Jane Nicholas' Representing the Modern Man

561 Words2 Pages

In Jane Nicholas’s Chapter 2 “Representing the Modern Man: Beauty, Culture, and Masculinity in Early-Twentieth-Century Canada” she explores the changes in men’s appearance and how it is depicted in advertisements of the time. Looking at many forms of magazines, advertisements and newspapers Jane Nicholas “aims to shed light on men’s place in modern beauty and commodity culture, not as producers, advertisers, or wage earners, but as potential consumers in early-twentieth-century Canada”(Nicholas,2012). Nicholas explores how, as urbanization was taking place in Canada men were beginning to pay more attention to their appearance and began to groom themselves accordingly. That modern man of the time changed; from not only being producers but also being consumers.
Before urbanization “masculinities in Canada have often been framed by men’s role in the production of goods as opposed to their roles as consumers” (Nicholas, 2012). Men were known to stay home, work on the farm, and hunted. Men were very rugged, muscular, dirty, and unshaven. Men cared little about what they looked like and ca...

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