ABSTRACT
The ‘kiwi bloke’ is often represented as a stubbie-wearing 1 , beer-drinking, sheep-shearing, ‘do-it-yourself’ heteronormative masculinity (Phillips 1987, Longhurst and Wilson 1999):
I think there’s an aspect of New Zealand culture and upbringing that’s sort of macho, and because of that, males in particular struggle to come to grips with their own true emotions. What they think they should be feeling has a lot of weight, and they can find it really hard to deal with full-on emotion. (Kirwan and Thomson 2010: 52).
