Bing! Bang! Boom! A Zine on Fashioning Masculinities

We are delighted to share a student zine developed as part of the course “Fashioning Masculinities – Gestaltung von Männlichkeit durch Mode,” taught this semester by our colleague Mariama de Brito Henn.

The zine brings together a wide range of student contributions that critically examine how masculinities are shaped, performed, challenged, and visualized through fashion, art, and popular culture. Drawing on theories of doing gender and performativity, the course examined the construction of Western, white masculinities and their entanglements with colonialism, power, and visual culture.

Working individually and collectively, the students engage with topics such as masculinity, the body, and consent; gendered aesthetics of color and neutrality; Two-Spirit and non-binary expressions; uniforms, subcultures, sports, and celebrity masculinity; decolonial perspectives on Black masculinities; and fashion as performance, resistance, and self-fashioning.

From Elvis Presley to Pedro Pascal, from tracksuits and camouflage to skirts and mullets, the zine shows how clothing becomes a powerful site for negotiating identity, norms, and difference.

The Fashioning Masculinities Zine is now available to read. We warmly invite you to explore the students’ thoughtful, creative, and critical work.