Papers by Craig Owen
Fashion, Style & Popular Culture, 2024
The body positivity movement has called for greater inclusion of diverse body types within the fa... more The body positivity movement has called for greater inclusion of diverse body types within the fashion industry. Although a growing number of high street womenswear brands now include plus-size ranges and employ curvier models to represent them, UK menswear is still trailing far behind. Fashionable clothing for larger men is scarce and the lack of research literature on the clothes shopping experiences of UK plus-size male consumers reflects this gap. The current research is the first study to explore male plus-size consumers' experiences of clothes shopping in the UK. Semi-structured interviews were conducted online with 10 plus-size men and reflexive thematic analysis was used to generate two key themes. First, the 'we struggle to fit in' theme explores plus-size men's problematic experiences of fitting into shopping environments, fitting in with their peers' shopping experiences, and fitting into clothes. The second theme, 'we little care about what we wear', identifies how the men dismissed clothes shopping, fashion, and appearance concerns, and identified gender differences as means to justify these actions. Together, these themes demonstrate that plussize men experience clothes shopping as a chore. Ultimately, we advise menswear brands to use these findings to facilitate a more welcoming, supportive, and enjoyable shopping experience for plus-size men.
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Journal of Health Psychology, 2024
Inflammatory Bowel Disease often causes abdominal pain, faecal urgency, and a range of other symp... more Inflammatory Bowel Disease often causes abdominal pain, faecal urgency, and a range of other symptoms, and is a common chronic disease among young people. Stoma surgery seeks to alleviate these symptoms, though complications often arise from surgery and many stoma patients experience various stigmas. Young people with chronic conditions are increasingly gathering online to share their experiences of illness. Given the rise in popularity of TikTok and its appeal to young people, this study explored how young ostomates with Inflammatory Bowel Disease and a stoma portray themselves on TikTok. Using thematic analysis, three themes were identified in which ostomates portrayed themselves as educators, warriors, and reformers, providing education, support, and guidance to the wider stoma community. These findings show that TikTok offers an innovative platform for ostomates' self-presentations and a novel space health professionals should harness to better support ostomates.
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International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, 2021
Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing on Ice are primetime reality television shows that promote part... more Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing on Ice are primetime reality television shows that promote partner dancing as a form of leisure in the UK. Both shows have consistently represented partner dancing as a partnership between a man and a woman. However, in 2019 and 2020male/male partnerships were introduced into both shows for the first time. Drawing on media reports that discuss these male/male partnerships, this paper explores how the partnerships were represented and made sense of by mainstream and LGBT + media. Employing thematic discourse analysis, we demonstrate how the male/ male dance partnerships were framed by a complex and contradictory inclusive masculinity discourse. On the one hand, this discourse celebrated the male/male couples as evidence that Britain is a progressive society in which homophobia is in decline. At the same time, the representations largely centred on the male dance couples' bromances while ignoring or silencing discourses of gay love or sex. We show that although the representations can be viewed as a positive step forward, there were also some limitations to the representations which necessitate more critical examination in future research
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Feminist Media Studies, 2021
Postfeminist media culture celebrates female bodies as a source of identity and power and calls f... more Postfeminist media culture celebrates female bodies as a source of identity and power and calls for women to engage in work on the physical and psychological self. This paper offers a critical analysis of marketing by Flat Tummy Co., a company that sells appetite suppressant products to women with the promise of achieving slim ideals. We collated 270 photos and 98 slogans from Flat Tummy Co.’s Instagram account. Our analysis identified three interpretive repertoires: be fit even though you’re lazy; be thin even though you binge; be empowered even though you’re weak. These repertoires set up an impossible dilemma between ideals and “reality”. Flat Tummy Co. claim to resolve this dilemma by offering products that tell women there is no need for work on the body and self. We conceptualise this rhetoric as Erasure of Labour, where socially desirable goals are ostensibly achieved without associated work. Whilst Erasure of Labour solutions are presented as freeing and simple, we argue they are a potentially harmful illusion. Our critical analysis will equip consumers and feminist activists with a means to evaluate and resist these seductive marketing messages. We conclude by encouraging researchers to look for Erasure of Labour rhetoric in other domains.
