity and doubt the existence of an anchored,
permanent masculine self.
In sum, in this article I read the crisis of masculinity not as a cultural truth
per se, but as a conceptual backdrop for interpreting why men may be selecting
and inscribing aesthetic bodywork as an innovative technique of ‘male-feminine’

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biopower. Cosmetic surgery is configured by the men in this study as a tool for
‘re-establishing’ a sense of empowered masculine identity in figurational settings
that they perceive to be saturated by gender doubt, anxiety and contest. In figu-
rational terms, surgically altering the flesh is a return to a very basic technique of
social control in a context of cultural uncertainty. Men, as de Certeau (1984) might
predict, seize control over their bodies in order to ‘reframe’ (White et al., 1995)
their masculinity as revitalized and empowered. With diffuse ideological and
material pressures to consume, commodify the body and perform scripted identity
work through highly rationalized physical displays (Crewe, 2003; Featherstone,
2000), it is understandable why, at this historical juncture, Canadian men are
finding ‘collective solutions’ to common ‘status problems’ (Cohen, 1955) via
cosmetic surgery. The empirical evidence presented in this study suggests a
pervasive but tactically managed ‘cultural victim’ mentality among the men, and
also why their habituses (Elias, 1991, 1996, 2002) may be underpinned by a sense
of doubt regarding the concept of established masculine dominance.

Method
Although there exists a rather full literature on women’s experiences with cosmetic
surgery in North America and elsewhere (Sarwer and Crerand, 2004), incredibly
few body theorists have empirically addressed men’s embodied interpretations of
the cosmetic surgery process (Davis, 2002). My own involvement with cosmeti-
cally altered men commenced when I first encountered a surgery patient named
‘Les’ in southern Ontario. Les exercised in a local health club I attended, and
learned about my previous research on tattooing. During the middle of a workout
one day, Les approached me and inquired as to whether I had studied cosmetic
surgery. Following a brief conversation, he disclosed his experiences with three
cosmetic procedures: Botox injections, liposuction and an eye lift procedure.
Over the course of time I pondered Les’s confessional narrative to me, and
considered the viability of a study of men and cosmetic surgery. By the autumn
of 2004, I sought out additional patients in the southern Ontario area (e.g.
Toronto, Hamilton, Mississauga, London and Burlington) for interviews.
Through Les’s sponsorship, I encountered and subsequently interviewed 44
cosmetic surgery patients in southern Ontario. I asked Les to provide the names
of several other patients he knew personally. At the time of his interview, Les
offered five names of fellow patients in the city of Hamilton alone. Rather
surprisingly, all of the patients agreed to be interviewed for the study. Subse-
quently, each patient provided the names of, on average, 2–4 other male patients,
and the sample expanded progressively.

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With a population in excess of 4 million and a booming cosmetic surgery

industry, the number of cosmetic surgery patients in the southern Ontario region
is increasing exponentially. Patients range in age from 19 to 65, a slight majority
are single, and they are largely middle class, with a mean income of approxi-
mately CDN$120,000 and predominantly of Anglo-Saxon heritage (Medicard,
2004). Experience with cosmetic surgery varies considerably, as evidenced by the
men I have interviewed and interacted with. Most of the men have undergone
one or two treatments, while a slight minority of others has received extensive
bodywork. The most common procedures requested by Canadian men include
rhinoplasty, Botox, microdermabrasion and liposuction (lipectomy). However,
other men experience hair replacements, breast reductions or reshapings (gyneco-
mastia or mastopexy), eye lifts (blepharoplasty), skin or fat reductions and ‘tummy
tucks’ (abdominoplasty), face lifts (rhytidectomy) and, in rare cases, muscular
implantations in the chest, biceps or calves.
Interviews with the men were conducted in a variety of settings such as my
office at the university, a coffee shop, a local park or a restaurant. In all but a few
instances, I used a tape-recorder during the interviews and field notes were taken
both during and after the interviews. Notes were then (within several hours or,
at maximum, one day) transcribed onto computer files and filled in considerably
as I conceptually analysed the texts in a constant comparison process. With
further regard to data analysis, the interview texts were coded holistically as
conceptual types of narratives about the experience of body modification, and
then open-coded separately and comparatively around emergent themes related
to masculinity and its embodied performance. It is important to note that theor-
etical lines of inquiry related to the crisis of masculinity were neither prefigured
into the interview schedule, nor crudely fitted onto the emergent data. Rather, the
theoretical reading of crises in the men’s narratives reflected how men, themselves,
told stories about and ascribed meaning to their cosmetic surgery experiences. The
narrative theme of ‘crisis’ I outline in the article is one of the most consistently
present themes, but not the only one woven across the men’s narratives. To this
end, I certainly acknowledge the potential reading of their narratives from
alternative theoretical standpoints.
Interviewees were given an explanation of informed consent prior to and after
each interview. Interviews ranged in length from 45 minutes to four hours. All
of the participants were interviewed once and (with the exception of five) were
shown transcripts of the interview sessions at a later date so that they might
review their own narratives. In all cases, pseudonyms have been employed to
protect the participants’ identities. Prior to each interview, I reviewed a schedule
of approximately 25 questions I wished to explore with participants about

