• English & American cultural studies
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.23-48
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• 2014

Considered as the first generation of the Chinese American male writers, Shawn Wong has often been tagged with the male-centered or cultural nationalistic writer for his first short novel Homebase since the 1970s. He has, however, shifted his own gender and cultural attitudes toward his male character in his second novel American Knees, published in 1995. By focusing on his second novel, this paper examines how Wong critically reconsiders the male-centeredness and cultural nationalism in a way to invalidate them in relationships among male and female characters in the formation of the Chinese American male's identity. Attempting to establish his own national and cultural identity as an American citizenship and the self-awareness of masculinity as a man, Rainsford Chan in Homebase believed that he could achieve his identity and masculinity with the chronological experiences related to his ancestors in American society. He even strictly erased the presence of female in his own identity formation. In doing so, he seemed to anchor his authorship at the discourse of the male-centeredness and cultural nationalist like other contemporary writers such as Frank Chin and Jeffrey Paul Chan who always strongly marked cultural tradition. By creating a non-conventional male character Raymond Ding with compromising and open-eared attitudes toward female characters, however, Wong dramatically changes the idea of representing the relationships between male and female characters in American Knees. In this novel, he suggests that the male character' identity can be properly formed not in the extreme reinforcement of masculinity or the ethnic-based cultural awareness but with the mutual understanding between male and female individuals regardless of ethnic and nationalistic biases. Consequently, Wong attempts to bail out of the male-centered images of the first generation of the Chinese American male writers through Raymond Ding.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.203-229
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that constitute masculine norms of masculine in Korean society. The definition of masculinity was to conform to the male-dominated standard formed socially and culturally. The results of in-depth interviews with 20 male participants were used for a concept mapping analysis to explore the configural representations of Korean masculine norms. After extracting the key sentences related to masculine norms, the participants sorted the 55 key sentences based on similarities and assessed the importance, which was then analyzed with multidimensional scaling method and cluster analysis. The result showed two dimensions, one representing social-personal domain and the other implying dominance-support domain as well as six clusters of caregiver, leadership, emotion suppression, job ability and organizational social adaptation, Expects the masculine abilities, power and control. Finally, the implications of this study, limitations, and the suggestions for future research were discussed.

• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.73-87
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• 2011

The Homme Fatale image, which has recently been brought to the fore by mass media in Korea, leads the public fashion with a strong influence on the preference of females who actively participate in men's fashion, and on the "mansumers"(man+consumer) who would use fashion styles as a medium for self-expression. In this study, the concept and fashion style of the homme fatale image expressed in the Korean mass media are exhaustively explored, and then its expressive characteristics are analyzed to determine the trends of men's fashion in Korea. According to the result of this analysis, the homme fatale image represented in the Korean mass media, shows us with its complex nature that it includes the following characteristics: strong and vigorous masculinity, sensuality which emphasizes physical attractiveness, duplicity of gentle sensibility and coldheartedness, and the mysteriousness of maturity and innocence. In conclusion, the homme fatale image can be thought to present fashion styles which emphasize masculinity and physical attractiveness in a variety of ways.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.50
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• pp.97-118
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• 2000

The purposes of the present research were (1) to investigate the sociological factors influencing the increase of ambivalence and the relationship between, the ambivalence and fashion change(2) to categorize sets of the ambivalence expressed for contemporary fashion and (3) to examine the frequency and the patterns of ambivalence presented for contemporary fashion. This research was conducted through in depth literature review and content analysis. Data was collected from 806 colored pictures presented on 'Collections' from 1972 to 1988. Eight types of clothing cues were incluede: look color texture decorative motifs of clothing collar sleeve and wearer's headdress/hair style and make-up. The results of this study were as follows: 1 The popularization of culture has been accelerated by mass production mass consumption and mass media. Since the 1980s postmodernism and poststructuralism have resulted in the breakdown of dualistic distinction. As the ambiguity of meaning in appearance increases the meaning is negotiated constantly for identity. 2. The most frequenctly expressed ambivalence in clothing was feminity/masculinity and tradition/modernity and wealth/poverty was the least. The number of ambivalent expression were the highest during 1990s. The rapid growth in ambivalence of tradition/modernity was found in 1970s feminity/masculinity in 1980s and modesty/immodesty in 1990s. Within a clothing style ambivalence was manifested through feminine look in white for beauty/ugliness feminine look mainly in yellow/red for wealty/poverty sexy look dominantly in black for modesty/immodesty androgynous look in black for feminity/masculinity and through ecology look most frequently in black for tradition/modernity.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.30 no.12 s.159
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• pp.1672-1682
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• 2006

Attitudes about the ideal body are influenced by media, including fashion magazine advertisements. The purpose of our study was to analyze the ideal body image for males and females in contemporary society. We analyzed the contemporary ideal gender image through the examination of physical characteristics(body type, age), and fashion styles(hair, make up, supplements, clothing styles, body exposure) in fashion advertisements published in Gentlemen's Quarterly(GQ) and Vogue issued during 2002. The results indicate some blurring in masculinity and femininity resulting in gender neutralization and naturalness pursuing natural appearances. But, some previous beauty norms related to masculinity and femininity remained.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.1217-1226
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• 2017