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British Educational Research Journal, 2020
Extensive feminist critique of lad culture has raised serious concerns about its role in the sexu... more Extensive feminist critique of lad culture has raised serious concerns about its role in the sexualisation and objectification of women; its association with ‘pack-like’ boisterous behaviour and pressured heavy drinking of alcohol; and its use of banter, irony and infantile humour to provide a protective shield for sexist and homophobic practices. These concerns have culminated in the National Union of Students calling for lad culture to be tackled on university campuses in the UK. This paper analyses how the call to tackle lad culture was represented in a student newspaper and made sense of by groups of male students at one university in Southern England. The findings identify three interpretative repertoires, one aligned with feminist critiques, with lad culture constructed as a series of harmful and unacceptable social practices; the other two, critical of feminist-aligned critiques, deployed rhetorical strategies to distinguish a ‘light’ side of lad culture from a ‘dark’ side, and disavow the ‘dark’ side by claiming it was performed by individual ‘bad people’. This paper recommends future campaigns address these multiple repertoires together in one, non-judgemental debate space. This will include the acknowledgement of broader definitions of lad culture, and the facilitation of ongoing student debate about the ‘light’ and ‘dark’ sides of lad culture, and the ‘grey areas’ in-between.
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Anglo-American cultures traditionally constructed dance as a feminine activity, thus devaluing it... more Anglo-American cultures traditionally constructed dance as a feminine activity, thus devaluing it, and making men who danced vulnerable to homophobia. But the emergence of new practices of masculinity offers the possibilities for dance to be repositioned. In this chapter, we examine such possibilities through an analysis of ten of the most popular YouTube videos of men dancing to the Beyonce Knowles dance video ‘Single Ladies’. We use these videos as an example of a range of representations of men dancing, afforded by technological developments and participatory culture. Employing a multimodal analysis, with a theoretical lens informed by inclusive masculinity theory, performativity theory, and the technologies of sexiness framework, our analysis explores the enactment of orthodox and inclusive masculinities, their intersections, complexities in interpretations, and instances of subversion and recuperation. Our findings point to an increasing visibility and celebration of male dance...
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Journal of Gender Studies, 2019
Inclusive Masculinity Theory (IMT) offers an important framework for conceptualising masculinitie... more Inclusive Masculinity Theory (IMT) offers an important framework for conceptualising masculinities within cultures characterised by declining homophobia. But the framework faces several challenges when it theorises masculinities as relatively stable sets of attitudes and behaviours in the context of complex and dynamic contemporary gender practices and identifications. Offering a solution through a poststructuralist-informed IMT (PS-IMT), we reconceptualise orthodox and inclusive masculinities as discourses that produce subject positions, which may require individuals to work on themselves (‘technologies of self’) to inhabit. Applying PS-IMT to data from a four-year ethnography with young men in a Latin and ballroom UK university dance society, an analysis of the problematic of ‘stiff hips’ is playfully presented as a set of dance steps. Step one shows stiff-hip movements embodying orthodox masculinity; step two, an entanglement of orthodox and inclusive masculinities as participants work to loosen their hip movement, enabling immersion in inclusive masculinity in step three; while step four evidenced a reframing of fluid hip movements into a new form of orthodox masculinity. Through these steps we chart complex, dynamic shifts across the fault lines of orthodox and inclusive masculinities, illustrating how PS-IMT offers important directions for masculinities research.
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Feminism and Psychology, 2020
Girls’ magazines play an important role in female adolescents’ identity and their constructions o... more Girls’ magazines play an important role in female adolescents’ identity and their constructions of femininity. Despite breast development being common to all female adolescents, and breasts being a key signifier of femininity, the representation of breasts in girls’ magazines has not been investigated. A Foucauldian discourse analysis was conducted to understand the ways in which breasts are represented in two popular girls’ magazines (Teen Vogue and Seventeen). Articles in Seventeen promoted a contradictory and potentially confusing postfeminist discourse, supporting calls for Body Positivity, whilst at the same time framing breasts as problematic and encouraging girls to aspire to an ideal breast. The reader was positioned as a consumer with the purchase and wearing of bras offered as a neoliberal solution to these problems. In contrast, Teen Vogue articles conveyed a feminist informed Body Positivity discourse. Readers were positioned as active feminist advocates, incited to adopt radical, collective, political responses in order to challenge the potentially damaging messages surrounding breast ideals and sexualisation. We argue that consistent feminist messages are needed across and within media to support teenage girls in negotiating their bodies and identities.