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cosmetic surgery and masculinity. Most of the discussions started with a basic
request: ‘So, tell me about your cosmetic surgery.’ I wanted the men to craft
narratives from the interpretive standpoints they wished, and from starting
points they found to be sensible. Over the course of time, I tactically discussed
my own personal doubts, interpretations and scepticisms about cosmetic surgery,
as a means of encouraging participants to share the more intimate details of their
personal narratives. As a ‘bad cop’ technique of narrative elicitation (Hathaway
and Atkinson, 2003), I challenged the basis of cosmetic surgery as ‘appropriate’
masculine bodywork. Here, I wanted to inspect how practitioners justify and tell
stories about cosmetic surgery to outsiders. By engaging such interactive tech-
niques with respondents I wanted our conversations to probe motivations for
cosmetic surgery, emotional accounts of its performance and elements of patients’
social biographies.

Men, Cosmetics and the Triad of Social Controls

I looked at my neck droop for so long before I mustered up enough courage to have it fixed. . . .
I look like I’m 20 again; well, at least around my neck. At least no one calls me ‘turkey neck’
anymore . . . you have no idea how many times I wore a turtleneck sweater to avoid derision.
I can’t buy enough low-collared shirts to show off my work. (Tom, facelift)

Tom is a 46-year-old advertisement executive living in Toronto. Although one may

never glance at him and suspect his ‘work’, he is proud of his body for the first
time in his life and exudes comfort in his ‘new skin’. Tom’s cosmetic surgery
narrative is a typical one: he tells a story about cosmetic surgery as a pathway
toward body enhancement, as a vehicle for fitting in and as a technique for
building self-esteem. As part of his narrative, Tom expresses a clear understanding
of his own interest in body enhancement; he simply wants to be present, recog-
nized and very ‘commonly’ male.
Among the select few men who choose to tell stories about cosmetic surgery,
a common narrative theme similar to Tom’s underpins their accounts. For these
men, transforming the body into something socially ‘common’ (and therefore
something to shown off as ‘common’) motivates their aesthetic projects. The act
of cosmetic surgery becomes a process of gaining power over others’ negative
stares and comments. Cosmetic surgery is not sought out by the men I inter-
viewed egomaniacally, nor is it intended to draw the social gaze to the surgically
enhanced flesh. The intervention is intended to achieve the opposite: to allow the
individual to fade into a crowd as a ‘regular guy’. With few exceptions, such as a
hair transplant, collagen/Botox injections or muscle implants, the most common
forms of surgery men undertake physically and symbolically ‘remove’ unwanted,

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stigmatizing features from their bodies. A liposuction patient named Patrick (37)
described:
There’s a comfort every day in walking out of your house and knowing that people won’t be
looking at your gut when you pass by . . . when people ignore you, it’s because you are the
average person, the nondescript regular guy. I was a fat kid, and then a fat man, and I all ever
wanted was to look regular. Yeah, when people ignore you, wow, what a great feeling.

Like many of the men interviewed in this research, Patrick’s cosmetic surgery
stories are replete with the idea of feeling ‘average’, of looking ‘regular’, and not
being marginalized. The ability to do so, these patients articulate, is an act of
biopower for them; a power to negotiate a portion of their public image through
non-traditionally masculine work. As discussed below, however, the sense of
being average deeply resonates with very traditional images and ideologies of
established masculinity in Canada.

