ABSTRACT

Pluralistic masculinisms have been described in terms of eight men's movements, with different perspectives flowing from responses to feminist viewpoints. The source of masculinist scholarship is the field of men's studies, which has become an accepted discipline that has its own organization. The justification for men's studies is that if the 'sex-role paradigm' assumes masculinity as the normative standard of reference, changes as a result of the women's movement are ignored. Just as feminism disrupted the idea of femininity as a monolithic construct, so too does masculinism challenge masculinity, implying that feminist theories of resistant reading can now be generalized to men and women. Once masculinity became an object of study, closer attention to the origins and contemporary definitions of ideal-male images began taking place. The origins of ideal images lie in the traditional differentiation of male and female bodies in accordance with biological functions and physical appearance.