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Journal of Health Psychology, 2017
Constructions of masculinity have shifted and changed but the central role of the penis has remai... more Constructions of masculinity have shifted and changed but the central role of the penis has remained firm. Yet despite the implications for sexual health, there has been very little research on discourses around penises. The messages men receive about their manhood is apparent in articles in men's magazines. We conducted a discursive analysis of the ways in which penises were discussed in four market leading UK titles: Loaded, Men's Health, GQ and Attitude. Two broad discourses were identified, termed Laddish and Medicalised, both of which create fear ridden spaces where men are bombarded with unachievable masculine ideals and traumatic examples of mutilated members. We discuss how health psychologists could use the findings to communicate with men about their sexual health needs using this channel.
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International Review of the Sociology of Sport
Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian bodily discipline that has now become a global phenomenon. In 2014 ... more Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian bodily discipline that has now become a global phenomenon. In 2014 the cultural significance of capoeira was recognised on the world stage when it was awarded the special protected status of an ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity’ by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. In the application to this organisation, and in wider advertising material and practitioner literature, capoeira is celebrated as a practice that promotes social cohesion, inclusivity, integration, racial equality and resistance to all forms of oppression. This paper seeks to problematize this inclusive discourse, exploring the extent to which it is both supported and contradicted in the gendered discourses and practices of specific capoeira groups in Europe. Drawing upon an eclectic corpus of qualitative data, produced through two sets of ethnographic research and the researchers’ twenty four years of combined experience as capoeira players, this paper documents the complex and contradictory contexts in which discourses and practices of gender inclusivity are at once promoted and undermined.
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Book Reviews by Craig Owen
Journal of Bodies, Sexualities, and Masculinities, 2021
Hegemonic Masculinity Theory is a titan, a theory of immense
influence in the understanding of c... more Hegemonic Masculinity Theory is a titan, a theory of immense
influence in the understanding of contemporary masculinities. At the same time, HMT has come under sustained attack from a long line of critics for over two decades. In this book, James Messerschmidt charts the context for the emergence and initial theorization of HMT, its subsequent reformulation, and its latest adaptations. Throughout, he constructively responds to an array of criticisms, accepting and embracing some, dismissing and rebutting others.
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Feminism & Psychology, 2023
In What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey Gordon offers an engaging and impassio... more In What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey Gordon offers an engaging and impassioned call for fat justice. Gordon exposes how U.S. culture normalises antifat bias, she challenges the assumption that fat people are inevitably unhealthy, and she advocates a society that allows "more peace in the skin we live" (p. 7). Running throughout the text, Gordon skillfully interweaves personal reflection, research, and cultural criticism. This integrated style will no doubt appeal to a range of academic and lay audiences. As such, Gordon harnesses published research to support her arguments, yet hides away the citations and references in the endnotes. Gordon also writes with journalistic flair, drawing upon a range of evocative metaphors, idioms, and turns of phrase. Yet her masterstroke is to write herself and her fat body into the text, recounting harrowing tales of embodied vulnerability. From my privileged position as a straight-sized, heterosexual, White man, the inclusion of gripping firstperson accounts invited me to empathise with the author and other fat people's experiences, and led me to lament the brutal sociocultural environment they encounter. In each of the eight chapters, Gordon attends to a different issue related to fat people's lives, yet a series of common arguments run through the book. I will now address each argument in turn.
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Feminism and Psychology, 2019
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International Society of Critical Health Psychology, 2017
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Martial Arts Studies journal, 2018
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Papers by Craig Owen
Book Reviews by Craig Owen
influence in the understanding of contemporary masculinities. At the same time, HMT has come under sustained attack from a long line of critics for over two decades. In this book, James Messerschmidt charts the context for the emergence and initial theorization of HMT, its subsequent reformulation, and its latest adaptations. Throughout, he constructively responds to an array of criticisms, accepting and embracing some, dismissing and rebutting others.
influence in the understanding of contemporary masculinities. At the same time, HMT has come under sustained attack from a long line of critics for over two decades. In this book, James Messerschmidt charts the context for the emergence and initial theorization of HMT, its subsequent reformulation, and its latest adaptations. Throughout, he constructively responds to an array of criticisms, accepting and embracing some, dismissing and rebutting others.