Physicality, Violence and Masculine Bodies

In a poignant analysis of the gendering of power in Western figurations, Brinkgreve
(2004) comments that men’s social control has been challenged along a number
of lines, especially men’s ability to wield unfettered dominance as public practice.
In adopting a figurational perspective, she argues that men’s agency for expressing
aggressive affect has been curtailed over the course of long-term civilizing
processes, or showcased in contained manners in social forms like sport or theatre
(see also Atkinson and Young, forthcoming). The massive cultural popularity
among men of violent sports in Canada like ice hockey, lacrosse, football and
rugby, argue Atkinson and Young (forthcoming), is proportionately related to
the degree to which aggression and violence are taboo in other social spheres.
Indeed, as Maguire (1999) comments, while men have in no way been uniformly
restricted as aggressive agents, and certainly criminal and non-criminal forms of
male aggression are unfortunate fixtures of everyday life (i.e. spousal abuse, sexual
assault, drug-related violence, etc.), the internal compulsion toward and external
control of physical/emotional/psychological aggression perpetrated by men has
both qualitatively and quantitatively shifted through civilizing processes.
Yet some men, contends Godenzi (1999), interpret the ongoing and unfinished
civilizing ‘attack’ on aggression as a challenge to the very foundation of established
masculinity. Labre (2002) examines how groups of men perceive the (external)
restraint of men or male bodies as a critical condemnation of and attempt to
control the very basis of the male psyche and/or the male social order. In perceiv-
ing masculinity as threatened through diffuse anti-authoritarian (read anti-male)
social doctrines and politically correct ‘sensitivity policies’, some Canadian men

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feel encouraged to reflexively engage in forms of bodywork to shore up their

traditionally masculine images in socially ‘non-threatening’ ways. The cosmetic
surgery patient Allan (41) explains:
I’d never looked like a handsome guy until I underwent the hair transplantation, you know. . . .
I’m like every other man who’s lived with teasing about being bald so young. Women find the
look totally unsexy and not very strong looking, but all the same attack me as a chauvinist, just
because I am male. I hear that all the time at work. If I became angry about being teased for
my baldness, I would be called hothead or the Alpha male trying to vent his anger. What a
joke. I could never win then, and now the only way people leave you alone and accept you
now [as a man], is if you look good without ‘acting out’ as a guy.

As Allan and like-minded peers explain, men may find novel forms of social power
by reclaiming their ‘threatened’ bodies and repackaging them as aesthetically
desirable (i.e. as emotionally pacified). They tactically align with ‘new’ or ‘metro-
sexual’ images of ‘male femininity’ through cosmetic surgery as a technique for
illustrating their consent to late modern social codes about men (Atkinson,
2006). By drawing on current cultural preferences in Canada for the fit, toned,
groomed and non-aggressive body (Niedzviecki, 2004), the men, at least from
their interpretive standpoints, negotiate their way through the contemporary
crisis of masculinity.
For many of the men I interviewed, exploring one or another form of cosmetic
surgery displays a willingness to submit the body to others. The late modern
Canadian man ‘gives’ his body to a corporeal professional such as a surgeon to
be re-worked in stereotypically feminine ways; in the process, he acknowledges
a central deficiency with his body. It is both an admission of weakness (i.e. the
failure to physically live up to masculine cultural expectations) and a moral
gesture of the desire for self-improvement. Such a ‘confessional’ practice finds
grounding not only in one’s desire to explore masculinity in novel but power-
building ways, but also in a traditional Canadian middle-class aesthetic (see White
et al., 1995) that targets bodies as sites of strict monitoring and disciplining. Byron
(28) comments:
I haven’t spoken to a lot of people about the face peel, because I’m so young and the reaction
would probably be seriously negative. But the women I’ve told react in a similar way; they
congratulate me for my body care. Some say it makes me sound more gentle and sensitive, and
into looking beautiful. . . . I should have done this years ago. At this point in my life, I have
no problem admitting I need help to be as attractive as possible, especially if I get something
[accolades] out of it . . . people, at least from my perspective, appreciate a body that is main-
tained and controlled. A ‘tight’ body communicates that I care about myself, and probably take
care of things in my life in general.

