Full Description
Explores the cultural significance of the metrosexual in sports.
How do you explain Dennis Rodman's dyed hair, tattoos, and pierced body parts? Why are there so many athletes stripping for men's underwear ads? Besides sport, what do Pat Riley, Alex Rodriguez, and Ian Thorpe have in common? And why has David Beckham been compared to Louis XIV?
In this fascinating exploration of past and present celebrity athletes, David Coad shows how gender roles for men are undergoing a revolutionary change. Once famous for their lack of style off the field, professional players are now fashion-conscious trendsetters. Looking at certain stellar sports figures of the past, such as Joe Namath and Jim Palmer, who were at the vanguard of reinterpreting gender roles, Coad goes on to examine their primped out and "pimped out" contemporary successors-those athletic peacocks in their furs, silks, and diamonds who embody metrosexuality, widen its focus, and demonstrate the range of experiences open to today's male.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Part One
1. Sports Sex
Gender and Sexual Mythologies
Jock culture
Sports Rape
Homosocial Desire
Homosexual Outing
Heterosexual Outing
2. Metro Sex
Mirror Men
Dandies
Playboys
Feminine Side
Backlash
Part Two
3. New York
GQ
Ralph Lauren and His Models
Protometrosexuality
Fashion Photographs of Athletes
4. Armani
Armani's Stellar American Athletes
Armani's Superstars in Europe
The Great Masculine Renunciation
Part Three
5. Undies
Premetrosexual Undies
The Pioneer of the Undie Revolution
The Modern Kouros
Football and Basketball Favorites
The All-American Metrosexual
Undie Trouble
Resistance to Metrosexuality
Metrosexual Undies
What Do Undies Reveal?
6. Black Bodies
The African American Aesthetic
Pimped Out Bodies
NBA Tattoos and Bling-bling
Mainstream and Transracial Pimped Out Bodies
Fetishizing Black Bodies
Black Bodies in Briefs
7. Sporno Stars
Sports Nudity
The Gay Gaze
Soccer Photo Albums
Sports Calendars
A&F Catalogs
Fetishizing the Exotic
8. Metrosexual Masculinity
Joe Namath
Ian Thorpe
David Beckham
Beautiful Bodies
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index