The Disney Studios have been aiming at the animation storytelling of the signification system that the contemporary audience can universally accept. And it can be said that such storytelling is aesthetic expression based on the contemporary mainstream dominant mythology. Seen from this perspective, the changes of the masculinity of male characters that are represented in the Disney feature animation Frozen are not just a simple aesthetic phenomenon but a strategy of animation storytelling that reflects the contemporary cultural and social trend. The gender identity of the male characters of Frozen is completely freed from the existing stereotypes about Disney feature animations, and it positively presents the changes of the gender roles that reflect the changes in social value and the needs of the times.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.157-171
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• 1985

An attemption was made to estimate the effect of menopause on the mental health of climacteric women. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) were questioned to 278 premenopausal women and 302 postmenopausal women. Data were analyzed by one-way analysis of variance in each variable of menopause, age, educational level, religion and partnership of husband, and two-way analysis of variance in two variables of menopause and one of other variables. The results were summarized as follows. 1. Menopause increased the scores of validity, psychopathic deviate, hypomania and paranoia scale, but conversely decreased the score of masculinity-femininity scale. 2. The older the climacteric women were, the lower scores of masculinity-femininity scale were observed. 3. The older the premenopausal women were, the higher scores of depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviate, psychasthenia and schizophrenia scale were observed, on the contrary, all scores of the postmenopausal women were decreased by the increment of their ages. 4. The higher the educational level of climacteric women were, the higher scores of correction and masculinity-femininity scale were observed, but the scores of hypochondriasis, hysteria, schizophrenia and social introversion scale were decreased by the increment of their educational level. 5. The scores of hypomania scale were higher in women of Buddhism than other religions. 6. The scores of validity, paranoia, psychasthenia, schizophrenia and social introversion scale were higher in widows than women with husband.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.1048-1061
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• 2010

The purpose of the study was to compare the culture and the clothing value between Korean and American college students, especially men. Also, this study was to analyze the culture effect on the clothing value. The survey was performed and 200 questionnaires were utilized for this study. The SPSS 12.0 was used to analyze the technical statistics like average, frequency, t-test, factor analysis, multiple regression analysis. The result showed, first, there were some 2 major cultural differences such as power distance and long-term orientation between Korean and American college men. Comparatively, Korean college men showed higher masculinity and lower power distance and long-term orientation. Second, there were differences in the clothing value aspect. Both of them considered the economic clothing value to be most important. Third, there were some differences in the clothing value because of the cultural differences. For Korean college men, there were masculinity and long term orientation that had an effect on the social and religious clothing values, however, for American college men, power distance, masculinity and long term orientation that had an effect on the social, religious, theoretical and economic values.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.164-176
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• 2013

The study aims to find differences in clothing image preferences according to gender-roleidentity. The questionnaire developed by the researchers was distributed to 533 men and women who aged between 20 and 59. Fourhundred eight questionnaires were used for the final analysis. The data were analyzed by ANOVA, and Tukey's test using SPSS 18.0/Windows. As results, both male and female participant groups of the study were classified into 4 groups according to their gender-role identity: masculinity, femininity, androgyny, and the undifferentiated. For men, the masculinity group showed a higher preference for flamboyant, sexy, expressive, cold, mature, hard, strong, weighty, heavy, sharp images, while the femininity group showed a stronger preference for flamboyant, bold, luxurious clothing images. The male androgyny group preferred masculine, sexy, cold, mature, hard, strong, weighty, luxurious, heavy, artificial images, whereas the undifferentiated group preferred flamboyant, sexy and mature images. On the other hand, for women, the masculinity group showed a higher preference for luxurious image, while the femininity group showed a stronger preference for sexy, urban, decorative, modern, complicated, luxurious images. The female androgyny group preferred expressive, modern, mature, complicated, and luxurious images, whereas the undifferentiated group preferred bold, decorative, rational, and complicated clothing images.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.1058-1073
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• 2022

Big data analytics and social media have shifted the way fashion trends are dictated. Fashion as a medium for expressing gender has created new concepts of masculinity in popular culture, where men are increasingly depicted in a softer style. In this study, we analyzed 2,879 menswear collections over a 10-year period from Vogue US to uncover key menswear trends. Using Semantic Network Analysis (SNA) on Orange3, we were able to quantitatively analyze how contemporary menswear designers interpreted diversified trends of masculinity on the runway. Frequency and degree centrality were measured to weigh the significance of trend keywords. "Jacket (f = 3056; DC = 0.80), shirt (f = 1912; DC = 0.60) and pant (f = 1618; DC = 0.53)" were among the most prominent keywords. Our results showed that soft masculine keywords, e.g., "lace, floral, and pink" also appeared, but with the majority scoring DC = < 0.10. The findings provide an insight into key menswear trends through frequency, degree centrality measurements, time-series analysis, egocentric, and visual semantic networks. This also demonstrates the feasibility of using text analytics to visualize design trends, concepts, and patterns for application as an ideation tool for academic researchers, designers, and fashion retailers.