In the above instance, men’s stories about cosmetic surgery closely resemble the
bulk of the literature on women’s experiences with the practice (Davis, 2002;

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Gillespie, 1996). When adopted to illustrate reverence toward established gender

codes, cosmetic surgery for men and women is an act of embodied cultural
submission. Surgery is framed as a vehicle for garnering social distinction, and a
raw text of physical capital that is both enabling and constraining. Cosmetic
surgery displays one’s sense of knowledge and membership within established
cultural spheres, but concomitantly signifies the degree to which individual
bodies are inscribed by conformist identity (read gender) codes.
Men’s involvement in cosmetic surgery, especially invasive and painful forms,
might be configured as an ironically self-aggressive response to cultural stereo-
types linking masculinity and violence. Davis (2002) has argued that acts of
cosmetic surgery are implicitly self-violent. Yet, as noted elsewhere (Atkinson,
2006), involvement in painful forms of body modification can be (re)interpreted
by men as a process of masculine character-building (i.e. as part of one’s ability
to withstand painful body ordeals with a quiet resolve) and a hyperbolically
masculine solution to problems of cultural doubt. Kevin (39) suggests:
When the doctor stripped away the layers of fat from around my waist, he removed 30 years
of anguish from my soul. I’d always been the fat outsider, the little boy who never quite made
the cut for anything. Being inside a body that is a gelatinous prison kills a tiny piece of you
every moment of your life. . . . When I woke up after the surgery and looked down, I felt
strong and confident as a man should. I could, never ever in my life, speak to anyone about
how much being heavy hurt me emotionally, and now I don’t have to. . . . Surgery is the best
psychotherapy offered on the market. You have to go through hell and the pain [of surgery]
to come out on top. Being beaten up though surgery is temporary, but being beaten up socially
can last a lifetime.

Kevin’s perspective teaches us that the current boom in Canadian men’s cosmetic
surgery might be, at least in part, viewed as an indicator of the cultural impera-
tive for these men to engage in cosmetic, self-abusive forms of body work.

Institutional Control and Masculine Bodies

Although marked gaps continue to exist between the genders in relation to
established-outsider power balances within most institutions, the men inter-
viewed in this study believe their position as established authority figures has
been dislodged by women’s participation in the economic and political spheres.
When telling stories about motivations underpinning cosmetic procedures, nearly
three-quarters (74 percent) of the men interviewed talked about feeling threatened
at work by younger, smarter and healthier women – especially in image-oriented
business environments that equate outward appeal with intellectual competency
and moral worth. It seems that as women have secured preliminary inroads to

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power sources in Western cultures like Canada, some men become rather fear-
oriented in their disposition. For figurational sociologists, the sociogenic shifts
in work patterns and relationships may impact men’s habituses and corresponding
body regimens. Peter (54) teaches us:
Our company hired three new managers last year, and two of them didn’t look any older
than 25. What makes it worse is that they are well-spoken, bright, charming women who are
gorgeous. So there is me, an ageing guy in a changing business environment who appears as if
he’s missed more nights of sleep than he should have. The superficiality of that realisation kind
of makes you sick . . . but these people won’t want me around unless I adapt, unless I change.

Important is that Peter’s fear-orientation encourages him to consider self-aggressive

cosmetic bodywork as a rational solution to his incompetence anxieties. Peter’s
masculinity, partly anchored in his ability to physically appear as competent in
the workplace, as Sennett (1998) might predict, is reconciled through physical
intervention. The outward ability to ‘look good’ supersedes concerns about his
ability to perform intellectually as a business administrator.
For other men, their ascribed social positions as established workers within
dense chains of interdependency are threatened by subtle implications that their
bodies appear decisively non-masculine, and therefore socially impotent. As
Connell and Wood (2005) document through the study of masculine business
cultures, one’s sense of masculinity is often validated by peers’ positive comments
(or at least lack of mockery) regarding one’s body image and style while ‘on the
job’. Therefore, when a man experiences persistent teasing about his body as
lacking masculinity (i.e. the fat, unhealthy, powerless body), the passive ridicule
may eventually manifest into a fear that others view him as inadequate socially.
A man adopting such an interpretive mindset associates his peers’ lack of public
acknowledgement of him as a business ‘expert’ as an indicator of their collective
interpretation of his deficient body image. Andrew (33) explains:
With my job, I don’t have time to work out two or three hours a day, and I have to eat most
meals on the run . . . and most of it is not healthy. And, it’s hard to lose weight, so the lipo-
suction gave a little kick-start to the process. Now I’m not the office fat guy everyone pokes
fun at and ignores. People listen to me and consider my opinions on practically everything. No
one looks at a fat guy and says, there’s a real go-getter . . . they say the opposite, he’s lazy,
unmotivated and someone worth firing.

