ABSTRACT
Over the last few years there has been a surge of interest in the study of men and masculinity. We are told that on both sides of the Atlantic men are starting to respond to the challenges of feminism. Women and gay men are no longer the ‘problem’ to be unravelled. Now the spotlight is on the heterosexual male. Fresh definitions of ‘masculinity’ abound, affirming old myths in attempts to create new males. From the ‘wounded male’ to the ‘new man’, images of reconstructed men appear on advertising bill-boards and television and in magazines and newspapers. These responses to feminism not only attempt to ‘unwrap masculinity’ (Chapman and Rutherford 1988; Polan 1988), but also to reassert male prerogatives (Faludi 1992): perhaps as Brittan suggests, ‘what has changed is not male power as such, but its form, the presentation and the packaging’ (1989:2).
