Men's Magazines

Glossy men's magazines are frequently vilified for their overt visualising of gender stereotypes. This article tenders that as a niche publication, founded by and targeted at upwardly mobile black men during the early stages of democracy in South Africa, the aspirational photographs of black men in BL!NK magazine are a justified form of visual short-hand. The argument is made here that although the photographic representation of black masculinity is entangled in stereotypes associated with (white) Western, hetero-normative manhood, the images offer just enough differentiation from the norm that they may be deemed seditious within the particular historical context. This article comprises an analysis of the photographs of black men in one sample issue of BL!NK and thereby positions this magazine as an archive of South African identities that both endorsed and challenged staid gender tropes. By naming, analysing and historically situating three specific photographic typologies of black manhood typically found in BL!NK, the author hopes to underscore the importance of such niche publications as points of intersection between global and vernacular culture, and powerful platforms for the visceral trying on of new selves.

The rise of men’s lifestyle magazines in South Africa from 2000 to the present has, as of yet, not been documented or interrogated in a comprehensive theoretical format. The so-called new masculinities that emerge out of these magazines are influenced by the homogenising influence of mass media that requires critical problematising and de-naturalising within the South African context. While in the United Kingdom and America, for instance, much of the theory and methodology of this study are old hat, in South Africa, men’s lifestyle magazines are a fairly new occurrence and are, subsequently, under-theorised.  This submission firstly, chronicles the rise of men’s lifestyle magazines in post-apartheid South Africa (including Men’s Health, FHM, GQ, Bl!nk and Maksiman). It secondly, attempts to contribute an analysis of the masculine ideal presented by these magazines to the already growing research surrounding gender in contemporary South Africa.

The article explores the language of appraisal in online versions of popular men’s lifestyle magazines vis-à-vis the concept of 'value', which is understood in three basic ways – as normative beliefs, value concepts and personal values. Following the analysis of the two passages it is argued that discursive function of values is twofold. On the one hand, specific instances of appraisal in discourse invoke values (that have been interpreted and conceptualized elsewhere) to legitimize a given social practice. On the other hand discursive recontextualization of such practices are discourse-in-the-making aimed at (re)conceptualizing and (re)negotiating specific value concepts. These dialectically related functions are then interpreted in a broader CDA perspective as ideological effects and instances of reproduction of social power of consumerist capitalism.