Andrew’s cosmetic surgery narrative is filled with self-effacing accounts of his

‘bigness’ and correlated social inferiority. For him, cosmetic surgery is an act of
masculine ‘re-establishment’, and a self-directed technique of threat management.
Andrew is not concerned with his body as a potential health risk to him, but as a
social symbol of inferiority. For men like Andrew, surgery is a more rational and
controlled response to body problems than the styles of self-starvation among

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80 ■ Body & Society Vol. 14 No. 1

young men described by Braun et al. (1999). Aesthetic surgery is, then, a civil-
ized and self-restrained response to long-term emotional distress.
The men who describe risk or threat at work as a motivator for cosmetic
surgery strategically employ classic techniques of neutralization (Sykes and Matza,
1956) to account for their body projects. When interviewed and challenged about
the source of their concerns at work, and the perceived lack of control experienced
in the workplace, men typically respond by arguing that cosmetic bodywork is
neither morally problematic nor physically dangerous. Further still, they high-
light how the degree to which they are willing to sacrifice their bodies to look
masculine jibes with a sense of worth and personal dedication to succeed – once
more, their clearly habituated middle-class aesthetic. Buttressing these accounts
is a stereotypically Western, consumeristic and present-centred mentality, in that
the solution to their lack of work control must be immediate and discoverable in
a commodity/service form. Derrick, a 52-year-old marketing expert who regu-
larly receives Botox and microdermabrasion treatments, says:
I can’t wait another 20 years to take action. I need to be a man who walks into the room and
no one says, ‘Damn, he looks tired.’ If that continues to happen, I’ll be out the door. I could
have experimented with herbal remedies, creams or lotions to erase the years from my face,
but it might take years, if it even works. Why wait when I can have better results from a doctor
in only one day?

For Derrick, any risk or potential long-term effects of the procedures is second-
ary to the immediate gains received from medical intervention. The means–end,
here-and-now mentality is directly reflective of the commodified and highly ratio-
nalized manner by which people come to approach bodies (and body problems)
in ‘civilized’ figurations (Elias, 2002). Any service that cures his problems of
masculinity is thus justified as worthwhile, particularly when the service may be
purchased from a qualified medical professional with celerity and precision.
What the above narratives underscore is the process by which men come to
frame and reframe their bodies/identities as innovatively ‘male feminine’ through
surgical intervention. For the men in the current sample, actively responding to a
perceived control threat through traditionally feminine bodywork is strategically
interpreted as a very masculine endeavour: as a manoeuvre designed to make them
appear culturally invested in new social constructions of masculinity. Surgery is,
then, configured as a technique of biopower and control as it helps men respond
to the fear of the masculinity crisis ‘head on’ (Sargent, 2000) without resorting to
‘uncivilized’ types of male aggression. Resonant with White et al.’s (1994) descrip-
tion of how male athletes reframe the injury process as a silent testing ground of
masculine character-building, cosmetic surgery patients often tell stories about
how their willingness to endure painfully invasive surgeries re-establishes their
ability to meet social threats with ‘modern’ masculine resolve.
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Knowledge Production and Masculine Bodies

Compounding the threat some men perceive to exist regarding their masculinity
in the workplace and across institutional settings is the type of work men are
performing and the lack of spare-time exercise they undertake. With more men
than ever in service or information-processing industries, the current generation
of middle-class Canadian men are perhaps the most ‘stationary’ workforce in the
country’s history. With decreasing amounts of spare-time, dietary habits revolving
around high calorie fast-food choices, and leisure time dominated by consump-
tion and inactivity, the physical toll on their bodies is evident (Critser, 2002). The
post-industrial economy and associated lifestyles, it seems, are not easily recon-
ciled with traditional images of the powerful, performing and dominant male
(Faludi, 1999).
Men interviewed in the present study express a sense of frustration with the
form and content of their work responsibilities. For these men, ritually perform-
ing disembodied or virtual work (i.e. computer-facilitated) every day encourages
a mind–body separation and neglect (Potts, 2002). Roger’s (45) words are emblem-
atic of the disaffection some men experience with their work:
Sitting at a desk for 10 hours a day, then a car for 2, on then on your couch for 3 more wears
your body down. Not to mention that my skin barely ever sees the light of day. At times, I
can feel my face literally sagging because of my posture. . . . Looking in the mirror when you’re
40 and having a road map for a face shouldn’t be surprising. That’s not who I am, that’s not
the image of my inside I want to project.

