ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the recent boom in men's cosmetic surgery practices, and notes how men and masculinities have been relatively under-studied in relation to aesthetic surgery. It describes the complexity of being a surgically altered man, and interrogates how the dramaturgical performance of reshaped masculinity is accomplished. The book also describes the gendered construction of occupational competency among doorstaff within the context of their potentially violent regulatory work. The book draws on qualitative interviews undertaken with boys who have voluntarily withdrawn from physical education in a sample of schools as a case study of institutional bullying, its link to masculinity performances, and its surveillance by social control agents. It demonstrates how broad social discourses create ideologies about normal/abnormal bodies in society. The book shows how body 'standards' are deployed in concerted and patterned ways in micrological settings of 'education'.