Men like Roger refuse to link marginalized external bodies with inner selves.
Roger’s body is further objectified and instrumentalized in the cosmetic surgery
process, as he views his physical form as a site of much-needed management. Such
an interpretation of the body only exacerbates existing fears about men’s bodies
as socially non-masculine. Cosmetic surgery provides a fast, efficient and highly
rational way of alleviating these psychological strains and social discomfort:
From the time I was 15 years old, I gained weight. I watched my diet and tried to work out,
but I kept packing on inches. By the time I graduated school and started office work [computer
programmer], it only grew worse . . . literally. Liposuction saved me from my self-hatred and
the ridicule I faced from others. It’s like having the clock re-set, or like a magic wand being
waved and your troubles are gone. (Ray, 43)

Narratives about the role of cosmetic surgery in eliminating the unfortunate

side effects of sedentary lifestyles are equally filled with constructions of the ‘male-
feminine’ body as ‘victimized’ by established cultural expectations that men must
labour for long hours. For men like Leo (37), a graphics designer living in Sarnia,
Ontario, his ‘need’ for facial surgeries results from a social pressure to work in
support of his extended family:
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82 ■ Body & Society Vol. 14 No. 1

It’s not like I can quit my job, or be there for less than 12 hours a day if I want to earn a living.
No one pays me for sitting on my ass and doing nothing, they pay me for sitting on my ass
and designing! If I choose not to work, I’m choosing not to feed my family. . . . We come from
a very traditional Italian background, and it’s not questioned that I’m the sole provider. . . .
There’s an unspoken rule that a man who cannot provide [for his family] isn’t really a man.

For nearly 10 years, Leo’s work habits have, in his terms, ‘weathered’ his body.
The three facial surgeries he has received temporarily remove the unwanted ‘marks
of masculinity’ from his appearance. Like other men, Leo configures his surgical
preferences as a symbol of his dedication to looking his best, even in the context
of incredible social/work pressure. Surgery, for Leo, is a decisively calculated
male-feminine response to the social problems of ‘men’s work’ inherent in every-
day life.
Still, when confronted about such constructions of cosmetic surgery, the men
employ yet another set of neutralization techniques. For the most part, these
include classic ‘condemning the condemners’ narratives. Steve (48) tells us:
Why should anyone else care if I did this [Botox]? I’m not hurting anyone, or even myself, so
whose business is it? No one should even try to tell me what to do with my own body!

While Steve engages in male-feminine body projects in order to reframe himself

as progressively masculine, the defensive posturing he adopts throughout his
narrative might be described as quintessentially, or at least stereotypically, mascu-
line. Steve refuses to have his body preferences interrogated, and responds to
such challenges from an overtly powerful interpretive position of control. Alan,
a 50-year-old office manager, re-directs criticism about ‘problematic’ body prac-
tices back to the source:
Everyone who picks on me for having my skin re-surfaced I bet never thinks about the million
ways they change their bodies every day by going to the gym or eating low-carb, kill-yourself
diets. . . . Don’t call me less of a man because I do something to improve my looks that you
are too afraid to do yourself.

Ironically, while men like Alan frequently position themselves as victims of work
structures and expectations, through their cosmetic surgery storytelling they
vehemently deny losing agency or possessing an inferior masculine status by
undergoing the cosmetic surgery process. Quite predictably, as Davis (2002)
mentions, these men never pathologize invasive body interventions as self-
victimizing. Instead, they reframe surgical intervention as masculine character
building. The courage associated with undergoing cosmetic surgery is high-
lighted as a powerfully decisive response to their identity/body problems.

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Exploring Male Femininity in the ‘Crisis’: Men and Cosmetic Surgery ■ 83

Discussion
The men’s narratives included in this article provide a conceptual composite of
what a selection of men in Canada consider to be the ‘re-established’ male-
feminine body. It is a body that is at once firm, fit, flexible and fat-free, and open
to exploring non-traditional (feminized) forms of bodywork in order to appear as
innovatively male. But most importantly, as Frank (2003) notes, it is a body that
exudes a cultural awareness and acceptance, a form articulating a deep sensibility
toward changing roles, statuses and identities of ‘new men’. The male’s cosmeti-
cally altered body is one that is economically invested in the established cultural
brand of masculinity (Schmitt, 2001). At the same time, it is an aesthetically
contoured body validated by ‘muted’ social recognition and kudos from admiring
others. In these ways and others, the cosmetically altered body is interdependent
with shifting constructions of masculinity and derives social meaning from
extended social interaction across social settings.
Upon first glance, one might interpret the recent turn to cosmetic surgery
among men as a stark indicator of shifting habituses among men. Indeed, the
participation in quintessentially feminine forms of bodywork might indicate a
fracturing of traditional notions of masculine physical manipulation and display.
However, while men may respond to sociogenic change and contemporary ideo-
logical currents with heretofore non-traditional forms of masculine modification
(Benwell, 2003), the narratives discussed in this article illustrate how men may
tactically reframe cosmetic surgery along established masculine lines of power
and authority.
First, involvement in cosmetic surgery reaffirms how bodies are employed by
men as texts of strength, authority and power. The cosmetically altered male is
readable as a signifier of power at a time when traditionally masculine bodies
are perceived to be under siege (Niva, 1998). The surgically tucked, sharpened,
minimized or masculinized body provides men with a restored or re-established
sense of social control – especially when other forms of institutional control and
knowledge production are fragmented.
Second, the implicit risk-taking and objectification of the body in order to
affirm one’s sense of masculinity equally suggests how cosmetic surgery is
incorporated into a wide range of men’s ‘self-aggressive’ or ‘risk-oriented’ body
practices. As Elias (2002) suggested, cosmetic instances of body performance are
encoded communicative gestures of masculine distinction and ability to endure
pain, further demarcating one’s sense of social power and achieved cultural
worth. The willingness to engage in surgery as self-aggressive risk may be, never-
theless, a civilizing turn in men’s habituses. The social battle over gender power

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84 ■ Body & Society Vol. 14 No. 1

and the ‘fragmentation of masculinity’ is turned inward and then inscribed on the
skin rather than cast outward through aggressive physicality or dominance of
others. Akin to Elias and Dunning’s (1986) description of sport in the civilizing
process, cosmetic surgery is a form of social mimesis for some men, as aesthetic
alterations to the body become proxy representations of a social battle between
genders.
Third, the men in the study comment on how cosmetic surgery tends to be
quietly managed and privately experienced. At present, the men interviewed in
this study do not openly discuss their cosmetic body projects with ‘outsiders’.
Men typically express how cosmetic surgery is not mainstream masculine
performance in Canada, and how an air of stigma still hovers around the practice.
The men perceive themselves as, in Goffman’s (1963) terms, ‘discreditable deviants’
whose predilections for surgical enhancement might jeopardize their status as
‘real’ masculine men. In response, the men refrain from expressing emotion about
the cosmetic surgery process and prefer to suffer the physical pains of surgery
in silence. They do, however, relish the positive comments received regarding
their ‘fresh’-looking faces, newly toned bodies or magically reinvigorated senses
of self.
Fourth, the widening use of cosmetic surgery among men may be a clever
technique of masculine power attainment via collective image work. In a beauty/
image-saturated and obsessed culture, these men glean significant attention and
social accolades for their secretly ‘improved’ physical forms. The beautification
of men’s bodies through cosmetic surgery might be considered as the poaching
of a traditionally feminine technique of power attainment through the body,
inasmuch as men are colonizing a site of social power traditionally dominated
by women. As Sarwer and Crerand (2004) suggest, the movement of men into
cosmetic surgery could be simply an extension of the male gaze in Western
cultures like Canada.
In the end, the analysis of men’s cosmetic surgery illustrates how ebbs and
flows of social control within a figuration become enacted through and inscribed
on body practices. While cultural theorists have been reticent to empirically
scrutinize how men actively use body modification to wrestle with masculine
identities, the study of cosmetic surgery outlines how cultural contests involving
established and ‘re-established’ gender power are embedded in corporeal perform-
ance. Men’s narratives about cosmetic surgery allude to how established masculin-
ity is reframed in innovative ways to reproduce traditional results: social power
and distinction for men across the Canadian social landscape. In this way, the
proverbial ‘song remains the same’ for men, masculinity and social control.

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Michael Atkinson is Senior Lecturer at the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, Loughborough
University.

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